More firsts and another good day :-) 10 Nov 2013

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!

Back in the sky – and first malfunction! 09 Nov 2013

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 :-)

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.   

Not back in the sky yet

So another couple of weeks have gone by and I've still not been back to the dropzone. Life has got in the way and I have many demands on my time, plus it has been cold and wet and windy, and definitely not camping weather.  I am not that obsessed by skydiving that I will hang out in freezing cold weather where there's no possibility of going up in the plane, just to talk about jumping, lol.

I will however, head back to the dz this weekend.  I have booked myself onto a progression course, so will hopefully pick up some useful information about canopy handling, spotting, JumpMaster duties and maybe even have another go at packing a parachute or two.  If there is any jumping (seems highly unlikely given the current weather forecast), I may even be able to put a little of it into practice :-)

I have pretty much resigned myself to some form of recurrency jump schedule next season as the UK season is over for some dropzones already, and will be over within the next few weeks for pretty much all the rest.  Having only just got my A licence, my first few jumps next season are likely to be quite unnerving, if I haven't jumped for 3-4 months or more.  Having considered going abroad to jump to maintain currency, I rejected the idea for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, if I don't jump in November, I will not be current for jumping anywhere else since I last jumped in September.  Assuming I do manage at least one jump over the next few weeks, even if I jump somewhere warm in December, that would still only keep me current until late Feb. Since that is also likely to be extremely poor weather conditions in the UK, there is a very high probability that I would need to do some form of recurrency jumping regardless.

Secondly, I do not want to run the risk of 'wasting' my winter sun holiday on jumping.  Without FS1, I cannot jump with anyone who is not an instructor, coach or has at least a C licence so that means either jumping solo, or paying for instruction.  Whilst I want to practice my landings so that solo jumping is not such a bad idea, I can see that turning up alone at a strange dz overseas could lead to spending a lot of time on the ground alone as well.  Fine if I'm on a secluded beach somewhere; not so fine at a busy dz where everyone else is having a ball.  Though perhaps that is just the introvert in me speaking - pretty much every experienced skydiver I've ever met has been very gregarious so maybe I'd be engaged in a social life regardless, lol.

Thirdly, I still don't really know if I want to continue.  And that's the biggest question - should I just bow out gracefully now?  There are myriad pros and cons to the decision and with everything else that is going on in my life right now, skydiving is a very low priority.  So I'm prepared to see what happens at the progression weekend and consider my options after that. 

A licence: Shiny new book

So I guess people could be forgiven for assuming I have given up skydiving.  Indeed, I have been very close to exactly that several times - only sheer bloody mindedness has kept me going to complete my A licence.  And now I finally have it.  My little book with my A licence number and my CH1 sticker, and it is such a bitter-sweet moment.  

I am not sure where my skydiving future will take me.  Certainly nowhere near FS1 just yet, I love having the sky to myself so I can just fly and do what I want.  I definitely don't want the pressure of feeling I have to turn points and not mess up other people's dives on top of all the issues I am having with my landing skills.  

And I have not been near the dropzone since that last consol jump just over 2 weeks ago.  I don't feel called back to it, I'm not desperately missing it, though I still think it's a pretty cool thing to do.  Maybe a couple of weeks break will be a good thing, though it will be at least a month in total before I'm back as I'm away next weekend and have to see my dad the weekend after, and there's no guarantee the weather will be any good for jumping late in October.  Though maybe I'll go up on the Sunday and just hang out, I've met some lovely new people and I don't think I'm ready to give up their friendship just yet :-)  

 

Consol 10: 28 Sep 2013

Not really enthusiastic about this jump but hopefully it’s the final one and then I will qualify.  And then I will see where to go from there.  Not happy about the winds – we have a rare occurrence of wind shear, with the wind changing direction at 5,000’ so we’re going to be put out of the plane in what from the ground appears to be completely the wrong place.  I get several wind briefings, just to make sure I know what I am supposed to be doing.  Chris M’s advice is to pull a bit higher than normal if I’m not comfortable, so I decide I’ll probably pull at 5,000’.  People are landing off all over the place so the jump run has been changed a couple of times – probably won’t make that much difference to me, I’ll do my usual trick of hovering in the holding area and then I should be under normal wind conditions.   

Totally non-eventful jump.  Not even particularly nervous, just wanting to get it over with.  A tick in the box.  And hopefully a reasonable landing.  Free fall went fine, usual stuff of doing a few turns, a quick track, some attempts at side slides, one of which made me wobble a lot so I obviously did something a bit odd with an arm or leg.  Was weird going in the opposite direction to the wind sock but I had expected that from the multiple wind briefings, so it was more of an observation than anything else. 

