I wanted to create some sort of resource for new and old jump pilots to use for gathering information about flying skydivers. Whether you have 250 hours and wet ink on your commercial license or you have 10,000 hours and an ATP, I hope that you will find something useful on this site. Things I want to put on this website are SPECIFICS about flying different types of aircraft in jump operations, an example syllabus for training, and a detailed list of jump plane accidents broken down by year, type aircraft and causes. This site should always be a work in progress. I hope that with time more pilots and jumpers will participate in growing this site.
Regulations don’t change often; however, the interpretation of regulations seems to evolve over the years. Hopefully we will be able to provide timely information on any changes to part 61, 91, and 105 FAA regs involving skydiving operations.
Different types of aircraft are used across this nation and around the world for the sole purpose of getting skydivers to altitude. The most common aircraft is the Cessna 182. Unfortunately, it is also the most common aircraft involved in accidents because of its widespread use. One section will describe the most common practices and procedures for flying the 182. Another will describe some accidents. We all learn from our mistakes, but learning from someone else’s mistakes or incidents beats the heck out of learning those lessons the hard way. I will also include other incidents and accidents on other types of aircraft as information becomes available and is verified. Accidents and incidents are no fun to talk about. Not learning from the mistakes of others means that we may be doomed to repeat them. Don’t let this happen to you.
Spotting with GPS becomes more and more popular every year. But some pilots still don’t use its full potential. Here you will find tips on how to use GPS for spotting.
This site, as I said, will always be a work in progress. Enjoy. And feel free to comment.
Chris Schindler (contact)
D-19012
246-way Lead Pilot
300-way Left Wing Pilot
14,000+ total time
3,000+ flying skydivers
870+ jumps
Contributors
Chris Schindler
12,000 hours total time flying. 3,000 hours flying skydivers. Flew as lead pilot for the World Record 246-way 12 aircraft formation at Skydive Chicago, Ottawa, IL July 1998 and was responsible for spotting the loads. Flew as left wing pilot on Airspeed 300-Way at Eloy, AZ December, 2002. Graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 1992 and is currently a captain on the CL-65 (CanadAir Regional Jet).
Chris is the creator and content manager of DiverDriver.com. Contact Chris
Christy West
50 hours flight time, occasional right seat ornament, several hours of freefall/5000+ skydives, Accelerated Freefall Jumpmaster (lapsed), Women’s World Record (118-way), multiple U.S. National Skydiving Championships medalist in 4-way, 8-way, 10-way, and 16-way, editor, web site designer.
Christy is the webmistress responsible for developing and managing DiverDriver.com.
John Kallend, BS, PhD
John received his bachelor’s degree (1967) and PhD (1971) from the University of Cambridge (England). His college was Trinity Hall. After post-doctoral work at Cambridge and UC Berkeley, he joined the IIT faculty in 1978. He is a skydiver in the Chicago, Ill., area and an affiliate at Los Alamos National Laboratory and at Argonne National Laboratory.
- Associate Dean, Armour College of Engineering, 1989 – 91
- Chair, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, 1991-95
- Dean, Undergraduate College, 1995 – 99
John developed the Freefall Drift Simulator on this site.
Philip Artweger
2 years of Ops, about 600TT and 1800 Flights roughly…. plus 17 years of operation at Pink Aviation.
Philip wrote the Skyvan article on this site.
George Merle
4,000+ hours total time mostly in F-18 and F-14 aircraft US Navy. Civilian ATP and CFII. 100+ hours in PAC 750XL.
Neal Alders
Neal Alders, chief pilot, Skydive Space Center, Titusville, Florida. Neal has about 10,000 hours total time, and holds an Airline Transport Pilot, Multi-Engine land, with a type rating in the DeHavilland Dash 8 and has flown 3500 hours in skydiving operations. He also holds a Commercial Pilot certificate with ratings in Multi-Engine Sea, Single Engine Land, and has Private privileges in Gliders. He is a CFI in single and multi-engine aircraft. He specializes in training tail wheel, formation and aerobatics. Neal has flown jumpers in King Air’s, Twin Otters, CASA 212’s, Porters, PAC 750’s, Cessna’s and Stearman biplanes.
