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Well, nobody said this before, and this is a new of piece of info to me. This information seriously changes the dynamics of my thought processes in comparing Laconia to Plymouth! So's, the plane lands on the runway, and the skydivers land on the grass field or somewhere soft, that's close to the runway. Somebody should have made this important point more clear to everybody, at an earlier time in this thread. Thanks very much!
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C'mon Less, ya gotta stay up on these things.....lol Mr. Hemmel made sure everyone on this thread knew all of the grassy areas we wanted to land in before we even had a chance to share them with you when he posted our landing area proposals here on this thread.
But I am REALLY REALLY glad you brought this back up, because it brings up a good point. Despite providing the LAA with a business plan proposal and posting our intents here on the board, most of those minority opposers, have no idea what it is we intend to do when we open at Laconia.
Our intent is to open a tandem skydiving operation to provide tandem skydiving over the lake. Our instructors and aerial videographers will all be professional skydivers with expert skydiving licenses. That will be 99% of our business at Laconia.
Will we welcome sport jumpers? Of course, but we don't expect it to be a regular thing, at least in the first few years of operation. Another thing to consider is this, is a Monday afternoon as busy as a friday or saturday? Not usually on the airport. So if Monday's are slow there, we may choose Mondays to do "sport mondays" to give sport jumpers a chance to enjoy the view without interfering with a busy saturday.
We mentioned this to the LAA and they know we are not planning on training students on weekends, if at all in the first few years. We made that abundantly clear. The problem is, they want to regulate that too, and guess what, they can't. Why? They're not experts. We are. No one knows what conditions are better for tandem, versus sport or sport versus student, than Mary and I up there. We refuse to budge because they have no legal right or safety background to be restricting our business.
Safety is our first priority. With our global safety experience background, we, not the LAA, are in the best position to make safety based decisions on how we choose to run our business. For them to suggest anything to the contrary is not based on any practical knowledge or experience.
So Less, what does that mean to you and I? I agree with you. How 'bout that?
I agree that Plymouth would be a great place to train students and I tell you what, I'm even willing to put a Cessna 182 up there to do just that for you.
I even told the LAA that for all intensive purposes, that tandem skydiving in Laconia was our primary objective and that student jumping was going to be non existent at first and minimally existent at best on slow days, once we got things going.
So, call your pals in Plymouth and give them my contact info, and I'll be up there with a plane in no time for you, I promise.
Blue skies to all and to all a good flight,
Tom