Short Final: Skydiving All Day

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • A pilot monitoring CTAF frequencies encountered a series of informal and potentially confusing radio calls from multiple skydiving operations at various locations.
  • These calls included unusual phrasing such as "Bombs Away!" and "Skydiving All Day. Please Stay Away!", leading to pilot confusion.
  • The pilot's subsequent query to Air Traffic Control about "dropping bodies" went unanswered, as ATC was unaware of the preceding CTAF transmissions.
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I was flying along, monitoring CTAFs and heard the following:

“Penn Ridge, Penn Ridge, use caution. Use caution. Multiple parachutes in the air near Penn Ridge. Use caution.”

Immediately thereafter, “Skydiving in progress over Brookhaven. Bombs Away!”

Followed by, “Cross Keys, Yay Hooray. Skydiving All Day. Please Stay Away!”

Then, me to New York Approach: “Are they dropping bodies over Gardner?”

Approach: “Huh? Say again.”

Approach obviously hadn’t been privy to any of the prior radio calls!

Daniel Spitzer
Piermont, New York

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