Landing zone (skydiving)
The landing zone is the space in which parachutists and / or supplies are landed as supplies after a parachute jump or drop. In a landing zone, aircraft can land contrary to a drop zone.
The Engl. In the military, drop zone refers to the airspace of the flight route in which people and / or supplies are dropped. The drop zone is offset from the landing zone in the direction of the wind, so that parachutists and supplies on the parachute are driven into the landing zone by the wind drift.
The landing zone, especially its beginning, is usually marked with optical aids such as smoke grenades, torches or flashing lights. The paratroopers in the aircraft are shown the beginning of the dropping process in the automatic jump by hand signals from the droppers and a green light with a horn signal from the aircraft crew. The lowering process itself, in the case of freefallers also the instruction of the aircraft in the jump zone, is carried out by the lowering person.
When dropping supplies by transport aircraft z. B. equipment or food attached to pallets with one or more parachutes or at a very low altitude and very slow flight speed by a braking parachute in deep dropping .
The selection of the landing zone depends on various factors such as a. Weather conditions with moderate wind speed and the nature of the land zone dependent. This must be sufficiently wide and long for practice jumps and free of obstacles such as trees or electric fence posts. There should be no bodies of water nearby. The ground should be flat and soft, and if possible made of grass, not rock or artificially hardened ground such as concrete, as otherwise there is a risk that the parachutists will be injured or jumpers and loads will be driven sideways out of or beyond the planned landing area by strong winds , get caught in trees or land in bodies of water.
A landing zone always extends in the direction of the wind and must be long enough to allow all jumpers to land in the direction of the wind. It is therefore several hundred meters long. Only for freefallers with controllable jump parachutes are smaller land areas sufficient to which obstacles can connect. A landing zone of 50 × 50 m is required. The first skydiver in the automatic parachute jump is placed in the jump zone in such a way that the wind lands at the upper end of the landing zone. The last jumper at the lower end, and thus set down beyond the landing zone.
The wind direction is determined in a permanent landing zone with a wind vane or wind sock, the wind strength with an anemometer.
In the case of military operations in a non-permanent landing zone, also by means of a measuring balloon, which is used by a mission control group (ELG) to determine the wind.
In the case of an outlanding from the skip by a drifter made of a neon-colored 5 m long crepe strip with a thin iron rod as weight, which has about the same rate of descent as a parachutist with a round canopy. To do this, the dropper selects a prominent point in the area in the landing zone and can recognize the offset caused by the wind based on the drift. Against the wind direction - i.e. in the wind direction - the drift distance for the drop point is then increased. The landing zone is therefore offset in the wind direction by the distance of the wind drift to the landing zone.
Today, this procedure is usually only used once a day in the morning or after a serious change in the weather conditions at the jumping area. However, this procedure is no longer compulsory due to the use of paragliders, but it also indicates the wind drift for parachutes, since the minimum opening height for parachutes is around 600 m and it is not the dropping height that is decisive, but the opening height.
There is no setting down during gliding because the landing zone is up to 50 km away from the landing zone.