In rec.aviation.piloting Mike Isaksen wrote:
"Gus Cabre" wrote in message ...
Mentioned in the Flyer e-group: skydiver nearly hits aircraft:
http://www.fugly.com/videos/6103/sky..._airplane.html

Original version in better resolution he
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/...n=file&id=2836

Discussion, started by the guy who shot the video, he
http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/foru...i?post=1183486

Note that both of these sites require registration. The guys that run
SkydivingMovies have said that this is a deliberate filter to keep their
bandwidth bill reasonable; I've been registered there for about a year
and a half and haven't gotten any spam from them. Most of Dropzone.com
does not require registration, but the above post is in the Incidents
forum, which does.

Another site, by one of those strange people that wants to stay in the
airplane all the time, is http://www.diverdriver.com/ . It mostly
focuses on piloting jump planes but it might be another place to
discuss procedures for flying near dropzones in general.

Disclaimer: I have less than 50 jumps at this point and I don't know
everything. But at the DZ I've jumped at where I can actually see
what the pilot's doing (Cessna 182), I've seen him switch over from
the ATC frequency to the local CTAF to make an announcement when we're
about to jump. At some other DZs, when I've been on the ground I've
listened to the CTAF on a scanner and I usually hear an announcement
from the jump plane.

I've got a couple of VFR sectional charts that have the parachute symbol
next to some of the airports. These tend to err on the side of caution;
I haven't seen any airports where jumping was going on that _didn't_
have the symbol, but I know of a couple of dropzones that have closed
down (in one case, a few years ago) whose airports still have the
parachute symbol. An alternate way (not valid for navigation, advisory
only, your mileage may vary, etc) to find active DZs might be the
database at http://www.dropzone.com/dropzone/ (no registration needed).
It has a map-based lookup for the US and the UK and a list for
everywhere else.

Matt Roberds