Angles 401 — Organise large movement groups

Application

This unit covers the Angles 400 mastery tier. It has two pillars, both built on the organiser’s craft of running large movement groups safely.

Pillar 1, big-way angles. A big-way angle is a full-load jump: a guide of a 12–17-way, a whole Caravan load. It is flown with two qualified angle leaders, each leading half the formation (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine). The load-bearing safety architecture is a two-stage split breakoff (detailed in Element 4).

Pillar 2, mixed-orientation angles. Tight, fast angles flown across mixed orientations, slight belly, back, head-up and head-down, with transitions from back to belly, but never through vertical (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine). The through-vertical case is Dynamic doctrine, not Angles 400.

Both pillars sit on the same organiser competency: planning lanes and airspace across a whole load, coordinating leader-to-leader, briefing and leading a group, and running the debrief and the leader pipeline afterwards.

The umbrella responsibility is the Leading Workshop’s one-liner: “bring everybody safely to the ground, preferably to the landing area”. Every flight pattern serves two objectives:

• Avoid every other group’s line of flight; and.

• Get every group home.

Applies to experienced movement leaders competent at FFP-AN301 standard who take responsibility for a movement day, camp or event.

Every angle group in this unit is a led group. The active leader flies belly-to-earth, always, back-flying is a follower skill in slot, never a leading position. Flyers learning angles join only with a trained/approved leader. On a two-leader big-way, both leaders are on the belly; the split hands each half to a belly leader, never to a back-flyer.

• In early 2015 a chief-instructor commentary on an angle collision called explicitly for a mandatory tracking/movement prerequisite before angle dives, and for a movement component to be added to the Freefly Crest.

  • It described angle flying as “a new dynamic and dangerous discipline with little checks in place” (ASM 74 p.33).

• At the May 2015 APF Annual Conference the Freefly workshop agreed to write APF-wide Angles/Atmo/Tracking guidelines, and to first define the terms (ASM 76 pp.25–27).

The eventual product, the Freefly and Angles Guide (APF006, Aug 2023), arrived roughly eight years later and remains educational, not a training table. The organiser this unit produces is who carries structured movement-jump practice at a drop zone in the absence of a national one.

Environment: sky only. Organising exercises navigation, jump run, airspace and breakoff, none of which exist in the tunnel.

Scaffold:

• Enter as co-organiser alongside an established organiser.
• Fade to organising independently under DZ oversight.
• The terminal stage is developing and evaluating other leaders.

Mastery tier: there is no sign-off. Completion is a milestone recognising organising and big-way capability, not a permission to lead, organise or approve any jump.

Pre-requisite units

FFP-AN202 (endorsement-standard angle flying), FFP-AN301 (lead movement jumps).

RPL route for the pre-requisites: logbook plus footage and a talk-through of movement jumps planned, briefed and led to AN301 standard, with standing leader approval from a drop zone safety officer/S&TA or an equivalent published DZ scheme, verified by a freefly coach.

Elements and performance criteria

1. Plan the movement operation

1.1

Build the day's picture from the full ingredient set:

• all three wind layers (freefall, canopy, ground), cross-checked against a second report and the pilot on marginal days;
• the jump run, direction, offset, zero point, green light, and type (into-wind, crosswind or curved);
• the resulting drift for every group on the load.

1.2

Assign each movement group a pattern that diverges from every other group's line of flight. Use the simplest pattern that does the job. Grade complexity to each group's and each leader's demonstrated capability, never to paper over a planning problem ("it's really easy on paper, but it's not so easy to fly",).

1.3

Hold the movement-group count per load to the briefed limit (guide: two per load). More than two, or two flying the same side, is a stacking flag that demands explicit airspace division: quadrants, wide buffer "walls" nobody crosses, declared opening points over named landmarks. Incidents come from accumulations of small factors, and closing speeds between groups are what kill (USPA SIM 5-10.E).