Chris Rosenfelt
Chris holds a Commercial Pilot Certificate with Multi-Engine and Instrument Ratings. He has logged about 3000 hours flying skydivers and ferrying Caravans all over the country. He is also the owner of CaravanPilot.com.
3 replies on “About DiverDriver.com”
Hello everyone. I am looking to put a lexan roll up door on my P206. Looking for resources or anyone that has done this. I have all the parts and ready to put the door on. I will be doing a field approval hopefully.
Probably best to ask this question in the Facebook group. http://www.facebook.com/groups/DiverDriverCom/
Hey guys! I love your site and have referred to it many times in the past when I was new to flying jumpers and then new to turbine ops. I currently have just under 3500TT, 2200 turbine, and 3200hrs of jump ops.
I have referred all of the guys that I have trained to your “aircraft specific cheat sheets”, to familiarize themselves with everything prior to their first flight with me.
The past several winters we have gotten a Quest Kodiak as our main aircraft at my current DZ. I’ve racked up 600+ hours in the Kodiak now and noticed recently that you guys don’t have a cheat sheet for the Kodiak.
In my time with them, I’ve noticed several quirks with it and if you guys were up for it, I’d love to put one together for it.
Most Interestingly (and dangerously), it is the most sensitive aircraft to CG shifting of all jump aircraft I’ve flown. Two that I have flown have in accurate placards in reference to speed on jump run. The placard states vMax 75Kts on jump run (which makes sense considering we use 80Kts in the caravan which is larger, heavier, and not a STOL aircraft).
I had minimal training before jumping into the Kodiak the first time. I had 1000 hrs in the caravan and the plane owner came to swap out the caravan for the Kodiak, told me the difference in start sequence from the caravan, and sent me off to the wolves.
that placard ended up getting me into a bit of a pickle. 3 months after at the DZ that uses the Kodiak spring-fall, it got another pilot (very experienced with jump ops, but also fairly new to the Kodiak) into an even worse pickle.
One day, a few months into the first winter we had it, the whole plane was leaving in one group. while pushing forward on the yoke to counteract the weight shift, I discovered that I was pushing the yoke as far as it would go and the tail was still slowly dropping. At this point I realized that the tail had stalled. Luckily right at that moment, the group left. As soon as they were gone the tail caught air again and the plane shot from 30 degrees nose up to 15 degrees nose down before I could release all of the forward pressure from the yoke.
For the pilot after me, he wasn’t so lucky and ended up fully flipping the plane over onto its back. Thankfully, all jumpers were able to bail out and he was able to regain control.
After this happened to me, I started using 85kts and haven’t had an issue over the past two winters that I’ve flown it following that.
The Kodiak is much heavier on the controls in general to the pac 750, blackhawk caravan, and Supervan 900. It takes a lot more oomph to make the corrections needed as the jumpers move towards the door. It also is notably more sensitive to crosswinds and is prone to tail oscillations (side to side) as it is blown by gusts of wind in the climb. You have to really work back and forth on the rudder to counteract it at times.
It also has an auto trim system that is far from perfect, causing the nose to drop significantly when removing flaps, and the nose to rise and a decay of speed when adding flaps. This can be mitigated.by a few seconds of nose up or nose down trim on the yoke switch prior to making the flap changes, but takes some getting used to, especially on jump run. It can slow you down really quickly if you aren’t on top of it.
These are just a couple of the main things that I have noticed with it, and I figured it’d be great to at least to make you guys aware in case you get questions in the future. Haha
I really appreciate all you guys do and look forward to hearing from you about putting something together to add to the site!
Have a great rest of the day,
Jeremy Fox