More firsts and another good day :-) 10 Nov 2013

So after a few beer fines and a relatively early night, I still struggled to get up this morning.  Awake since the early hours, then falling asleep again at 7:30am to be woken by the alarm wasn't the best of starts.
Will I jump today?  Not sure, the forecast is good but I am very tired and had a very challenging day yesterday.  So I pootle out to the manifest office and am not impressed by the apparent wind speeds.  After checking out the flight run-in board, I am even less impressed!  The winds are not going to stop experienced jumpers but the direction is not great and they are higher than I would like.  So time for a cup of tea then :-)

Paul has recovered the main that I chopped yesterday (wading in water up to his chest in the process - yikes!) and it was definitely a locked toggle so I made the right decision to cutaway.  Cecilia wants to practice for her packing assessment so she tackles the sodden tangled mess!!  Thankfully it appears to be free from damage though it will need drying out and a careful inspection from the rigger before it is fit to jump again.

I potter about for a couple of hours, watching landings (all over the place!) and chatting with other people who have decided that the winds are a tad beyond their comfort zone, then decide to go and get some packing practice by helping Conrad convert a couple of rigs back to normal pilot chute throws after his course last week.  He gives me the ripcord rig and tells me to put it on.  Properly or just over my shoulders? *Properly.  Ok, not sure what he has in mind, but happy enough to comply since I'm going to be practising packing anyway, I scramble into the rig. 
*Ok, find the handle, it's similar to a pilot chute pull but may be a bit harder.  Watch the whippy end of the cord in your face.  Keep hold of your handle.

Umm, ok. I pull the ripcord and have a toggle and length of plastic line in my hand as my spring-loaded pilot chute fires off my bag, pulling the D-bag out of the container onto the floor.

I look back at Conrad who is now laughing. * See if you had been a RAPS student, you wouldn't have dropped your handles after your mal.

Ooo, mean, lol! I call him a few names as I'm laughing.  Point taken, guess if I ever have another mal, I'll remember to keep hold of my handles unless things are going very wrong....

So I now have a canopy on the floor that needs repacking, Conrad has the other rig that needs sorting out, so I begin.  Except I get confused pretty quickly.  I lay out the canopy ok, and do the 4 line check, then get myself in a muddle over whether I am flat packing or pro packing.  Conrad comes to the rescue.  Either flat pack and he'll check each stage off, or pro pack alongside him so he can watch every step as I do it.  Ok, I'll pro pack alongside.  I manage fine until trying to fold in the loose fabric so I pause while Conrad gets his canopy into the bag and comes to help.  We get to the point where I have to wrestle the canopy into the D-bag and Conrad shows me another way of doing it.  I get to the bag lock and am feeling pretty pleased with myself, thinking I'll have another go in a minute, when the tannoy announces a call for more fun jumpers to fill the load.  Conrad asks if I'm prepared to jump my canopy.  I pause for a moment and can't think of any reason why not - he's supervised my packing and I've kept my lines taut and the slider is nicely placed.  So I say yes and we keep going - I finish the lines, then he helps me put the D-bag into the container.  I sort the risers and then close the container, before doing the pilot chute.  We head out to manifest to see what types of jump are on the load.  We collect Robyn on the way and decide to do a hop and pop from 7000 to practice CH2 skills.  The plane will be on a refuel shut-down so we have a bit of time to work out the plan. 

Conrad talks us through the drills - rear riser avoidance manoeuvres, full toggle checks, rear riser braking.  Full flare, front risers, note the differences.  Depending on height and wind, maybe another flare and front riser practice.  Then he talks us through the landing pattern to attempt a declared landing.  Ho hum. So far I've had several lectures on my landing patterns, so I am paying very close attention.  After discussing the theory, we actually walk through a mini-landing pattern, using a cone to mark the landing target.  And with doing the arm movements for flat turns, suddenly something clicks and I am a bit more confident that I can attempt this.  To be honest, I'll be happy if I land on the grass again but maybe I can learn how to get closer to where I want to be. 

Then Conrad drops the next bombshell.  Not only am I jumping my own pack job for the first time, but we are also going to do a linked exit. Err, what?  Which bit of "I don't like the idea of people touching me in freefall" did you not understand???  * So you've got a phobia, this is how you'll get over it. 
Umm, not sure about this, but hey, I've had plenty of firsts already this weekend and I trust him, so let's have a look at how we do this.  Over to the mock up and we practice a very simple exit.  Conrad outside, me holding onto his sleeves (no sausages!!), shake, out-in-out, then he will jump, I will push out with my legs tucked up and we will fall with him grabbing my grips as we leave the aircraft.  As we start to level out, I need to straighten my legs and we will just float like that until break off.  Okaaaay.  Sounds fairly straightforward. 
You're not going to do anything fancy, right? * Nope, keep eye contact with me, just stay level until we break, that's it.  If it goes wrong at any point, let go, arch and just stay like that until it's time to pull.  I'll track away, you don't have to do anything.