1.4

Set exit order as a navigation tool:

• big-to-small among belly groups;
• each movement group placed where its pattern works (never immediately after another movement group);
• belly groups out first on windy days (“if there’s a doubt, there’s no doubt”);
• separation computed from ground covered over the terrain, never an arbitrary second count (APF006 s3.2).

1.5

Compose each group around its least experienced flyer. Size the "rope", steepness, speed and turn count, to what that flyer and the group can spend. More flyers means simplify: fewer turns, a little flatter with speed, never flat-and-slow (the rope model; USPA SIM 5-10.B).

1.6

Design each group's breakoff before the jump:

• altitudes, guide 5,000 ft up to a 4-way, 5,500 ft for five or more (most modern groups brief 5,500 ft regardless of size);
• last turn complete by ~7,000–7,500 ft;
• a fan that keeps every flyer’s track away from jump run. Breakoff in or just out of a turn, or a final leg pointed at the line of flight, is where the collisions happen (the project’s coaching doctrine breakoff standards). In any jurisdiction keep at least 1,000 ft between breakoff and planned deployment, in Australia this is mandatory (the APF Operational Regulations).

1.7

For a big-way angle (12–17-way), plan the two-stage split breakoff (Element 4.6) as the primary safety architecture. Assign the two leaders and split the load into two leader-owned halves. Confirm every participant knows which leader they follow through the split (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

1.8

For a single-leader angle, treat 10–12 people as the practical ceiling. This is a high-risk jump: brief a raised breakoff of 6,000 ft or higher, and move to the two-leader big-way structure past this size rather than fanning one large single-leader group (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

1.9

For a head-up angle group, raise the breakoff floor, minimum 6,000 ft, and higher for larger groups. A head-up breakoff buys almost no separation, and rotating to head-first costs altitude (Carlton; the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine; and see the head-up-angle breakoff item in Knowledge evidence).

1.10

Prepare plan B as a pre-briefed conditional, as simple as possible, and as close to plan A as possible, changing only what must change. Count every horizontally-moving airspace user in the plan, including wingsuits and novice solo freeflyers (assume the perpendicular corridor both sides of their exit point is theirs).

2. Prepare the load

2.1

Declare every movement group to manifest. Publish each group's drawn pattern on a DZ map or flight-planning board before boarding, so each later group plans around the earlier ones. This buys time, information and accountability long before the mock-up (the manifest-map system; the Spaceland flight-planning board).

2.2

Confirm airspace division leader-to-leader, face to face. Sit within talking distance of the other movement leaders in the aircraft, so a changed jump run is a conversation, not a shout across a running door.

2.3

Brief each group from the plan, the briefing comes from the plan, it doesn't shape it. Deliver at the twenty-minute call and walk it at the ten, in positive instructions (what to do, never only what not to do). Cover, in order:

• dry data first: jump run, then exactly three wind categories (freefall, canopy, landing);
• the pattern by landmark, on a map you can draw on;
• approach and levels doctrine;
• the left-behind protocol (“we don’t break off at the same altitude of the group, we break off at the same timing of the group”);
• the breakoff walk-through;
• after-opening rules;
• plan B as a conditional.

2.4

Screen every participant by demonstration, not jump numbers:

• how close do they fly, could they dock on their leader?;
• what does their body position show?;
• what footage can they offer? Hold the group to its least experienced flyer, and decline late add-ons who cannot be properly briefed. “You don’t know what you don’t know”, and an unbriefed flyer in the mix is a documented collision precursor.

2.5

For a big-way angle, brief the split explicitly. Every participant must know which leader they follow, which half they are in, and which way their half diverges at the split. Name who sits near the seam between halves. The split only works if every participant tracks their assigned leader through the divergence (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine, see 5.5).

2.6

Verify precision in pilot and manifest communication:

• green-light language double-checked (“0.5 before”, before what?);
• the DZ’s jump-run convention confirmed (does it report the aircraft’s heading, or the drop line over the ground?).

3. Conduct the jump

3.1

Lead from the belly for the entire working time. An angle group is never led from the back. The leader's job is navigation and ground reference, which back-flying surrenders, and a group following a blind leader is a group nobody is navigating (the project's coaching doctrine the project doctrine; APF006 s5.12, "the lead flyer must always fly belly to earth").

