{"id":17357,"date":"2016-07-13T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skydivemag.com\/new\/?p=17357"},"modified":"2016-07-13T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T23:00:00","slug":"2016-07-14-its-all-alright-till-it-goes-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skydivemag.com\/new\/2016-07-14-its-all-alright-till-it-goes-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s All Alright till it Goes Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please watch this video showing one example out of many skydives that led to the writing of this article.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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It’s all alright until it goes wrong!<\/h2>\n

Skydiving Breakoff Safety: Video Takes the Center, High<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a super cool shot to get when you\u2019re flying outside video above a skydiving formation \u2013 that shot when the camera flyer above drops into the center as the formation breaks away, probably turning in place to watch everyone\u00a0track far and fast before deploying.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a great shot \u2013 that is, as long as everyone is really tracking far and fast. On many occasions, like the above example, the outside camera flyers have had near misses with the people they were filming on deployment. Most of these near misses occur when the camera flyer doesn\u2019t deploy at breakoff altitude, but instead sucks it down to the group\u2019s pull altitude for whatever reason \u2013 there isn\u2019t a really good one \u2013 and one or more of the formation flyers short tracks and has a 180-degree turn on opening. Or perhaps the group breaks off low, the videographer pulls low because the group broke low, everyone short tracks because they\u2019re low,\u00a0and\u00a0now we\u2019re perfectly set up for collisions on opening.<\/p>\n

\"It's<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to blame the formation flyers in this scenario \u2013 hey, remember the videographer takes the center? But the cameraflyer bears responsibility here as well, because all he or she has to do (usually) to avoid this traffic is to pull at the planned breakoff altitude. The formation flyers should have planned at least 1500 feet of altitude\u00a0or around 9\u00a0seconds (when belly flying) to track away from the center, so by the time they deploy they should be around\u00a01500 feet below and several hundred feet away laterally from the camera flyer.<\/p>\n

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The group breaks off low, the videographer pulls low because the group broke low, everyone short tracks because they\u2019re low, and now we\u2019re perfectly set up for collisions on opening<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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With this scenario,\u00a0the only way the camera flyer should have any traffic issues with their group on deployment is if:<\/p>\n

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