That’s all fine and dandy, both of us liked the idea of having a little coaching and reminders on emergency procedures and altitudes before throwing ourselves out of a perfectly good airplane anyways.

We waited around the drop zone for a bit and finally it was our turn to get geared up and head out to the plane.  On our way out, some of the jumpers that were just getting back in told us that it was just starting to rain a little bit at the higher altitudes.  Huh, well that’ll be interesting!

Interesting is quite the understatement of the day… OUCH!!!!!!

If you think about this from a numbers standpoint, when raindrops hit your head when you are standing on the ground, they don’t hurt, they aren’t traveling very quickly.  According to this site, a raindrop falls at about 22 mph, give or take a little depending on the size of the raindrop.  Well when I fall from the sky, I’m traveling somewhere between 120 mph and 130 mph.  You see where this is going?  Do a little subtraction and there we go … raindrops hitting me in the face at about 100 mph!

And if this wasn’t enough, after we get back on the ground someone comes back from the computer saying, “Hey guess what! At 7,000 feet it was freezing rain!”  So little ice pellets hitting us at 100 mph.  And even then, when we weren’t being bombarded by a torrential … uppour … of ice pellets, the raindrops we were hitting were from the opposite direction they normally hit people.  They typically have this nice round shape that plops nice on your head.  But the top of a raindrop is all sharp and pointy.  And that unfortunately is the side that hits you in the face at 100 mph when you are skydiving.

Once we got down on the ground we all had a good laugh about the jump, complained about our aches and pain and the such, but all secretly enjoyed having another story to add to our repertoire.

Now we nurse our wounds.  Melissa was the worst off I saw, little tiny welts all over her neck and cheeks.  There were even a few spots on her chin that it looks like rain broke skin on.  I have a 3 day beard which hides most of my welts, but I have a few spots on my hands and face that the rain broke skin.

I know, it sounds like I’m complaining.  But I think that jump was just so funny.  Sure it felt like thousands of needles were giving amateur acupuncture to our faces and hands on the way through the dive flow and it definitely hurt.

But I was back up in the sky … and that is all that matters to me

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As we progress through our AFF course, we have gone through categories A – E already (E has been my favorite so far) and are working through F.  F is comprised of three jumps, the first two are called hop and pops.  This is when you deploy your canopy immediately after exiting the aircraft from a lower altitude.  My first jump of the evening was from 5500′ and the second jump was from 3500′.  The purpose of these jumps in the progression is to get you comfortable with the idea that the exit is exactly the same, you are just pulling sooner, and you can handle an aircraft emergency by exiting the plane a lower altitude.

These two jumps were completely different experiences than the jumps where I had more than 5 seconds of free fall.  They had a sort of ‘James Bond’ feel to them.  Jumping out at a low altitude and deploying immediately while still looking at the plane flying away has a sort of “HAHA I escaped!” mentality.  The thing that surprised me the most was when deploying the canopy, the relative wind was not coming from directly below, but in front of me a little bit from the forward momentum of the plane, so when the canopy catches the wind it swings you back a bit like a pendulum.  After exiting the aircraft, I was still on the hill when pulling my pilot chute out, still looking at the plane as it gets smaller and smaller.  For both jumps, I was under a fully deployed canopy within 500′ of my exit.

Next I’ll be learning to track, which is transitioning into more control over my jump and adding a ‘flying’ aspect in addition to the ‘falling’ aspect.  This will also open more doors for when jumping with other people.  Controlling my position relative to other people in a formation will be a bit important.

I’ll give a quick summary of what our jumps have been so far

Category A: Classroom and just staying stable (w/ 2 instructors)
Category B: Relaxing (w/ 2 instructors)
Category C1: Being stable without instructor grips (w/ 2 instructors)
Category C2: Being stable without instructor grip (w/ 1 instructor)
Category D1: Turning 90 degrees and 180 degrees in each direction (w/ 1 instructor)
Category D2: Turning 360 degrees in each direction (w/ 1 instructor)
Category E: Barrel roll, front flip, and back flip.  Regaining stability from unstable position (w/ 1 instructor)
Category F1: Hop and Pop from 5500 feet (w/ 1 coach in the plane but solo exit)
Category F2: Hop and Pop from 3500 feet (w/ 1 coach in the plane but solo exit)

In addition, the canopy rides have been quite fun.  I like pulling the toggles as much as possible and spiraling towards the ground, feeling the G’s push me into my harness like a roller coaster going through tight turns.  I have stood all my landings except my very first jump which has been nice.  Lately I have been overshooting my target by a little bit with basically no winds, so that is one area that I am working on and getting better with each jump.