3.2

Follow the published plan. Hold your ground against pre-board pressure and in-air temptation alike. When a change is forced, change the minimum, and always to the simpler version.

3.3

Keep the group together and fly to the lowest-level jumper:

• no slow go (speed equals lift);
• smooth progressive turns and pitch changes;
• predictability over accommodation. Never dive, flatten or turn at a straggler. Changing the closing speed on someone already struggling is a documented collision cause.

3.4

Hold the assigned lane, heading within ±45° of the planned leg. Never turn the group back toward jump run, or into another group's declared airspace. Every other group on the load planned its day around the line you published (USPA SIM 4-7.D).

3.5

Run the check cycle, heading → group → self, repeat. Advance the plan only when everyone is in slot. Hold or simplify a scattered group; never escalate it (APF006 s5.14).

3.6

If a flyer leaves the plan or corks out, continue the plan, never chase. The group follows the leader, so a chase drags everyone into the hazard and leaves nobody accounted for (APF006 Part 4 recovery doctrine).

4. Complete the jump — breakoff and landing

4.1

Complete the last turn by ~7,000–7,500 ft. Settle the group straight, together and calm well before breakoff. Never break off in or just out of a turn: "that's where the collisions happen".

4.2

Initiate breakoff at the briefed altitude, leading straight ahead, fast and efficient, as the group's reference line. Never stop, flare out or turn in place. A leader who kills their speed is a standing target, and a group without a reference line is "just floating in the sky" (APF006 s5.10).

4.3

Monitor the fan through your own breakoff:

• everyone peeling progressively to no more than 90°;
• looking before turning;
• turning flat from the hips;
• anyone slotted above the leader flying an explicitly briefed line. Clear your own airspace with a look or a clean back transition, never a barrel roll, and never a “pull to clear airspace”.

Advisory divergence from APF006 (educational), flagged and argued. APF006 s3.3 recommends “Perform a barrel roll to check there is no one above prior to opening, only perform this if capable of doing a smooth and reliable barrel roll”, and the Freefly and Angles Guide assesses the barrel-roll airspace check (s8.4, s8.7). FFP does not adopt the pre-opening barrel roll at large-movement-group organiser scale, and argues the divergence.

A barrel roll at deployment altitude briefly puts the flyer belly-up and blind below. It costs altitude, and it can seed the very instability the guide warns against. That is acceptable risk for a small, slow-tracking group, where APF006’s advice is sound. It is not acceptable where a fanned-out large movement group is closing radials at speed.

A clean back transition keeps eyes on the airspace throughout, and buys the same information with less exposure.

The barrel-roll check remains a valid smaller-group technique and an assessed Freefly and Angles Guide item. FFP diverges only for the organiser-scale, large-movement-group case this unit covers.

Dated context (why this divergence is worth arguing, not assuming). The barrel-roll airspace check was once stated as prescriptive freefly SOP in this scene. A Moruya DZ safety briefing of the era put it plainly: “For freeflyers, doing a barrel roll is a good technique to check airspace” (ASM 56 pp.61–65, Jules McConnel DZ briefing).

It was local orthodoxy, which is exactly why FFP names the technique, keeps it for small slow-tracking groups, and only diverges, with an argument, for the organiser-scale case.

4.4

Deploy at the planned altitude after clearing airspace in all directions, ahead, behind, above, below and beside, always assuming somebody is there. The one time they are, you want to be prepared (Austin, "pulling early is not a breakoff").

4.5

After opening, hold position off jump run until the other groups' canopies are seen open, then fly the briefed canopy plan. On the ground, confirm every flyer in every movement group is back before anything else.

4.6

For a big-way angle, run the two-stage split breakoff (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine):

• Stage one, at ~7,000 ft: split the formation into the two leader-owned chunks. Each chunk diverges 45° from the common line, so the two chunks open 90° of lateral separation between them.
• Stage two, at 5,500 ft: each chunk runs its own separate, normal-scale breakoff.