Hmm, sounds reasonable, can it really be that easy? 

So up we go - we're due out first, then Robyn will dive out after us after a few seconds so Conrad can watch her landing pattern too.  And it seems to work fine.  The door monster is long since forgotten, I'm too busy concentrating on how much new stuff I still have to learn and we get into the doorway.  *Ready?
Yes.  Shake, out-in-out, and we're off.  I'm looking at Conrad and he's grinning back at me and it's cool.  He's holding onto my grips, I've still got his sleeves, I only break eye contact to check my altimeter, and we are floating down together.  Ok, this isn't so bad.  He isn't attempting to move me around, I don't have to let go and try and dock, he's falling at the same speed as me so I'm not getting dragged down, I can cope with this. 
Break off time so we both let go and I shoot backwards.  Oops, what happened there then?  Oh well, no time to worry about it, I wave off and pull.  My canopy opens beautifully, very soft and I suddenly remember that I packed it :-)  I've had some hideously hard openings and this one was lovely.  Cool!  It may be a while before I get signed off, but I'm very happy with my packing so far.

Time for some exercises then.  Conrad and Robyn are already way below me and everyone else is still in the plane so I have the sky to myself to play.  Rear risers are easy, I've done those several times before, front risers are definitely more of a challenge.  Even with a full flare immediately beforehand, pulling those beasties down is almost impossible.  My right arm is obviously stronger than my left because I can't pull them down evenly and end up with a slight right turn each time.  And I literally only get a couple of seconds before they are pulled out of my hands.  No chance of ever actually using them in anger on a student parachute then, lol. 

I'm struggling to stay in the holding area so keep facing into wind which means I have to keep craning over my shoulder to watch Conrad set up his pattern.  So much for "follow me in", rofl.  I am still at 2000' and he's on the ground, ha ha.  I watch Robyn start her pattern, then I'm low enough to sort out my own approach.  Except I'm coming in too fast, so I turn away again to drop some more height.  We've talked (and walked) through the whole approach, so that works perfectly.  I'm set up nicely on the downwind leg, and the base works too.  I turn into wind, and find the wind has dropped more than I expected.  I try to 'S' off the distance but only do tiny turns and don't lose enough height.  I land maybe 50m beyond the pit but am delighted!  It all worked!  I should have turned a bit later off my downwind leg, or maybe done bigger S turns, but I am on the grass, on my feet, within a few metres (relatively!) of my target!!  This is such a massive achievement compared with some of my other landings, I am bouncing all over the place.  3 landings in a row on the grass, on my feet, on two consecutive days.  Ok, now maybe I can say I'm starting to get it :-)

And as Conrad reaches his hand to his helmet, I suddenly remember that he was videoing the whole thing - exit, freefall, deployment, landing.  Wow.  So for the first time I will be able to see what I am doing, what it looks like and maybe get some more corrections and things to practice.  I am one happy bunny :-)   We head back to the packing shed and I'm prepared to pack my rig again but it's needed by someone who is already manifested so I have to give it to the packers instead.  In the process, I forget to take my knife off the chest strap and have to retrieve it later, once they come back down. 

We try to manifest for the last load but there are no rigs available so we have to wait for everyone to come back.  Conrad packs for me but it is the sunset load and the pilot tells me they are only going to the top.  Since it was so cold yesterday, I decide not to go; I've had a fantastic weekend and don't want to wreck it by rushing for a final jump that may not go too well if I get cold hands and can't feel my toggles properly.

So I go back to the bunk house to get changed and pack up the car, with a very warm fuzzy feeling.  This is the first time in a long time that I have been so enthusiastic about skydiving and it feels good!

Back in the sky – and first malfunction! 09 Nov 2013

After a horrendous journey in extremely heavy traffic, I eventually arrived at the dz well after 9pm on Friday night.  Having planned to leave work early to try and get up there for about 6:30, I was pretty zonked and planned to have a relatively early night, then a lie-in (if possible, difficult for an insomniac!) and pootle about practising packing and drinking lots of tea on Saturday.  Except the weather forecast changed from horrible, to actually quite pleasant.  Cold, but not too much wind, with clear sunny spells.  Might be jumping after all….

