Jump planes

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Mtns2Skies

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Mtns2Skies
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I don't know if they're "supposed" to do anything, but I've jumped in two different places. It seemed like the pilots tried to get down pretty quick, even if there wasn't another load waiting. One place ALWAYS beat us down. The other place did about half the time, depending on how long their jump run was.
 
Jumpers......... how much does the drogue slow your speed?
 
Our local skydiving operation flies a Caravan. They drop at 14500, nose over and are usually back on the ground before the tandems land. He comes over my house at 5000 feet on a left base for runway 9, 4 miles north. It takes about 24 minutes for a complete run, takeoff to landing.
 
I'm both a skydiver and a private pilot, but never fly a jump plane. My local dropzone flies a king air and a Twin otter as jump planes. They usually takeoff/climb fast, comparing to the poor 172 I fly, and descend very fast, to minimize the flight time, reducing the operation/fuel cost.

As a skydiver, I don't care too much what the jump plane does after I exit, as long as it dose not create a collision hazard. It's really hard to see a jumper in the freefall, so we do spotting to check nearby traffic before exit. We also do our patter at 1000AGL, but it's much smaller and we do pay attention to avoid flying over the runway below 1000AGL.
 
Only the turbines stand on the nose after dropping the jumpers. 182 jump planes have to make sure they don't cool the engine off too fast.

Drogue's are only used for tandem skydives. It's for stabilization (no tumbling) more than slowing speed, but it does slow them down. As far as free fall time, figure about 10" for the first 1k' of freefall, then 5" for every 1k' after that.

(2 jumps today and it was beautiful!)
 
The 182 at the drop zone at WVI drops their jumpers at 10 grand and is often turning base to final as the last jumper is touching down five miles from the runway. No problems with their engine so far.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
How do 182's and other piston's descend?
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My guess (not a jump pilot): Power to idle, prop full forward, full flaps (I'm guessing none of the drop zones use 182's new enough to have only 30-degree flaps, and 40-degree flaps are VERY effective), and 30-degree bank or so...

They'd easily be down from 10K in 5 minutes.
 
The Pilatus H6 is a pretty stout aircraft but some of the flying you see at dropzones pushes the limits of the 'utility' category the type is in. The Twin-Otter pilots tend to be a bit more conservative.
 
in the 182 when towing gliders i usually just throttle back to about 20" (middle of green I believe) and put the RPM in the middle of the green and push it to about 130 mph. this seems to give about 1000 fpm descent. throttle idle and prop full seems like a great way to kill an engine, but thats just me. of course i usually only have to lose 1000 feet to get down to pattern altitude but i normally beat the glider back to the runway
 
not always though! sometimes the glider hits big sink and beats the towplane down.
 
eventually the power is at idle and prop governor is set at high RPM (although the prop itself never sees an increase in RPM after takeoff power is applied). Generally somewhere between entering downwind and just before touchdown. This is after cylinder head temps have had a chance to cool off into the sub 300 deg range. However the way i read Kent's post was to reduce power to idle and prop full while making a steep full flap descent. Low power, high RPM, relatively high airspeed on an engine that was running pretty hot after a long high power climb just doesnt seem like the nicest way to treat it to me.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
My guess (not a jump pilot): Power to idle, prop full forward, full flaps (I'm guessing none of the drop zones use 182's new enough to have only 30-degree flaps, and 40-degree flaps are VERY effective), and 30-degree bank or so...

They'd easily be down from 10K in 5 minutes.
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So does flaps 40, top of the white give a better descent rate than flaps up, up to redline (Depending on turbulence, of course :D ) ? Don't know. Haven't flown a 182 very much.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
How much of that time is the descent?
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About 5 or 6 minutes I'd guess. I've never timed just the descent, though I have flown right seat on a couple of drops.
 
I fly skydivers on sundays. The typical routine is we'll take the tandems to 10,000 AGL and the experienced ones to 3 or 4,000 agl. After they're out, I'll pull the throttle back to idle, close cowl flaps and take it to the yellow line. It's something you don't typically do with passengers which means I enjoy it a ton. Thankfully most of them have brightly colored chutes. Usually I'll stay few miles to the side and spiral down trying to keep them in sight as much as possible. 9 times out of 10 I'm touching down as the skydivers are on their final 100 or so feet. I've gotten compliments on how effective that is because the next tandem load is busy watching the last ones come in but ready to go when they're down.
 

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Greg Bockelman said:
So does flaps 40, top of the white give a better descent rate than flaps up, up to redline (Depending on turbulence, of course :D ) ? Don't know. Haven't flown a 182 very much.
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I think so. The flaps make a BIG difference in the descent angle on the 182.

Of course, I think you'd have to put the nose straight down to hit redline on the "Drag-O-Matic" 182 anyway. :rofl:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I think so. The flaps make a BIG difference in the descent angle on the 182.

Of course, I think you'd have to put the nose straight down to hit redline on the "Drag-O-Matic" 182 anyway. :rofl:
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I just checked, and the emergency descent procedure doesn't seem to be specified in the 182S POH.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I think so. The flaps make a BIG difference in the descent angle on the 182.