Pulled at 5000 and did my usual canopy checks, got to the holding area without any problems and tried to determine a respectable landing pattern that might avoid yet another talking-to.  And it worked, to a point.  I didn’t land where I wanted to but it was on my feet and I didn’t mess anything up.  Feeling very deflated even though it’s only late morning.  Had a go at front riser turns and ended up doing pull ups.  I don’t think the canopy even noticed!  Found out later that student rigs are loaded differently to other rigs so it’s unlikely I will be able to do anything with the front risers, despite Chris’s declaration that I should be able to make turns on them before downsizing a canopy.

Back at manifest after dropping off my rig, and I learn that the winds have picked up a little and are still quite flukey, so students are on weather hold.  But that doesn’t include me.  Chris tells me to complete my paperwork for my CH1 and my A licence application form and then I can continue to jump as a qualified jumper, as I am no longer a student.  I didn’t know I needed passport sized photos for the application, so I end up traipsing off to the nearest service station to find a photo booth.  I completed my CH1 exam last week and brought it with me, so all that is left is to hand everything over with my card details (£15 admin fee) and my application will be sent off for me on Monday.  Such a bitter-sweet moment.  I’ve done it, I’ve passed and I’m quite pleased with myself for sticking with it, but don’t feel any real joy in the achievement.  Too many emotions churning around, along with the knowledge that my landings are far from the standard I would have hoped for by now, so I drift back out into the sunshine without bothering to manifest. 

And other people start asking “How did it go? Did you get your CH1 signed off? Are you qualified now?” and it starts to feel a little more real.  I smile and tell them yes, I now have my A licence, though I stop short at calling myself a skydiver.  I don’t feel like a skydiver, I make too many mistakes and get lots of ‘review sessions’ from the instructors.  I don’t feel confident in my ability to land in the right place and I don’t feel comfortable that I will know when to get out of the plane when there is no-one to despatch me. 

Chris has told me to get myself a hook knife as I should wear one now that I am qualified, though apparently I’m only to use it as a very last resort, for a line-over on a reserve.  If I get a line-over on a main, I should cut-away as previously instructed.  Rich has bought one for me as a ‘well done’ present but I have very mixed feelings as I take it from him.  I am not at all certain that I will continue, I definitely don’t want to jump in conditions that are not considered ok for students, especially on my bus of a student parachute.  So I feel at a bit of a loss. 

A call comes out for catchers to help with landing tandems so I go to assist and that turns out to be pretty easy and a lot of fun.  A chance for some camaraderie and some gratitude from the tandem instructors, and a different perspective of the landing field.  I realise that this is the first time I have ever stood here without a harness on – I have never watched landings from the landing area itself, only from the other side of the runway. 

The day passes and I get more congratulations from people as time goes on, but I feel a bit of a fraud, smiling and joking with them all.  I have no intention of jumping again today, I’m really not in the right mindset.  I buy beers later and try to ignore all the comments about how I need to start on my FS1 coaching jumps straight away.  I am forever under scrutiny for my landings, there’s no way I’m about to put myself under the cosh for my free fall too!!  Next step will be CH2, if I continue – solo jumps with the sky to myself, and learning how to land consistently. 

Consols 6 - 9: 22 Sept 2013

Consol 6: 22 Sept 2013

Asked if I could downsize to Nav 240 after the lack of forward motion on yesterday’s landing and got an extensive lecture on my abilities, and how I needed to be able to fly my canopy under all conditions, land on target every time, use front and rear risers, into wind, downwind and crosswind.  That’ll be a no then :-/   My wing loading is only 0.65 so I guess that means I’ll be sticking with student winds for now. 

I spotted the landing zone (with a bit of help earlier before the plane cut engines),and was by the door so had fairly good visibility down even when the door was closed.  Straight out, stable.  Turns, left side slide, short track on heading away from dropzone to avoid getting too close.  Rear riser turns up high.  Good canopy control, pulled at 4,500.  Flared slightly too early, let up too soon (apparently before feet touched down though I don’t recall that), so landed on feet, then knees.  On grass though!

Consol 7: 22 Sept 2013
Spotted dropzone, looked down out of plane before jumping. Baby steps towards proper spotting! Pulled at 4,500.  Close call with AFF Level 1 student who had jumped behind me, steered his canopy right over the top of mine and was dropping faster than me.  Couldn’t find him above my canopy with small turns, so did a very aggressive spiral to get clear.  Bit shaken as it had looked like he was on target to hit my canopy.  Tried to avoid him on landing as he was unpredictable in flight and was obviously moving faster than me and dropping more quickly.  Turned into wind and found winds were lighter than previous jump so did S-turns as previously instructed to snake off the distance.  Kept seeing 2 students behind me as I did my turns and they appeared to be closing the distance quickly.  By 200’, decided it was better to go straight and overshoot, than to risk one of them hitting me.  My still point seemed to be halfway between the grass and the hedge but partway there, I wasn’t sure so did a gentle 90 degree turn right to land parallel to the hedge.  Good flare, landed a bit faster than anticipated due to being crosswind so landed on feet then stumbled.  Complete bollocking for overshooting L  Apparently the CCI had been yelling at me to turn right and I hadn’t heard him.  Even if I had, I would have ignored him because he was primary with the AFF level 1 student so I would have assumed he was shouting instructions to the student, not me.
 