This is the load-bearing safety architecture of the big-way angle. Split early into two leader-owned halves, open 90° between them, then run two independent breakoffs at the 5,500 ft group standard, rather than fanning one 12–17-way group at once. Each leader owns their chunk’s stage-two breakoff exactly as they would a normal group.

5. Master mixed-orientation and big-way flying (the 400-tier mastery layer)

5.1

Fly tight, fast mixed-orientation angles, slight belly, back, head-up and head-down, with transitions from back to belly. Never transition through vertical: that is Dynamic doctrine, not Angles 400 (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

5.2

Manage speed range across orientations. Hold a large range of speeds on both belly and back, so a change of orientation does not become a change of fall rate that scatters the group (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine, participant speed-range skill).

5.3

For head-up angle content, follow the Carlton recommendations. Head-up movement jumps are advanced and higher-risk: a small group scatters easily (one of two flyers behind, above or below the leader). Keep numbers smaller and participants more experienced. Where a group leaves head-up into a head-first angle, convert with a "team layout" (staying on the line of flight), not the "in-place layout" Carlton names as the worst option, and initiate the transition by ~6,500–7,000 ft (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine; Carlton).

5.4

Lead a big-way angle with a second qualified leader, each leading half the load. Both leaders fly belly. Coordinate the two halves in the air, and hand each half cleanly into its own chunk at the stage-one split (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine; see 4.6).

5.5

Demonstrate the big-way angle participant skills (whether leading or flying a slot):

• be reliably in slot, not burbling others, not falling behind;
• hold a large range of speeds on both belly and back;
• keep the brain-space to remember your leader when the group splits in two, follow the right leader, in the right slot, at the critical junction of breakoff, without becoming confused or confusing others (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

5.6

Fly the last-diver approach to a big-way angle, aim at the FRONT of the formation, where it is going (the project's coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• Safety rationale: if you overshoot with speed, you pass in front of the group, not into it. An overshoot resolves as a fly-past ahead of the formation, not a collision.
• Practical / flight-envelope rationale: aiming at the front puts you above and ahead of the formation, with a large range of body flight, good visuals of the group, and out of the group’s burble.
• The rear-approach trap: approaching the rear runs you out of flight controls (compared with being above with stored kinetic energy), and forces you to fly through the group’s burble at a full-power body position, no margin left to arrest or correct.

6. Review the operation

6.1

Debrief each group to the protocol:

• participants speak first;
• the video runs once, uninterrupted;
• safety points first;
• teach by showing the good example to the group;
• something relevant for every flyer;
• end on a win.

6.2

Compare plan against flown: draw what you planned, draw what you think you flew, and, if you have access to a GPS, compare all three. The gaps are the navigation curriculum for the next jump.

6.3

Develop the DZ's next leaders:

• set flight-plan homework, assessed on the defence, not the drawing;
• start candidates on simple patterns with experienced groups (never a new leader with a beginner group);
• observe and record their briefings and led jumps against a published standard (the Spaceland evaluator model).

6.4

Feed the day back into the DZ's system, lane assignments, per-load limits, the leader list, briefing culture. Stand down or re-train where the flying showed it, and remember that half the organiser's craft is knowing when not to lead (Skydive Arizona off-landing bar).

Bold criteria are safety-critical: non-compensable (any Not Yet Satisfactory = unit Not Yet Competent).

Foundation skills

• Multi-party communication under noise and time pressure, manifest, pilot, drop zone safety officer/S&TA, the other leaders, the whole load; precise, positive language.
• Wind and drift numeracy, unit conversions, drift arithmetic, ground-reference “rulers”.
• Map-based airspace design and briefing.
• Mentoring and assessment communication.
• Self-management with a whole load depending on it, the ability to say no, and to read your own condition-specific experience honestly.
  • “understanding that you don’t understand, and maybe you should back off today, is also an important thing”.