Of course, I think you'd have to put the nose straight down to hit redline on the "Drag-O-Matic" 182 anyway. :rofl:
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you mean Vfe? hardly.
 
tonycondon said:
throttle idle and prop full seems like a great way to kill an engine, but thats just me.
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I'm with Tony on this one.

I don't know anything abot piston jump planes, but a buddy of mine flies Twin Otters. They'll typically go up to about 14,000 (depending on where the clouds are), drop their load, and then he'll reduce the power and do about a 4,000-5,000 fpm descent. Of course, he's also the only person I know who's had 5 PT-6s fail on him.
 
tonycondon said:
gee, i wonder why????
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Probably a combination of factors, and the fact that they run the engines until they break has something to do with it. Whenever I tell him I don't get why people would jump out of a perfectly good plane, he points out that jump planes aren't perfectly good!
 
EvilEagle said:
Drogue's are only used for tandem skydives. It's for stabilization (no tumbling) more than slowing speed, but it does slow them down. As far as free fall time, figure about 10" for the first 1k' of freefall, then 5" for every 1k' after that.
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I use to work as a tandem instructor and the drogue is used primarily for speed control and the secondary benefit is for stability. I have only done one tandem without the drogue (during my initial certification) and our speed reached 180 mph. With the drogue, it is around 120 mph, which is the standard free fall speed for non-tandem jumpers (5 seconds per 1000 feet).

Ryan
 
Been a few years since if flew the 182 jump plane, I reduced power to about 20" lean it out, close the cowl flaps and then go full flaps and accelerate to the top of the White arc in a 30-45 degree bank. I then continued slowing reducing power as I descended. I figured the slower speed of decending with flaps would cool the engine more slowly. At about 2000ft AGL I would retract the flaps and accelerate back into the landing pattern. I typically was landing about the same time as the jumpers.

Brian
 
n12365 said:
I use to work as a tandem instructor and the drogue is used primarily for speed control and the secondary benefit is for stability. I have only done one tandem without the drogue (during my initial certification) and our speed reached 180 mph. With the drogue, it is around 120 mph, which is the standard free fall speed for non-tandem jumpers (5 seconds per 1000 feet).

Ryan
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I'm an AFF coach, but don't have my tandem rating. I've heard people argue both as the primary reason. I don't know - never done a tandem. :dunno: Both make sense and seem like good reasons to have them. I've heard a lot of bad stories about guys who are spinning and have a weak drogue throw.
 
tonycondon said:
you mean Vfe? hardly.
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No, I mean Vne (with flaps up). And yes, I know it can be done, I was just joking.

The low drag of the Diamond is taking some getting used to after flying the 182 so much. I actually have to reduce throttle to stay out of the yellow arc below about 6,000 feet; it'll easily maintain 100+ knots on 12"MP on an ILS. But once you slow down enough to get the flaps out, it slows quite well - I did get it from 130 KIAS down to 70 KIAS in 600 vertical feet on the ILS glideslope too.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
No, I mean Vne (with flaps up). And yes, I know it can be done, I was just joking.

The low drag of the Diamond is taking some getting used to after flying the 182 so much. I actually have to reduce throttle to stay out of the yellow arc below about 6,000 feet; it'll easily maintain 100+ knots on 12"MP on an ILS. But once you slow down enough to get the flaps out, it slows quite well - I did get it from 130 KIAS down to 70 KIAS in 600 vertical feet on the ILS glideslope too.
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sounds like it could use some airbrakes :)
 
brcase said:
Been a few years since if flew the 182 jump plane, I reduced power to about 20" lean it out, close the cowl flaps and then go full flaps and accelerate to the top of the White arc in a 30-45 degree bank. I then continued slowing reducing power as I descended. I figured the slower speed of decending with flaps would cool the engine more slowly. At about 2000ft AGL I would retract the flaps and accelerate back into the landing pattern. I typically was landing about the same time as the jumpers.

Brian
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our 182's Vfe is only 80 or 85 mph so that wouldn't work. plus like i said we only need to lose a couple thousand feet usually.
 
tonycondon said:
sounds like it could use some airbrakes :)
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Well, it is a descendant of gliders... I wonder when they went away? :goofy:

The flaps are very helpful because the two feet or so on each side closest to the wing root functions as a split flap - The wings attach about 2 feet outboard from the side of the fuselage and the flap is attached to the wing, but it extends inboard to roughly where the side of the fuselage is.

tonycondon said:
our 182's Vfe is only 80 or 85 mph so that wouldn't work. plus like i said we only need to lose a couple thousand feet usually.
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Wow - Ours lets you use 10 degrees at up to 160 mph, and full flaps at 110 mph.
 
yea ours is a bit of a pain to get slowed down to flap speed when you come out of the dive and into the pattern. part of the charm i suppose. some of the other guys like to do their downwind a bit lower than normal and then a slight climbing turn onto base to bleed off the speed.
 
tonycondon said:
our 182's Vfe is only 80 or 85 mph so that wouldn't work. plus like i said we only need to lose a couple thousand feet usually.
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I think that was all the flap speed was on the one I was flying. I think it was a B model.

Towing I tend to do it more like you do in that I am normally lower and farther away from the airport. I can use the extra speed to get back to the airport quickly.

Even when flying the jump plane I retracted the flaps at about the altitude you release the glider at. You can lose that last 1000 feet pretty quick that way.

Brian
 
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