So nothing has really changed with regards to me continuing beyond the end of this season, but have been managing a lot more fun in the meantime :-)
Still had lots of frustrating days with weather holds and have countered that with more mid-week jumping whenever possible. Hinton now looks like it will be a good option, as I've met more people there now and have more people who can jump during the week without having to drag myself all the way up to Sibson.
Didn't manage to get a team together for the UKSL at Nethers in the end, so I joined a novice FS big way coaching day instead. I didn't have nearly enough jump numbers for the entry criteria but Rich vouched for me (and several hours of tunnel helped) and the organiser agreed to let me try, with the caveat that I would be taken out of the group if I wasn't good enough yet. And we had the most amazing time! Such fun and so much more relaxed than 4-way :-) There were 10 of us, so not a massive group but obviously a lot more people in the air than I'm used to. We managed to make several formations with all but one person getting into the formation each time. I learned loads about building larger formations, exit order, how to dive to the base, flat tracking etc and all the experienced guys were really friendly and helpful.
At the end of the weekend, I saw a poster for a more advanced group in July and asked if it would be possible for me to join that one. He needed to check with the other organiser since my jump numbers were even further off the basic requirements and we hadn't managed to build a 10 way so my formation size didn't meet the basics either, lol. However, the other organiser also agreed to let me try, given my performance on the first weekend so things suddenly got a lot more exciting. It's not many people who can say they did their first big way multi-plane dives with less than 100 jumps in total!
If I thought it was a steep learning curve for the novice weekend, the intermediate weekend came close to frying my brain, ha ha. So much to remember, though I wasn't the only newbie to big way so everything was explained very carefully several times. And in the end, the weather slowed our jump rate down as we kept being put on wind and cloud holds. So I Iearned about multi-plane lifts taking off in formation (very freaky seeing another plane so close all the way up to altitude!), how to do the first part of tracking off in groups before splitting away from each other, how to look for the exit from the lead plane to know when to leave the trail plane, and how to find my slot in the formation. I didn't quite make it down for the first jump, so just hovered above my slot until it was time to break off (so other people knew where I was). All the of the rest of the jumps were fine and I made it comfortably, having discovered I'm pretty good at diving down to a rapidly departing base, lol. It helps that I am quite floaty so there was never any time when I was likely to drop low, unlike many of the other guys who then struggled to get back up to the base.
I definitely want to do more and had signed up for the next training weekend but that may now get nudged to one side in favour of competing at the FS 4-way Nationals. More exciting news but need to wait a couple of days to find out whether that is going ahead.
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