- Have you ever been in a situation
where you were at a long spot from your drop zone?
It means that you were looking at your landing zone
and wondering if you would even make it back.
Well in this video let's talk about
how to avoid being in a long spot situation.
And how to make it back
when you're far from your landing zone.
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Hey there, this is Catherine Bernier here, from Skydive Vibes,
sharing the passion of skydiving
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Well since the beginning of this season
I ended up in some situations where I was wondering
if I would make it back to the landing area.
Those situations gave me a little bit more stress
in my jumps and I wanted to share with you
what I've learned from those experiences.
Meaning, how can you avoid being in a long spot situation,
and when you do are in one,
how to react to make it back to the landing zone
as safe as possible.
So first, let's talk about how to avoid
being in a long spot situation.
First, everyday you start jumping and at every jump, really,
you want to be aware of the winds,
not only on the ground but also in altitude.
Most of the drop zone are often offering you a dashboard
where you can see the winds at 12,000 feet, 6,000 feet
and 3,000 feet.
Those wind speed indications are very useful
when you know how to use them.
Usually the wind speed at 12,000 feet
will give you indications on how much time you need to leave
between each jumping groups.
After that the wind speed indication
that interests us in this video is the one at 3,000 feet
because it's gonna be the one affecting you under canopy.
And keep in mind that you don't only need to know the speed
but also the wind orientation.
And this brings us to the second element
you need to be aware of,
which is the spot or where you're exiting the plane
relative to your landing zone.
Spotting the landing zone is something
very important to do before each
and every one of your jumps.
And this applies,
even though you're the last one jumping out of the airplane.
So you should have learned that when you became a skydiver,
but before exiting the plane you gotta make sure
you're exiting at the right place,
according what was discussed on the ground.
And to define that they are actually looking
at the wind speeds, just like we talked at the beginning.
So the exit point is designed
so that the wind helps you get back to the drop zone.
So in each of your jump, if you know what are the wind speed
and also where you should exit the plane at,
well you'll be able to double verify
and make sure that you're exiting at the right place,
in order to make it back to the landing zone.
So when you want to apply that in your jumps it's very easy.
Whenever you are about to exit the plane
make sure to locate the drop zone, down below,
and make sure you are at the right place,
according to what was discussed and also the wind speeds.
On a side note, this was a personal experience
where we were the last group exiting the plane
and we didn't take time to look at where we were
before exiting and we ended up all doing a plan B,
as we call it, which is landing off the landing zone.
So taking a couple of seconds to just look down
and see where we are, and if necessary,
simply ask the pilot to do a second round,
to make sure you're exiting at the right place
because it's always safer to land on the drop zone
then somewhere else, of course.
All right, so the third element I wanted to share to you
in order to avoid landing off,
is that if you have a doubt on your position,
according to the landing zone, simply pull higher.
This way by being under canopy
earlier and higher in altitude,
you'll have more time to make it back to the drop zone,
if you were far away.
As a quick tip, as soon as you are under canopy
the first thing you wanna do, of course,
is to check if you have a square canopy
that can fly properly.
Then using your rear riser,
without touching anything else before,
you want to look for the traffic
and then orient yourself towards your landing area.
That's the first thing you wanna do
because you don't want to end up
in the worse situation than you were
by messing around with your canopy routine,
while you are getting further away from your landing zone.
So before touching anything else
make sure to orient yourself towards the landing zone.
All right, so those were four elements
that I wanted to share with you to help you
avoid being in a long spot situation,
and land off your landing zone.
But now, what do you do
when you are in a long spot situation
where you're doubting that you're gonna make it back
to your drop zone.
Well, let's talk about some tips for you.
In most situations, if you are in a long spot,
you most likely are in a downwind situation.
Which means that the wind is working for you,
behind your back.
So taking that into consideration what you wanna do
is you want to have that wind effect,
plus your forward speed,
helping you getting back to the landing zone.
So for that matter,
if you want to increase the wind effect on your wing,
you want to stay in altitude the most possible.
So knowing that we want to stay
in the air the longest possible,
we want to slow down our descent rate
and improve our glide ratio.
Which will make us go further.
Of course, different canopies and different wingloading
will react differently to the techniques
to improve the glide.
One other tip is to simply leave the toggle stowed
and let the canopy float, as it is.
You can adjust the orientation by giving small inputs
on the rears or also with your harness.
The goal is to not give too much inputs
because by doing so you're gonna lose altitude,
which is what we don't want.
Another technique is to unstow your brakes,
but then giving a little input on the rears
to flatten out your canopy.
Again, the goal is to slow down the descent rate
and have the wind push us forward the most possible.
Another technique, depending on the situation,
is to leave the brakes stowed
but then give that same rear riser input.
It all depends on the canopy and your wing loading.
So try to test those three techniques
and see which one will give you the most performance.
Like I said earlier try to orient yourself
while you're in this position with your harness,
not to give any hard inputs with the toggle
because each inputs will give you drag
and then make you lose altitude,
which will leave you less time
to make it back to the drop zone.
In that situation, again, drag is your enemy.
So to help out you can also
raise your knees up to your chest,
so that you're reducing the drag of your body
and trying to make it more efficient forward.
You can also collapse your slider,
again to reduce the drag.
Lastly, I want to tell you that landing on the drop zone
is secondary to landing safely.
So if by a 1,000 or 800 feet, you figure out that
you're not gonna be able to land on the drop zone,
it's time to choose a plan B or another landing zone.
Avoid obstacles to the maximum,
plan your landing pattern according to the winds
that you should be aware of.
There has been a lot of jumpers trying to push the limits
and trying to land on the landing area,
and ended up having serious landing injuries.
So it's really important to land safely, first.
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Blue skies.