And so it turned out.  Got up at 8:30am and tandems were already arriving for their briefings.  Several AFF students were also being briefed and the first load was manifesting.  So I put my name down and found a rig, though at 280 sq ft, it was bigger than I really wanted.  Cecilia and I headed to the packing shed to see if there were any other rigs available and found another 4.  I grabbed a 260 and she got the 240 and we headed back to kit up.  It was to prove to be an eventful decision!

All was fine going up and I wasn’t nervous in the plane, even though I’d expected to be after a break of 6 weeks.  This was my first jump after qualifying so I had absolutely nothing to prove, just try and concentrate on a good landing and get these patterns sorted so I can land on the grass.  The temp at altitude was -13 deg C so I was bundled up in as many layers as I could get on, including a thermal hoodie (with the hood on under my helmet!) and a neck warmer that was pulled up over my mouth and nose.  I decided on a tuck exit so jumped and went straight into a couple of back flips and then arched.  Nice and easy, nothing challenging, all very familiar.  Then I checked for the landing area.  And couldn’t see it! The familiar landmarks didn’t seem to be there.  Eventually I realised that the caravans that usually mark a line directly towards the landing area had been removed so there was only a series of brown patches in the grass marking where the bright white caravans had been lined up.  I was fairly comfortable with my exercises, so decided to pull at 4,000’ as planned.  That was all fine, soft opening, clear airspace – until I went for my toggle checks.  And discovered that my left brake toggle was stuck.  The right one came down cleanly so I was a bit confused for a moment, then tried to inspect the toggle to see what was wrong.  I couldn’t work it out so gave it a few more firm tugs and nothing was happening.  I was still in clear air and at good height so I gave it a hard yank – and all that happened was the rear riser pulled down.  Ok, I can’t steer left and I definitely can’t flare.  It briefly crossed my mind that I could attempt to land on rear risers but instantly dismissed that as being a) too tiring and b) probably way beyond my capabilities at this stage.  So time for a cutaway. 

Oh *&%^! The air was a bit blue for a couple of seconds, but my hands were already going for my handles. I didn’t even need to look, I’d checked them several times on the ground and in the plane and since I was on a slow malfunction (flying under a good canopy, just not able to control it fully) and was upright, the handles were exactly where I expected. So Cut – Away – Reserve and suddenly I’m back in freefall.  Although we’d drilled for this, the reality is a bit of a shock.  One moment I’m floating under a nice big canopy, then next minute my risers are flying up away from me and I’m accelerating fast.  It seemed to take a long time for the reserve to deploy and ‘catch’ me but that was probably because of the contrast between being under canopy and freefalling again.  In reality, I doubt it was longer than 3 seconds. Unfortunately my brain had gone into overdrive mode by then so I dropped my handles as I was so focused on getting hold of my new toggles.  It can’t have been very long because I had a very soft opening and was nowhere near terminal velocity.  I was also still quite close to my wildly flapping main canopy and could see it twisting as it flew.

Next step – now I’m back under a fully functional canopy (bright canary yellow) and have done all my checks (not bothering with the system checks for obvious reasons, lol), I’m trying to work out where to land.  Luckily the winds were relatively light so I hadn’t gone too far off course.  I was at about 2,000’ and quite close to the landing area on the correct side of the runway, so I was able to crab sideways across the fields and get in line with the landing area.  I was too far downwind to have any hope of making it back to the grass but I was happy to be in the right general area.  I landed neatly on my feet, gathered everything up and headed for the bus.

Lots of teasing and a beer fine to follow for my first malfunction and chop (with another beer fine for losing my handles!) but everyone was very pleased to see I was ok. I was a little shaken but not excessively so – I kept expecting to go into shock once I’d had time to process what had happened, but throughout the day, I never did.  My main canopy didn’t function fully, I’d been trained to perform EPs without thinking about it, and it all just worked.  I filled out my malfunction form, had a cup of tea and manifested for load 3.  I didn’t have any qualms at all about getting back in the plane or jumping again, which I think surprised a couple of people.

But my adventures for the day were not yet over.   Up we went, threw out Conrad and Brian for a hop and pop at 5,000’ and continued up to altitude.  By 6000’, the cloud had started.  And I kept looking out of the window as we climbed and couldn’t see anything.  By 8000, I spoke to Papa G and asked if he could see anything.  He wasn’t concerned and said we would look for a gap in the cloud when we were on jump run.  Ok, fair enough.  Except this looked a bit thick to be broken cloud cover….

