Skydive-drop pilots, how to...
How do you guys calculate wind correction for the exit point ?
We're flying the jumprun at 80 KIAS with the Skyvan, what we do to get the wind correction is:
a) get the wind up to 5000ft and use 0.1Nm/3Kts Wind (wind drift on the chute)
b) get Wind up at drop alt and use 0.1/6Kts Wind (wind drift in free fall)
Then consider that you're "tossing" them 0.5NM due to exit speed
e.g. 15 Kts up to 5000, 30kts at altitude, same direction (say 270) would give:
Jumprun heading 270:
0.5NM+0.5NM = 1NM after passing overhead, and due to the balsitics you give the green light at 0.5NM after passing overhead.
Now that's all nice as long as the Winds aloft and the wind on the ground is about the same direction, and as long as you don't have an exceedingly high number of exits. But how to deal with highly different wind directions, high number of exits (long jump run)
What i do if the wind is calm and i have a large number of exits (for example there was a freefly corse and we had something like 17 exits with 24 skydivers in the load) is to fly an arc at 0.5 around the field, that gives everybody a pretty reasonable distance to the field and the seperation is not a problem too...
Comments, suggestions, different experience ?
MB