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!
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