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.