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The "Big Sky Little Sky-Diver" theory fails once again.....

depends if you are trying or not......

Jim

Not to mention the eerie name irony

True story:

While I was in the Corps, I was flying back to MCAS El Toro after having fixed a broken Hornet in Oklahoma. The last leg of our flight was from Albequerque, NM to SoCal.

As we were nearing Lake Elsinore, the pilot and I were heading towards the "saddle" of Saddleback Mountain when he all of a sudden banked hard right and let out an "Oh *****! Did you see that?"

Being in the aft seat of a T-34, all I was ever able to see during the flight was the back of his helmet and the view out the port and starboard side. Well, I looked out the starboard window in time to see a parachute opening a few hundred feet below us.

I have no idea how close we came, but judging from the pilot's excited comments, I'd guess we came pretty close to having something like this happen to us. :eek:

Randy

There are stories of close calls, and I've read a few about Elsinore, but this type of collision is extremely rare. Its hitting the skydiving community pretty hard, since Gus was well known.

Here's a little snippet from someone on dropzone.com discussing the situation:

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Re: [GreenLight] Gus Wing Hit By Otter At Deland - NEW [In reply to]
Quote | Reply
__Here at Perris we have 5 aircraft not including the JET. At any given time there can me 3 or more aircraft in the air going up or coming down. Our landing area is right next to the runway by the way. How can you expect all these aircraft to wait untill all skydivers are down before landing. Economics won't allow this with gas prices the way they are and the growing neighborhood around us wouldn't like all the extra noise from planes circling. You can't cover all the bases and make everyone safe. Each individual has to think for themselves and try and keep out of the way of aircraft and other skydivers in the air.

Time will tell if the FAA agrees with your logic. Seems like they might consider this a good argument for moving landing areas off of airports, which has happened at some CA dz's.

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I've landed after the plane that I jumped out of many times. Yikes. Guess I'll really have to start paying closer attention to winds aloft from here on out.