Seville Round 2 - Big Success :-)

So I'm back from Skydive Spain with renewed enthusiasm and having had a lot of fun, despite unusually bad weather there too!  

I only got one jump in on my first day due to weather, then no jumping at all for 2 days, followed by 5 great jumps on my last day :-)  I also downsized from the Nav 240 I was jumping in December to a Nav 220 and stood up all my landings, so my canopy handling hasn't suffered too much from a 2 month break.  

I asked about exiting the plane in the most stable position for a low altitude exit and have now learned how to do a float exit - so easy!  Can't believe I was ever nervous of trying to climb out of the plane, lol.  After having a couple of goes at it, I was then coaxed into doing a coached FS1 jump with Jacobo for my 3rd jump of the day.  After some instructions and practice on the creeper, we had a go at fall rates.  And it went surprisingly well.  I suspect that tunnel time probably helped as I have done a little work on matching fall rates and learning to go higher and lower in the tunnel, though the techniques are slightly different in free fall.  Jacobo videoed it for me and we managed to get it onto my phone SD card so at some point I have to figure out how to get it onto YouTube so I can post a link :-)

I did another couple of solo jumps to practice the techniques but was too tired to do another coached jump, plus it was getting late in the day and it was very cold at altitude so my hands were suffering, despite all the precautions with surgical gloves inside my leather gloves to protect from wind chill.  

I will come back in March to do some more coached jumps - it will still be way too cold to go to altitude in the UK, and it's rare that we get above 13,000' anyway, whereas in Seville they always go to 15,000 which gives that bit extra time in freefall for practising new manouevres!   

The tunnel scrambles were also great fun, though a little frustrating.  It's now very apparent that although I have improved a lot since last time, I am definitely the very weakest link to a team through my lack of ability to turn in place and to match fall rates with several people at once.  I ended up with 24lbs of lead on me to keep me down with everyone else, since I am so floaty, despite a very close-fitting 'fast' jumpsuit.  I also don't have booties on my suit which apparently will make a difference - time to get some more tunnel coaching since I can't jump in this rubbish weather anyway!