California Skydive seasons?

a lot of places it's mostly year round, but with less business in the winter.

Have you flown skydivers before? How many hours? Turbine time? A lot of the year round places I know fly a dch-6, caravan or a king air.
 
Lol I dont think i'd qualify for anything turbine yet :) And havent flown divers before.. Just curious what the "pay" would be.. Not paycheck size, rather its frequency..
 
sky_captn said:
Lol I dont think i'd qualify for anything turbine yet :) And havent flown divers before.. Just curious what the "pay" would be.. Not paycheck size, rather its frequency..
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Here, I get paid at the end of every day. $10-15 a load in pistons is normal, and in turbines they usually give something like $1 per head.
 
sky_captn said:
How many flights do you normally do a day? Im guessing its 5-6 days a week..
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I usually get 4-5 days a week, 5-20 flights a day. It's really random. I know some other dz's will run you 5+ days a week. For me this was a good way to get hours relatively quickly and also he was willing to hire a pilot with as few of hours as I had... while paying me ok(for the job), being very safety oriented and an overall very nice person.
 
Well, looks like i'll be changing my avatar name to diver driver :) Just got a gig in socal.. small little set up, but possibility of running 30-40 drops a week.. Only one spot here, but I'll let you guys know if anything comes up!
 
sky_captn said:
Well, looks like i'll be changing my avatar name to diver driver :) Just got a gig in socal.. small little set up, but possibility of running 30-40 drops a week.. Only one spot here, but I'll let you guys know if anything comes up!
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Good for you. Flying a 182?
 
sky_captn said:
How many flights do you normally do a day? Im guessing its 5-6 days a week..
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For me, it's 7 days a week, barring poor weather (about 1-2 days off every month)

Weekends have been averaging about 20 loads per day, weekdays 15 loads per day.

Base pay or $1/head whichever is greater.
 
so whats is it like dropping divers? i may have the oppurtinity to do it next season in michigan but it would require me to move up there for the season and i'm hesitant to do that
 
The season out here is year round at the bigger DZs. The summer is bangin, and the winter stays strong by lots of foreign groups from all around the world.

The experience flying jumpers depends on a lot of things. Aircraft, how busy the DZ is, etc. The flying isn't difficult once you do it a few times. I have flown jumpers in a 206 and I currently fly a Twin Otter. The 206 was simple, not much CG change and the jumpers mostly did their own spot. In the Twotter once you have the spot figured out for the day, its basically flying a non precision approach over and over with the GPS with a constantly changing CG. It can also be really fun when you fly big ways with a few other planes.

It can get really repetitive, and fatigue can creep up on ya. If you are at a busy DZ you can expect to be in the plane literally all day. On a weekend I will get in the plane at 8, get out maybe around 12 for 2 minutes to take a leak during a hot fuel, and finally shut down around 6. My record so far is 24 loads in a day. I came from a 135 operator before this, and I love how laid back it is. Not to mention what the girls in back do for extra altitude.. ;)
 
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