RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM THE BACK SEAT By Jeff Orchard
FALLING OBJECTS
"You are travelling through another dimension.......a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a place whose boundaries are that of imagination....That's the sign post up ahead. Your next stop...THE JUMP ZONE."*
That is certainly how it seems on some days. You check the board for the jump zone, you look at the wind, you see where previous loads of jumpers have exited, and you go flying. On tow you scan the instrument panel and see the yellow "JUMP ZONE" sticker, which reminds you to look around again to see that you are clear. Just before 3000 feet, you see the towplane lurch upward and you release into a 900 foot per minute thermal. Two turns later, the radio says..."Skydive 5 to manifest, we have to go around again...there is a glider in the drop zone."
Smugly, you look around for the intruder. Boy, is that pilot in trouble. Hmmm. There are no other gliders in sight. You look straight up, beads of sweat beginning to form on your forehead just in time to see the Twin Otter disappear from the hole in the overdeveloped cumulus directly above your head.
What happened? You were outside the jump zone....you thought. "Texas" is way over there, and the last load dropped right over Texas. The wind has not changed. But the only place that the jumpers could see the ground and the airport was right over your head. You better hope that the wind is light enough that the hole stays right where it is while the Otter makes a big, expensive circle in the sky on your behalf.
I first flew gliders in Salem NH, and spent many years doing the bulk of my flying right there. The only thing we had to look out for was other aircraft traffic, generally moving on a horizontal plane. Once in awhile, when we were feeling frisky, we would delve into the vertical. Our biggest concern was airline traffic between Boston and Manchester. If you missed those guys in your sky-scan, you usually could hear them if they were close. A story for another time.
My first flight at Pepperell was on a day that there was no jumping. My second flight was with a student, and we were aware that the jump plane was about to drop a load of bodies into the sky. I strained to see the Otter, and even asked the student to hold straight and level while I looked in vain for the drop. I checked our location again and confirmed that we were well clear of the DZ, they were dropping in a north wind on the far side of the runway, in a clear sky. I told the student to continue in his thermal and on the next turn toward the field, I was shocked to see objects falling from the sky a half a mile away. My first time. It seemed too close at the time, but we were well away from the drop zone and in a very safe position. I was just a newcomer, and was experiencing the air-sharing for the first time. Now the drop zone is more familiar to me, I know when I am near it, and falling objects do not make my eyes widen so much when they appear out of nowhere.
GBSC is a guest of the Pepperell Airport management. A paying guest to be sure, but still a guest. We are, as a club, committed to being safe in our activities and we constantly strive to improve our training and our abilities.
As a part of this effort, it is important that we observe the rules that keep gliders and parachutists out of each others way. We all remember the incident in western Massachusetts where an airplane passing through a drop zone had it's elevator sheared off by a free falling skydiver. The pilot of the airplane was simply not aware of the fact that he was in a drop zone, and he and his passengers had a few moments to realize that before they hit the ground. The radio was found in the wreckage on the wrong frequency, and there was no sectional map in the plane. The skydiver was the lucky one. He lived. An airplane will fly without the ailerons working properly, or without a rudder or flaps...but it will not fly without an elevator.
There are new maps done by Don Mayer which divides the area around Pepperell airport into 8 segments. These segments all are designated by a letter of the alphabet from A to H. There will be a large one at the clubhouse, and Don has provided us with enough small ones that each glider will have one in it. At the beginning of the day, the senior field officer should go to the manifest office and get the drop zone segments. It may be just zone F or it might be a combination of F and G because of wind conditions. The most important thing to remember is that it may change at any time, and to be aware of what is going on around you at any given time. The drop zone can change if the wind shifts, it can extend if the velocity increases, and there is the possibility of a bad call on the part of the jumpmaster, letting jumpers out in the wrong place.
Our biggest tool is the radio. The club is having regular discussions with the management of the airport to resolve issues before they arise. Some of the improvements being discussed are some form of notification from manifest or the jump plane that the drop zone is changing. The jump plane currently announces two minutes to skydiving over Pepperell on every flight. The jump plane willl announce the letter(s) of the intended DZ at that time as well. It will also be useful to have an announcement of "Jumpers away over Pepperell, Zone B" as the skydivers exit the plane. One last check for safety's sake.
None of these measures take the place of pilots using common sense in their flying. If there is a high overcast and light wind, we should expect that a drop may occur through a hole in the overcast, even if that hole is not exactly in the drop zone that is on the board. In that case, we should stay out from under holes. That should not be too hard to do, as most thermals are directly under the clouds anyway.
There are situations where the wind is right down the runway, fairly strong, that neccesitates the drop zone being elongated along the runway heading. Jumpers that are doing long free falls will exit the plane first, and others will follow, making a string of parachutists extending upwind, possibly in several sectors at the same time. The skydiving operation has promised to try and notify the SFO when that is a possibility, and the SFO should make the announcement over the radio. Please keep your radio on and tuned to the right frequency while you are flying in the vicinity of the airport. And a radio with a dead battery is just extra weight.
We will also be notified when the jump zone changes due to conditions. Gliders and jumpers need to both be aware of wind conditions, and ideally we would both like to be directly upwind of the runway at 13,000 feet. Since gliders are far more controllable and have better L/D's, we can be out of the drop zone, off to one side of the jump area and still make it home without a long walk. Parachutists do not have that luxury.
If we use common sense, we can all use the air over Pepperell safely. Be aware of the drop zone before you get in your glider. Make sure your radio works, and leave it on. Recognize that like soaring, parachuting is not an exact science; that occasionally conditions will fool even the best jumpers (and the best pilots). Never......NEVER fly directly over the runway at Pepperell, and if you are very high up, adjust your distance away from the runway to accommodate the conditions. Stay out of the upwind sectors, even if they are not the "published" drop zone. Use your head while you are in the air and look around. Be aware. Think. Have fun.