9000, 10000 and I’m still not able to see anything at all out of the window.  Charlotte was JM and she asked the pilot Wayne what the wind speed was at the top.  30 knots.  Ok, so now we have several thousand feet of thick cloud, high winds and no sight of the landing zone.  Charlotte looked for the spot and called it.  She told the pilot and the rest of us that she wasn’t prepared to jump with her FS1 student as they wanted to pull at 6000 and couldn’t guarantee they would be out of the clouds, plus wouldn’t be able to see each other for the coached jump anyway.  I had already decided there was no way I was getting out.  Tim was happy to take his tandem out, and Papa G and Thomas also decided to jump, though Thomas left his skysurf board in the plane.  4 of us stayed put and came back down.  I was more than happy to lose my jump ticket in order to avoid any further risks – I would be flying blind for way too long, had no GPS or other indicator of direction and wasn’t convinced that the cloud would stay clear below 6000’.  I hate clouds at the best of times – icy clouds in high winds were definitely a no-brainer!

A nice surprise when we landed was that we were refunded our jump tickets.  Because the JM declared she wasn’t happy with the spot and couldn’t see it, and because the clouds turned out to be 6000’ deep (12000’ down to 6000’ on our descent!), the dz credited us for the jumps even though some people had chosen to jump anyway.  They all landed safely, though they all flew through ice and rain – definitely the right decision to stay in the plane, lol.

And onto the next adventure.  Tracking down a missing main…..

As I was landing under reserve, Kye was already off looking for the freebag and main.  As the plane went up for loads 2 and 3, Wayne was looking out over the fields for the main too.  But so far, it hadn’t been spotted.  How can 260 sq ft of dayglo orange parachute just disappear??  It was cloudy up high but the sky lower down was clear and bright, where on earth had it gone?  I joined in the search and spent over 2 hours walking around fields inspecting trees, hedgerows and ditches along the approximate flight path but no joy.  I even had the locals helping me at some points – I must have looked a strange sight, striding about in a blue jumpsuit with bright yellow FS grips on the legs, periodically consulting a map, ha ha.

As I drove back to try and catch up with everyone to see where to search next, Conrad stopped me to let me know that the canopy had been spotted from the air, stuck in some trees and someone had headed off to retrieve it.  3 hours later, and it had been seen (and photographed) from the air again but still not tracked down on foot.  Eventually, the guys worked out which treeline it must be in, and planned to go back first thing in the morning when it was light to see about recovering it.

So back to manifest then for round 3.  I was manifested onto load 5 (very slow day!), found another rig and off we went again.  So far today I’ve had a reserve ride, lost my handles, come back down in the plane for the first time (another beer fine) and lost a main canopy that hasn’t yet been recovered.  My bar bill is going to be impressive, surely my adventures are done for the day…???  Err no.  Another first.  This time a nuisance factor.  I have never experienced line twists ever.  Until today.  7 full twists after I pulled at 4000’.  Is somebody trying to tell me something, rofl?  Kicked them all out eventually, canopy was functioning fine and I landed, according to the correct pattern, on my feet on the grass. Yay! Go me! 

Back to the minibus and I’ve pretty much had enough for the day.  Way too much excitement and I really could do without anything else going wrong.  Except everyone on the bus has a different plan – sunset load! Really? Yes, ok fine guys, you go ahead without me.  Nope, not good enough. What??!!  Haven’t I had enough excitement for one day?  And anyway I haven’t got a rig.  

* There’s loads of rigs, not a good enough excuse.  Get on the manifest.

And as I go into the packing shed, sure enough, there is a 280 packed and ready to go.  Lol, you talked me into it.  So the guys race to pack their kit and I head back over to manifest to warm up for a couple of minutes.  No need to even take my gloves or altimeter off, we are already on a 15 minute call to get back up before it gets too dark.  

And so we head up for the final lift of the day.  And it’s bitterly cold up there.  For the first time, I really feel it in freefall – not just the icy wind on my face, but my feet and hands are feeling it too.  I had a great jump, with another good landing (on my feet on the grass again) but my hands are like blocks of ice and the Reynauds has kicked in. I won’t be doing another sunset load in these temperatures, I have found my limit.   

