Otter 1 Well I must admit that I have flown jumpers in the very early days when you told them to put the seat restraint on or no takee off and when clouds cover the zone we do not get involved with them no matter how good you think your flying skills are, but hey it was for fun and the dollars did not corrupt the operation. So you flew them I am impressed if it was in the victoria area did you know Claude of Doncaster (alias God) I also have a local that was a first of the new idea of private skydiving with the el cheapo military canopies but yeah this GW seems to me to be one of the wayward type that will defend any association with the skydiving fraternity be it good ops or even defend the bad situation by condeming bad practices and or sloppy buck chasing operators.
Otter 1 I failed to mention an incident about jumping through cloud that occured at Labertouche (old jump zone east of melbourne) a visiting team was to arrive early morning and stated they would jump in, by radio they where informed that it was eight eights but they said we do it all the time? and let the guys out over what they thought was a good mark (by others telling them it sounded overhead) the guys jumped but good for them they decided not to go through the cloud layer and opened and floated for about 20 seconds before landing on the mountain in cloud. The pilot was a bit shaken when he learned of it but the old jumpers had to get down unaided because four wheel drives could not even get to them. The moral is why risk your life and anybody elses when it is not needed, The cloud will break but if it does not wait or try another day. But this posting forum has seen the problems first hand and are trying to remedy it ? I do know of fuel starvation at least twice at this particular field but the machine they now use would probably negate that but hey cloud ops are not legal and the APF should do a surprise visit and bring CASA along. I am not anti skydiving but feel that it should not be performed at this location as well as not at another location about 4km away either on safety of area grounds. If it was just a club it would survive by not doing cloud jumps as most members would understand but being commercial in operation the public is spending the operator is wanting the dollars any way possible, through traffic must be on there toes as you may not make it to your destination if you get hit by a sky diver that you will not see or indeed you see him/her.