{"id":24482,"date":"2020-04-27T12:31:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T12:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skydivemag.com\/new\/?p=24482"},"modified":"2022-08-11T08:06:43","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T08:06:43","slug":"what-is-your-decide-and-act-altitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skydivemag.com\/new\/what-is-your-decide-and-act-altitude\/","title":{"rendered":"What is your Decide and Act Altitude?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

? \u2013 Do you have a Decide and Act altitude ?
? \u2013 Do you have a Hard Deck altitude ?
? \u2013 How do you decide these altitudes ? <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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In 2018 I published an article called <\/strong>\u201cThe Malfunction Flowchart\u201d<\/strong><\/a> in an attempt to summarize the most common nuisance factors and malfunctions and the appropriate reactions on one page so that jumpers have a visual aid to review and hopefully practice their emergency procedures regularly. <\/strong>
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While the feedback was mostly positive, to my surprise there were a number of people on various channels of social media who seemed to be disturbed by the \u201cDecide and Act<\/em>\u201d altitude of 2500 feet I chose to adopt in the graphic (altitude recommended for students by the USPA).
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Most comments went along the line of \u201c\u2026and I should ride it down to 2,500 feet till I react, or what?\u201d<\/em> I shrugged it off as people just being keyboard warriors, patted myself on the back for making skydiving safer and forgot about it.
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Until recently when I gave a talk about canopy collisions, where I was met with blank faces when I asked about people\u2019s Decide-and-act altitude and their hard deck. Turns out a considerable number of skydivers have not considered, let alone set these altitudes for themselves. It is after all a complex topic with A LOT of factors influencing your decision, which can of course lead to information paralysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, or people just don\u2019t like to think of worst-case scenarios, let alone complex ones and their solutions.
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Either way, given that in recent years we have seen an increased number of fatalities due to low cutaways, I am going to take you down the rabbit hole of a caffeine-fueled rant about the Decide and Act Altitude<\/strong><\/em>. <\/strong>
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All About Altitude<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What we will discover is the following:
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