Performance evidence (a guide to how long it might take — adjust locally)

Ability evidenced across a suggested 12 movement loads organised and led by the candidate, a guide to how long the organiser’s craft might take to evidence, scaled to the local scene. Include:

• at least 4 loads planned and flown carrying two movement groups, groups of a guide 6-way or larger.
• at least 1 big-way angle (12–17-way) planned and flown with a co-leader and a two-stage split breakoff, or, where a full-load big-way is not available locally, the largest two-leader split the DZ can safely field, with the two-stage split flown as briefed.
• At least two different days/wind conditions and two different jump-run situations.
• at least 2 consecutive organised operations meeting all criteria without assistance from a supervising organiser.
• Involvement in developing at least one newer leader, homework set and defended, or a briefing or led jump observed with structured feedback.
  • Where no leader-candidate is available locally, a structured scenario-and-footage review with a developing leader is an acceptable substitute.

Recommended currency window: 12 months. Tunnel time evidences nothing in this unit.

Knowledge evidence

• The flags framework. Explain that incidents come from accumulations of small factors, and that “there is no flag that’s too small”.

  • Name the common flags: strong or changing winds, curved or crosswind jump runs, multiple movement groups, group size vs skill, your own condition-specific inexperience.

• A two-movement-group load plan. Design one on a map of a nominated DZ, patterns, exit order, ground-covered separation, opening points, holding areas, and defend it. The defence, not the drawing, is the assessment.

• Drift doctrine. Explain why belly groups drift more (they are in freefall longer, not because of orientation), and the hold-after-opening rule (don’t fly toward jump run until the other groups’ canopies are open).

• The graded pattern menu. Explain straight 90 → 45-45 → 45-90 → zigzag → back trail → 270, with each pattern’s breakoff geometry.

  • Explain why no pattern should ever finish with a leg pointed at jump run, and why any jump-run crossing must be complete by ~10,000 ft.

• Breakoff altitude guides and group-size ceilings. State the guides: 5,000 ft up to a 4-way, 5,500 ft for five or more, noting most modern groups brief 5,500 ft regardless.

  • Derive the group-size ceilings from fan arithmetic (~30° of a 180° fan per flyer gives a practical six-flyer ceiling for intermediate groups).
  • State the deployment discipline they protect: airspace cleared in all directions before the pull, at least 1,000 ft between breakoff and planned deployment (in Australia mandatory, the APF Operational Regulations) (the project’s coaching doctrine).

• The two-leader big-way split. Explain the big-way angle structure and why it is the load-bearing safety architecture:

  • What a big-way angle is, a guide 12–17-way, a full load, flown with two qualified leaders each leading half.
  • The two-stage split, stage one at ~7,000 ft, each chunk diverging 45° for 90° of separation between the two halves; stage two at 5,500 ft, each chunk running its own normal breakoff.
  • Why you split rather than fan one large group, a 12–17-way fanned at once produces unmanageable radial closing speeds, whereas two leader-owned halves at 90° separation run as two normal-scale breakoffs.
  • The single-leader ceiling, a practical 10–12 people on one leader is high-risk and warrants a 6,000 ft+ breakoff, and past that size you move to the two-leader structure rather than growing the single-leader fan (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• Big-way angle participant skills. Explain what a participant must demonstrate: reliably in slot (not burbling, not falling behind), a large speed range on both belly and back, and the brain-space to follow the right leader in the right slot when the group splits in two at breakoff.

  • The split only works if every participant tracks their assigned leader through the divergence (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• The last-diver danger and the last-diver skill. Explain why the last diver bombing the formation is the key big-way angle danger, and why the diver aims at the FRONT of the formation, where it is going:

  • Safety, an overshoot with speed passes in front of the group, not into it.
  • Flight-envelope, the front approach puts the diver above and ahead, with a large flight range, good group visuals and out of the burble.
  • The rear-approach trap, approaching the rear runs the diver out of flight controls and forces a full-power pass through the group’s burble, with no margin to correct. Case study. This is the failure mode in the IMPACT documentary; the snapshot card below carries it. Render it in the curriculum as a snapshot card, not flowing prose.

