Load organising for freefly

Study material for a developing coach. It confers no rating and no authority to assess.

Coaching is one person’s progression. Organising is everybody’s airspace, and it is the job where a coach’s decisions affect people who never asked to be coached.

This page is about assembling and running a load. The flying itself is covered elsewhere: see exit order and separation for the separation logic, calculating drift for formations for the arithmetic, and what a movement leader owns for leading a movement group once it is in the air.

Work it out with the other leaders, before the call

The first move is not a plan, it is a conversation. Every other group leader and instructor working that load needs to know what you intend, and you need to know what they intend.

The aim is simple to state and takes work to achieve: everybody opens clear of everybody else. Every decision below serves that.

Order the load by drift, not by status

Exit order follows how far each group will drift and how much airspace it needs, which is a function of freefall time and horizontal movement rather than of who is most senior or most impatient.

A working ladder, adjusted for the day:

• Movement group, first.
• Belly groups, largest to smallest.
• Freefly groups, largest to smallest.
• A second movement group, flying a different direction from the first.
• Students.
• Tandems.
• High pulls.
• Wingsuits.

Two things about that order are worth spelling out. A second movement group goes ahead of students so that fast, mobile canopies are not arriving in a student landing pattern. And board the aircraft in reverse exit order, because a load that has to rearrange itself at altitude wastes time and generates the kind of confusion that produces mistakes.

Slower-falling groups drift further because they are in freefall longer. That is about time, not orientation.

Separation is ground covered, not seconds counted

When the winds at height are strong, the horizontal separation between opening points depends on how much ground the aircraft covers between exits. A fixed count of seconds gives a different distance on every different day, which is why counting alone is unreliable.

Watch the ground, know your groundspeed, and understand that a slow run-in into a strong wind needs longer than the number you used last weekend.

Two movement groups is the working guide

More than two movement groups on a load is difficult to deconflict, and a movement group takes a large volume of airspace.

Where there are two, they fly different directions by default. Where strong upper winds force both to fly the same way, split the airspace into sectors with one group each side and an explicit buffer between them.

Declare every movement plan to manifest so that groups can be deconflicted before boarding rather than at the door.

Everybody has to know where they are meant to be

This is the part that gets skipped when a load is running late, and it is the part that matters most.

Draw the intended flight path on the board before the detail. Other groups and the load organiser should be able to read your intent at a glance during their own dirt dives. Label groups clearly.

Then confirm the six things every movement plan needs: direction, distance, breakoff and separation plan, opening area, initial canopy direction, and a plan B.

Plan B is a straight-down jump. No intentional horizontal movement, everybody in an orientation they are solid in, standard breakoff and deployment. It stays callable until the door opens, and calling it is a normal decision rather than an admission of anything.

Canopy priority, plainly

Smaller canopies do not get priority in the exit order. A fast canopy can work out how to fit the pattern, or land straight in.

Swooping is not a priority and should not shape how a load is ordered. After opening, nobody flies back toward the jump run line until the other groups’ canopies have been seen open.

Screening, and the authority to say no

An organiser needs the authority to exclude somebody who is not suitable for the jump, and needs to be willing to use it. A drop zone that gives an organiser the responsibility without the authority has set them up to fail.

Screen on evidence rather than on self-report. What have they actually flown, with whom, and how recently? Talk to other coaches: is this person safe, and do they own their mistakes? Both halves matter, because a jumper who makes errors and names them is a much better prospect than one who does neither.

Design the jump for the least experienced person on it. If that makes the jump boring for the strongest flyer, the jump is correctly designed and the strongest flyer can wait for the next one.

Where a flyer is weaker, give them more room and a defined quadrant rather than a slot in the middle of the traffic.

Build the formation for safety first, then for learning

When you slot people, the first pass is about who can be next to whom safely. Only on the second pass do you adjust slots to serve what somebody is working on.

Plan the breakoff at the same time as the formation, including who goes where, what a flyer does if they are behind, and what everybody does if the leader is taken out. Those contingencies are briefed, not assumed.

Then rehearse it as a load

Run it from climb-out to breakoff. Run it again. If there are errors, run it until it is clean, and if anybody looks unsure, that is a reason to go again rather than to move on.

The first jump of a day is a good place to let people feel out the conditions and each other before the plan gets ambitious.

After the load

Debrief the group, and give each flyer one thing. Then look at the load as a whole: did the openings actually end up clear, did the order work, did anything nearly happen?

That last question is the one that improves a drop zone. A near miss that gets discussed is worth more than one that gets shrugged off, and an organiser who raises their own near misses makes it safe for everyone else to do the same.

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Advisory, educational content. Exit order, group sizes and leader approvals are governed by your national federation and your drop zone, and local policy prevails over anything here. Some material on this page is drawn from coach-development notes contributed by freefly coach Elliot Ng.