Enlighten me, what issues would they have coming through cloud in CTA?

It was the wind that put them off yesterday not the cloud.

Disregarding for the moment the first few thousand feet of drop and the few dozen or so aircraft to be avoided on the way down, does anyone else share my concern about having parachutes landing right next to a busy 4 lane highway, distracting hundreds of drivers of vehicles known to be far more dangerous than aircraft, while they are operating in close proximity to the drop zone and each other?

A lot of residents also raise concerns about houses right before the threshold of runways.

You know that parachutes have been steerable for more than 20 years now...

Cattletruck:

Not Cowboys? How does dumping punters into a full on Northerly/Westerly Port Phillip wind change sound?

Not Cowboys? Only here for the summer? Do they have working visas?

I think I'm going to apply to start a croquet club on the Monash Freeway median strip, usnig G'Tangs logic, what could possibly go wrong?

To jump into there you need the right display license and have done 20 consecutively nominated landings within 1m. I think those guys will miss the highway.

Sunfish what if I told there are professional skydivers in the country that have gained residency from it? Is it that hard to believe that it's easier to get a job skydiving than flying? In fact per load you could probably earn 7 times more as a skydiver than a jump pilot.

Yeah too true, may as well shut down Picton, Tooradin and a few more while were at it.

Yep, shut them all down, they are only having fun after all.

Hey nonsense, please don't judge my driving ability based on your own capabilities!

Sunfish, do you actually think before you post? Or just like to see your name popping up on here?

Hey Sunfish, don't you think a lot of what you have written in this thread completely contradicts your excellent post in this thread

Good Idea Nonsense,

We should stop them from skydiving, hence it may distract drivers. Following that logic, all billboards, road signs, pedstrians, pretty clouds and all cars other than white will also be banned, to eliminate distraction.

Really hoping what you wrote was a wind-up

j3

He is taking the piss, Marine Parade is hardly a 'busy highway'. It's a 60km/hr road, that has two lanes each way, one of which gets blocked by parked cars outside of peak hours. For the inner city, it's not exactly the busiest stretch of road either.

He did a good job :ok:

combat flights melbourne
 

Great example of the traffic around the DZ.. But you forgot to add the new start up venture doing two ship combat aerobatic flights ex YMMB out over Rickets/ Carrum @1500-4500 ' in a couple of Nanchang's!

See combatflightsmelbourne.com.au ( free plug?)

To be honest the weather the other day was rather sudden ( and I say that as a 18000 hour 330 captain ) and extreme ( I was in the garden at Brighton watching it )

SDTB pilots ( and I know a couple) have so far impressed me with their professionalism and ability. The incident the other day was perhaps unfortunate but ended relatively well. SDTB is one pf the few success stories of aviation to be honest , so let's stop bagging them.

In fact, the other day they canned jumps in 25 knots at Barwon when I flew in with my Nanchang - and found it a tad of a handful in the all cross wind grass landing! So they do think about what they are doing, it appears to me.

I also agree that chutes deployed at 4-5000 feet are easy to see and unlikely to be an issue if you generally avoid the DZ by a small margin and keep your eyes and if needed, ears out.

As for the sausage factory out of Moorabbin etc, everyone has to learn somehow, and yes it might be onerous (to a point) transitting the area, but all the peripheral procedures can ( more or less ) be forgotten if you look outside enough.

Personally, I have only recently got back into a single pilot operation after 20 years multi crew and find the whole Port Philip Bay flying a pleasure.. I know I don't get all the procedures correct but I come back to my point on the VFR lookout concept.

Ready to take incoming criticism if I appear too cavalier ?

Codswallop.

It's a dual carriageway with two dedicated lanes plus parking bays plus a cycle lane (between the parking bays and the left traffic lane) southbound, and three traffic lanes northbound until just past the marina where it matches the southbound.

It's also a very busy road, regardless of the speed limit.

Not that I think that the proximity of the road is relevant to this debate. I just think that the drop through busy G is unnecessary and a better location could have been chosen.

Suggest one and I will tell you why its not.

Actually, no, I wasn't taking the piss.

It is a busy 4 lane highway with bumper to bumper traffic several hours each morning and afternoon peak hour.

Moving video billboards are also a well recognised hazard that councils such as Bayside (corner of South Road and Nepean Highway, for example) are just coming to grips with.

Pedestrians, road signs, cyclists and non-white cars are normal everyday components of the traffic. Clouds are above car drivers' normal sight line, just as falling parachutes are above pilots normal sightline when looking out for other traffic.

If a broken down vehicle or a minor crash is sufficient to cause a traffic bottleneck and further crashes (and surely we've all seen that many times), a bunch of parachutes suddenly appearing right next to traffic can't be good either.

And Aussie Bob, while I'm delighted to hear that one of the cars around me is being driven by a superior driver such as yourself, by definition, 1 in 20 of the cars around me is being driven by a 5th percentile driver, and according to police random breath testing stats, about 1 in 200 is being driven by someone who is drunk.

We all learned to drive while drunk when I was young. It's the drugs you should be worried about!

Kaz

One which doesn't drop into a busy (88,000 movements per year) VFR traffic lane in G.



(I notice that you have erroneously entered your IQ instead your nominated age, but I'm sure that PPRuNe can amend that for you)

While this thread is dropping into the comedic ...

It's so easy to avoid John. Simply head northwest and join the other country bumkins. Here we can listen to your endless circuit commentary's on 126.7 as you struggle with identifying yourself.

Back in the real world of 88,000 movements, the pilot of average ability knows that a 1nm wide column is easy to avoid. This same pilot is also more than happy to see at least one GA business succeeding.