And it’s been an awesome day.  Considering the forecast was so dire, I would have been really pleased to get 3 jumps in regardless, and tomorrow looks like being even better weather-wise. I coped pretty well with my first malfunction, the bar tab wasn’t too outrageous as not many people stayed since they had a party to go to, and now Conrad has promised to do a two-way with me tomorrow if the weather proves to be as good as it’s forecast to be.  Life is good :-)

Progression weekend 02-03 Nov 2013

Decided to try my hand at packing and get some of the briefings needed to progress towards my B licence to see if I got excited about skydiving and sticking with it.  Had a lot of information thrown at us and we had a lot of great discussions about the whys and wherefores of various recommendations and regulations.  The JM stuff prompted the most debate, mainly around the exit order of various groups of jumpers.  We came up with about 11 different categories of jump and about the only thing we all agreed on was that hop and pops go out first, lol. Unless of course you’ve got static line jumpers on the same load in which case you boot them out first, ha ha, but that’s pretty rare at our dz these days. I’m now kind of intrigued about static line – I still can’t really envisage how it works in practice and it might be fun to try it.  Funny how the thought of not being under canopy until 3,500’ still feels a bit unnerving when static line jumpers all start at that height, most experienced jumpers pull somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 and my AAD wouldn’t actually fire until about 1,000!!  And on my canopy, it still takes a long time to get down from 3,000+ :-)

In the end, Mark H explained why we use the exit order that we do at our dz, how it varies at other dz’s and some of the reasons for the variations. So we have static line and hop & pops first, then followed usually by CReW jumpers if there any about (not often here).  And we only get the accuracy jumpers just before a competition and they’re usually out at 3,500 so no real arguments there either. So the real debate was about who gets out in which order at the top. 
Here we throw out the FS jumpers first (large groups – small – solo), then the FFs.  But then our resident skysurfers complicate the mix, lol.  So if they’re on board, they go out first.  And we were all fairly comfortable with AFFs, then tandems, then wingsuiters going last.  Which left tracking groups and hybrids (a mixture of disciplines within the same group).  So usually we despatch the trackers before AFF and then the hybrids depends on which disciplines and how high they are going to pull.  In practice, they often count as FS/FF combinations.  
And we only have one plane in the air at a time here so that makes things a lot simpler.  At dz’s where they have multiple loads in the air at the same time, it can get much more complicated, trying to keep everyone horizontally and vertically separated, especially given the different fall rates and pull heights. So I shall be trying to determine the order of each load I am on from now on and ask questions about any decisions I am not sure of. 

The responsibilities of a jump master were somewhat sobering.  It’s all very well determining who goes out in which order and then spotting, and getting everyone out.  It’s somewhat more difficult for an emergency situation where the options vary greatly depending on the experience of the jumpers and height and type of emergency.  Generally it was agreed that anything over 2’000 feet and everyone was getting out, even students, though they would be told to have their hand on the reserve hand and pull as soon as they were clear.  1000’ was more difficult – maybe experienced people would be out if the pilot could hold the plane steady.  Any less than that and it would be a case of going down in the plane.  If a parachute comes out of the container (either main or reserve), everyone is coming back down in the plane.  And if there’s a problem higher up, then there probably would be no reason not to go for the main, even for students. 

There were loads more things that a JM is responsible for, like the manifest checking and communicating with the pilot about the spot and whether to let people jump, or to go around again but it was all a bit much to take in so I’ll start practising and do another refresher when they run it again in Feb :-)

The kit overview was fascinating – so many different variations of container, with differing deployment methods (packing a ripcord spring-loaded pilot chute is definitely a challenge!), each with their pros and cons. Definitely waiting longer before purchasing any kit!

And packing itself is something of an art too.  Flat-packing was a challenge because of the amount of room it took up and the amount of crawling around on the floor that was necessary, but it did make it much clearer how the pack-job needs to be in order for the lines to stay clear and taut and to make sure everything is in the right order.  So then we moved on to pro-packing, which is essentially flat-packing done over the shoulder, partly for space reasons and partly to keep the canopy off the floor as much as possible.  And it’s quicker!
First few goes were taken in ‘check’ stages, where a qualified packer can inspect someone’s pack job at predefined intervals and then sign the stage off to say that the stage had been done correctly. So we got the hang of handling several hundred square feet of slippery fabric with numerous lines and fiddly bits, lol.  My first couple of pack jobs were a real battle but by the third one, Conrad reckoned he would jump it, so my next challenge will be to do a supervised pack job and jump it myself.  Quite looking forward to that although I won’t get many jumps in that day, rofl.  I’m guessing with the weather turning, I’ll be getting a lot of packing practice in on days when there is no jumping.