  Case snapshot — the last diver into an angle big-way (IMPACT) When/where: 14 January 2021, Skydive Byron Bay, NSW, Australia. The jump: an 18-way sunset angle big-way, larger than this group usually flew, run at an intentionally mild pace to keep the mixed-experience formation together.

• What happened: one of the last divers out, calibrated to the fast, steep angle the group normally ran, approached at high speed.

  • The formation was running milder that day, and there was no way to see that from behind and above.
  • By the time he recognised he was coming in too hot and tried to pull out, his knee struck an in-formation jumper in the back of the head.
  • First-person accounts and the film identify him as the second-to-last diver, the very last jumper out had no role in the collision, so “the last diver” is a fair colloquial description, corrected here for accuracy.

  The outcome: the struck jumper was knocked unconscious, his helmet crushed; his life was saved by his AAD firing low. The diver ruptured his knee and fractured his leg in several places. Both men survived, through long physical and mental recoveries. The lessons:

  • Approach speed is calibrated to the group you usually fly — a milder or larger formation makes that calibration dangerous (criteria 5.5, 5.6).
  • The planned pace must be briefed explicitly: “running mild” is invisible from above, and later exiters carry the most speed-building altitude (criteria 2.3, 2.5).
  • Aim at the FRONT of the formation, where it is going, so an overshoot resolves as a fly-past ahead of the group, not a collision — the rear approach runs you out of flight controls through the burble with no margin (criterion 5.6). Watch: IMPACT (dir. Patrick Dunne, All Beef Productions, 2022) — full film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWGClb6jIaE and https://www.impactdoco.com/.

  Treat IMPACT as a first-person human-interest account of what this failure mode does to real people, not a technical safety film; use it respectfully, per the public accounts (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• Mixed-orientation angle mastery. Explain the 400-tier mastery: tight, fast angles across slight-belly/back/head-up/head-down orientations, with back-to-belly transitions but never through vertical (the through-vertical case is Dynamic).

  • Explain why staying off vertical is the boundary that keeps the jump an angle rather than a dynamic jump (the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• Head-up angle breakoff, the Carlton recommendation. Brief the orientation evidence for larger groups.

  • Carlton’s GPS data shows a head-up breakoff cannot buy separation: on a slow head-up breakoff six jumpers each taking a 30° heading change get only about 268 ft of separation (≈1.4 s reaction time), and about 392 ft (≈2.7 s) on a fast one.
  • Versus 690–1,165 ft for a head-down breakoff, so Carlton calls a head-up breakoff in six or more “unacceptable” and even five “pushing it.” Because converting to head-first does not accelerate a flyer immediately (a measured 1,500–2,000 ft lag before horizontal speed builds), the head-first transition must be initiated by ~6,500–7,000 ft in groups of six or more.
  • Using a “team layout” (front/back layouts around a centre point that keep the group on the line of flight) rather than the “in-place layout” Carlton names as the worst transitional option.
  • Apply the raised FFP floor for head-up movement jumps, minimum 6,000 ft, higher for larger groups, so the flyer is already head-first and tracking, not still head-up, through Carlton’s window (Carlton, head-up movement research; the project’s coaching doctrine round-4 doctrine).

• Why an angle group is only ever led from the belly. Explain why back-flying is a follower skill in slot, and how the two-leader belly-to-belly handover solves any jump design that would otherwise put the lead on someone’s back (the project’s coaching doctrine; APF006 s5.12; FFP-DY201 doctrine).

• The screening doctrine. Explain why self-reported answers (“biggest jump”, “fastest”, “steepest”) cannot vet movement skill, the demonstration screens that can (could they dock on their leader? what does their body position show?), and the default of treating an unseen flyer as lower-skilled.

• The don’t-chase doctrine. Explain it, and the “predictability beats accommodation” collision cases.

• Audible-system discipline. Describe consistent settings, dirt-dived changes, a ~7,000–7,500 ft last-turn alarm, and a slightly raised breakoff alarm (never more than 50–150 ft) for flyers who panic on the beep.

• The three-picture drill. If you have access to a GPS, explain what it measures and why the ground track includes drift.