I’m looking forward to learning more about controlling my flying/falling and learning to jump with others.  Mondays have taken on a whole new persona, due to the fact that we mostly jump Monday evenings.  Good times and blue skies!

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Melissa and I went out to Lebanon / Warren County Airport early yesterday (May 24th) morning for a day of learning about skydiving and making our first jumps.  We have both wanted to skydive for a long time, so what better time than now to give a go!

Well holy smokes it was amazing!  We spent from 8am to 1pm in the classroom and outside practicing procedures before actually putting on our gear and heading to the Cessna Caravan.

Once loaded and after takeoff, I was getting a little nervous about my jump.  What helped me was that my instructors would ask me what I would be doing at certain altitudes of my jump (whatever altitude the plane was at).  Talking about everything helped keep my mind on what we practiced and not on the idea of jumping out of the airplane.

Around 12,500 feet, it was time to go.  I was the second to last group to leave the plane, and Melissa was the last.  I scooted down the bench towards the door and concentrated on what we had practiced.  In hindsight it seems like my mind was pretty numb at that point.  I wasn’t thinking about the actual jump, but was only thinking about the procedures we had gone over for more repetitions that I care to count.

I took up my proper door position.  Went through my hotel procedures… check in, check out, prop, up, down, FLARE!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

In what seemed like half of eternity, I just fell.  The wind and the sight of nothing around me was sensory overload.  I had both of my instructors with me, and realized that I had things to do.  Although, when watching the video (see below), it didn’t seem very long before I started my circle of awareness.

My circle of awareness consisted of checking my heading, altimeter, check with left instructor for hand signals, check with right instructor for hand signals, and three pilot chute practice touches.  On my first practice touch, I got my right instructors hand instead, but he helped navigate my hand towards the proper position.

All was fine and dandy.  Soon, the videographer zipped down in front of me and filmed as I continued through my short circle of awareness.  At 6,000 feet, I locked on to my altimeter with my eyes and watched until 5,500 feet.  At that point I waved off twice, reached and grabbed my pilot chute and threw it as hard as I could.  It took wind and took out my main chute out of the container and jolted me as we slowed down.  All the while my instructors zipped away towards the ground.  They had to beat me there so that they could get on the radio and help talk me through the landing pattern and touchdown.

The canopy ride was very nice.  A little uncomfortable in the harness, but I managed.  I checked the controllability of the canopy by making two 180 degree turns in opposite directions and checked my flare.  I was about 3,000 feet when I was just chilling out.  I made my way to the landing area easily enough and turned into a long downwind at about 2,000 feet.

I followed a tree line perpendicular to the runway and made my crosswind right turn soon before now running parallel to the runway.  Descending quickly I made my turn to the west for the base leg.  I was amazed at how quickly the ground came up during the last feet.  My instructor was on the radio and helped me with the timing of my flare.  My feet hit the ground but didn’t quite know what to do with that entire moving thing and I fell into a slide on my knees.

After the whole thing, my legs were shaking with excitement.  It was a gorgeous day for such a fun new hobby.  While walking back, I debriefed with one of my instructors.  He had all good things to say.  I had kicked my feet once or twice when we first left the plane, but he said I did very well and should be very prepared to continue my jump sequence.

So now that we have our first jump course out of the way, the jumps are cheaper from here on out.

The facilities at Start Skydiving are fantastic.  One of my instructors had over 10,000 jumps and competes at world class level competitions.  The computer manifest stations are very cool, where jumpers just scan their card and select the jump time that matches their schedule.  I love the small uncontrolled airport feel as well.  The restaurant on the grounds (which I think the chef is the wife of my videographer) was a little kitchen and a grill.

Fantastic experience, though.  I can not wait to go out and continue the progression.  I know Melissa feels the same way.  We paid for a package deal that will get us our AFF jumps at a discounted rate (even more discount because we are University of Cincinnati students).  So we are ready to head up and out, again!

Blue Skies!

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