When I was young, my life-long fascination with aviation led me to create a short list of aviation related goals I wanted to a accomplish. (This predated the term “bucket list” but consider it a flight related “bucket list.”) One item on the list was to skydive.
It was the last item on my list. I was never very sure I'd complete my sky list, but after several items had fallen into place by chance (hang gliding and hot-air ballooning), I thought I should finish it.
I found a skydiving school nearby and screwed up the courage to go. I managed two jumps on the first day. I progressed through those first static line jumps and returned a few weeks later to work up to hop-and-pops, jumps with no free fall time, but pulling my own ripcord. As a young Air Force officer I didn't have the money to go as frequently as I might have liked, but I went back every few weeks. Because I wasn't there every week, instructors wanted me to do a hop-and-pop to demonstrate basic proficiency. But before I could get to actual free fall the afternoon winds would come up, exceeding the safe limit for students. So, I collected a few more short falls, one at a time.
On one of those jumps, things got a bit interesting. When you jump from a small plane with a high-wing configuration, you don't jump at all. You sit at the door, put your feet on a small platform, and pull yourself out along the strut that supports the wing. Once hanging onto the strut you simply let go; however, you must hold your body in the correct position to transition from forward flight into a stable fall. Try to imagine lying face-down on the floor, arms arched over your head, head and shoulders raised off the floor, legs bent up a bit behind you, so you are resting on your center of mass. That's the correct position.
What made my jump interesting was that my position was not quite correct. If you bend your legs back too far, then there is more drag on the upper part of your body and instead of falling face-down, you get blown over on your back. Without getting any more technical about it, this is bad.
So, within a few seconds I realized I had not seen the ground. But I was clear of the plane and I had waited for the 10-count, so I pulled the ripcord. Feeling the parachute deploying toward my feet further supported the conclusion that I was not falling in the correct position. I glanced down to watch the chute go past my feet and saw the riser lines unfurling, one to my left, the other between my legs. Quickly realizing that was a problem, I had the presence of mind to cross my right leg over my left to keep the lines apart. As the chute filled with air and slowed my fall, I dropped between the lines and the remainder of the ride under the canopy was relatively uneventful, despite the opposite twists in each rinser line.
I gathered up my chute and carried it to the hanger where the jump school rigger repacked student parachutes. As he took the rig from me he looked at the lines, flipped the harness through them and told me, “You really ought to be careful when you land not to walk through the lines and twist them like that.” I told him, “I did that in the air.” His expression slowly changed, his eyes growing wide, as he replied, “You know that's bad, right?” “Yeah, I know that,” I said.
It took a few weeks, but I did return to do one more hop-and-pop. That was the point I decided I'd done more than enough skydiving to cross it off my flight bucket list.
It was the last item on my list. I was never very sure I'd complete my sky list, but after several items had fallen into place by chance (hang gliding and hot-air ballooning), I thought I should finish it.
I found a skydiving school nearby and screwed up the courage to go. I managed two jumps on the first day. I progressed through those first static line jumps and returned a few weeks later to work up to hop-and-pops, jumps with no free fall time, but pulling my own ripcord. As a young Air Force officer I didn't have the money to go as frequently as I might have liked, but I went back every few weeks. Because I wasn't there every week, instructors wanted me to do a hop-and-pop to demonstrate basic proficiency. But before I could get to actual free fall the afternoon winds would come up, exceeding the safe limit for students. So, I collected a few more short falls, one at a time.
On one of those jumps, things got a bit interesting. When you jump from a small plane with a high-wing configuration, you don't jump at all. You sit at the door, put your feet on a small platform, and pull yourself out along the strut that supports the wing. Once hanging onto the strut you simply let go; however, you must hold your body in the correct position to transition from forward flight into a stable fall. Try to imagine lying face-down on the floor, arms arched over your head, head and shoulders raised off the floor, legs bent up a bit behind you, so you are resting on your center of mass. That's the correct position.
What made my jump interesting was that my position was not quite correct. If you bend your legs back too far, then there is more drag on the upper part of your body and instead of falling face-down, you get blown over on your back. Without getting any more technical about it, this is bad.
So, within a few seconds I realized I had not seen the ground. But I was clear of the plane and I had waited for the 10-count, so I pulled the ripcord. Feeling the parachute deploying toward my feet further supported the conclusion that I was not falling in the correct position. I glanced down to watch the chute go past my feet and saw the riser lines unfurling, one to my left, the other between my legs. Quickly realizing that was a problem, I had the presence of mind to cross my right leg over my left to keep the lines apart. As the chute filled with air and slowed my fall, I dropped between the lines and the remainder of the ride under the canopy was relatively uneventful, despite the opposite twists in each rinser line.
I gathered up my chute and carried it to the hanger where the jump school rigger repacked student parachutes. As he took the rig from me he looked at the lines, flipped the harness through them and told me, “You really ought to be careful when you land not to walk through the lines and twist them like that.” I told him, “I did that in the air.” His expression slowly changed, his eyes growing wide, as he replied, “You know that's bad, right?” “Yeah, I know that,” I said.
It took a few weeks, but I did return to do one more hop-and-pop. That was the point I decided I'd done more than enough skydiving to cross it off my flight bucket list.
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