• The “responsible adult in the load” practice. Describe checking that novice solo freeflyers actually know where jump run is, and teaching them if not, without condescension.

• Benchmark leader-development systems. Evaluate Spaceland’s approved-leader process (questionnaire, course, evaluated jump, flight-planning board), Arizona’s day-drop zone safety officer approval and daily lanes, and the Leading Workshop’s deliberate choice not to certify graduates.

  • Adapt one into a written scheme for a nominated DZ.

• Incident analysis from the leader’s chair. Analyse the incident set, the Sebastian jump-run crossing, the “to the basement” breakoffs above the leader (including the Australian cases), the accommodation collision, naming the flags that stacked in each.

  • Historical case evidence for the coached-context/leader-required doctrine (Australian): hard openings from insufficient speed reduction after an atmo jump (ASM 56 p.74).
  • Target-fixation and height loss at atmo breakoff (ASM 65 pp.55–56).
  • The “show up with no plan and put up a big Angle dive” drop zone safety officer warning (ASM 73 p.29).
  • And, conceptually only, not by his unverified numbers, Burke’s “The Horizontal Flight Problem” framing of uncoached low-jump-number camera angle flying as the next safety frontier (ASM 70 p.29; ASM 71 pp.25–26).
  • These are the failure modes a briefed, led, organised movement day is built to prevent.

Assessment conditions

Assessment on genuine movement operations at a drop zone running movement jumps, real multi-group loads for the multi-group evidence items, and a real big-way (or the largest two-leader split the DZ can safely field) for the big-way evidence item. Tunnel evidence is not accepted for any criterion.

Sky jumps from a recommended 13,000 ft or higher where available (larger groups need working time; adjust locally).

Evidence:

• Footage of assessed jumps (leader-flown or helmet-mounted), with the candidate talking the assessor through their planning and in-air decisions.
• A photographed copy of each assessed load’s published flight plan (board or map).
• GPS traces where the candidate has access to a GPS.

Required equipment: visual altimeter, functioning audible (a second recommended), AAD recommended, movement-suitable gear.

Conditions within the DZ’s briefed limits, spanning the wind range in the evidence. Avoid assessing on the last loads of the day (off-landing recovery in fading light).

Assessor: an experienced movement-jump organiser current at this scale, using the published FFP-AN401 checklist (Satisfactory / Not Yet Satisfactory per criterion).

Completion is recorded as a Mastery milestone only. It confers no privilege: leader and organiser approval remain with the drop zone safety officer/S&TA under local rules, and may be revoked at any time.

Coaching priorities

Deliver in the project’s priority order: Safety → Fun → Learning (curriculum Part A0).

The organiser holds that order for the whole load, not just their own group. The non-compensable criteria protect every group sharing the sky, and no movement day trades them for throughput.

Fun is the operation’s fuel, plans published without drama, groups landing back on the DZ grinning and re-manifesting, and plan B jumps designed to be genuinely great skydives (“when was the last time you skydived and actually took a minute to be like, I’m skydiving, I’m in the sky?”,).

Fun is also a safety mechanism at organiser scale. Leaders and flyers who enjoy the organised system stay inside it, instead of going full send unled.

Debriefs end on a win with one improvement focus, and the candidate models that standard for the leaders they are developing.

RPL evidence set

• Logbook plus footage and talk-throughs of organised multi-group movement days (camps, events or a standing organiser role), including at least one two-leader big-way or largest available split.
• Standing approved-leader or organiser status under a published DZ scheme (e.g. Spaceland’s evaluated approved-leader list, Arizona’s day-drop zone safety officer approval, or equivalent).
• Written references from a drop zone safety officer, S&TA or movement-jump evaluator attesting to multi-group load planning and leader development.
• Completion of a recognised leading workshop (contributes to knowledge evidence only, the workshop model itself deliberately does not certify,).
• Or a challenge assessment across one organised movement day, a suggested 4 organised loads, at least one carrying two movement groups and one big-way split, against the full criteria with a qualifying assessor.

Sources