Consol 8: 22 Sept 2013

After a break and time-out to lick my wounds and assess whether I had actually deserved the scolding, I  figured I only had 3 jumps left to finish my consols so would tough it out and just do the endurance test of getting through them.  Neither of the Nav 260’s weren’t available so I grabbed the last Nav 280 instead.  I’ll probably have another crap landing but at least I’ll get another one over with.  I do my checks and get into the harness; I’m ready to go when Chris M comes past and asks why I have such a huge rig on.  I explain that the 260’s are both unavailable and he goes into the kit store and comes out with a Manta 288 in a smaller harness.  Oh fabulous, an even bigger parachute, well, I guess it may be a slightly different design so maybe it won’t be so different to the 280 to fly it into wind.  He gets one of the other instructors to help me get into the new rig and takes the other one to another student.  He seems quite chirpy and doesn’t mention my previous landing incident so I presume he’s happy for me to jump.  I get my pre-jump checks done and signed off on the manifest and we head out to the emplaning point. 

I get through the jump, don’t do much on free-fall, a couple of turns and attempts at side slides, I am not really enjoying this, just want to get the landing over with.  The landing plan is going fine, I am nicely lined up on my downwind leg and have assessed where I will turn to land on the grass.  The wind has picked up a little so there’s no danger of me overshooting.  So far, so good.  Then it all changes as an AFF student comes hurtling past me on the downwind leg and after my discussions with Rich and Chris D about what I could have done differently on the previous jump, I don’t want to turn in front of him.  So I wait until he turns before I turn behind him and of course, he has enough speed and drive to go forwards whereas I don’t.  Bizarrely, he continues on his crosswind leg instead of turning into wind but he is well out of my way so I do a curving 180 and predictably, drift gently forward instead of flying back to the grass. I end up landing short, on my feet, but there is no delight in the achievement, just frustration that my landing pattern got messed up because I had to avoid someone else (he eventually turned into wind and also landed short, but much closer to the bus than I did).  When I got back to the bus, Chris asked me how the landing went.  I told him I couldn’t turn when I wanted to because I didn’t know what the other guy was doing and he replied that he didn’t know what the student was doing either because he wasn’t doing what he was being told on the radio!  Some small comfort then, that I haven’t actually made a mistake this time.

Consol 9: 22 Sept 2013

My penultimate jump as a student, lift 18 and still 2 lifts to go.  I may just make it onto lift 20 and be done if my Manta gets packed (it’s still in the shed awaiting the packers) by the time I get down from this jump.  I am back on a Nav 260 this time as I retrieved it from the packing shed on the way back from my last jump. 

Still no real enthusiasm for the jump, but the end is now in sight.  Cecilia is on my lift and she is very nervous as she is jumping her own pack job for the first time.  She wants to pull high but the JM says no.  Eventually they compromise on a pull at 4,500, the same as me.  She is slightly smaller than me, flying a similar rig (also 260 sq ft) so we work out a strategy to make sure we are clear about our landing patterns because we are likely to be coming down at the same time, plus there is another AFF student behind us.  I will look out for her canopy when we open, whichever one of us gets to the landing area first will set the pattern for the other, so the intention is for me to follow her in, even if I end up landing short again.  At least that is less likely this time because we are of similar build on similar canopies and she is a much more experienced jumper than me.  Hopefully I will learn something about setting up correctly which will be very helpful.

As before, the exit and free fall go fine, once under canopy I’ve spotted Cecilia in the air and also have an eye on the student above me so I play with rear riser turns in the holding area.  Cecilia seems to be too far over towards the runway so I decide not to wait for her and start my downwind leg.  It all goes smoothly this time, I turn and hold the crosswind leg a little to lose some height and then turn again into wind.  Slightly more forward motion this time so I land neatly on the grass on my feet.  This time I’m happier.  I start gathering my canopy whilst looking to see where the other parachutes are.  Cecilia lands slightly downwind and to the side of me, also looking very happy and relieved.  She had a good opening and we discuss the landing pattern on the way back to the bus.  She notes that my turns had caused me to drop more quickly and also I started my downwind leg a bit higher than she would have, hence she had decided to fit in behind me.  The other student is talked down close to the bus so we all bundle in and head back. 

I am in time to manifest and there are slots but the Manta still isn’t packed and there are no other student rigs available so I have to miss out on doing my final consol today.  The light is definitely going, this will be the last lift.  I go back to the tent and finish packing everything up whilst I wait for Rich to come back down from lift 19.  The packers are incredibly busy so he will probably have to pack his own parachute when he gets back and we have two long drives to do so I want everything to be ready for us to just leave when he is done.