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 :-)
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