Off of student status, on to solos and coach jumps

There were several tandems as well as a few other students scheduled throughout the morning and afternoon on Sunday, so I took advantage of the downtime and did some reading for one of my classes. Around 5:00pm I finally got up in the air again.

Jump #8: AFF Category E-1

Since I was so nervous for the unpoised exit, Kevin agreed to let me do one more from the poised position. This was my first exit without an instructor holding onto my harness, and even that was somewhat nerve-racking. I stabilized shortly after leaving the strut and then did a back flip followed by a barrel roll. This was my first attempt at aerial acrobatics, and the maneuvers were, of course, rather sloppy. The main goal, though, was just to get off balance and then regain stability, which I did without any problem. The winds were coming from a different direction than they have on my previous jumps, and I had some trouble adjusting my landing pattern to compensate for the difference. I ended up way overshooting the target, landing not far from the runway and only 10 feet or so from a fallen-down barbed wire fence. I didn't get the flare right either and had to roll on landing (not quite a textbook PLF, but it worked well enough).

Jump #9: AFF Category E-2 (my graduation jump!)

On this one I faced my fears of the unpoised exit, which turned out to be a lot less scary than I had imagined. I managed to get my belly into the relative wind coming from ahead of the plane and didn't really even tumble before stabilizing. Then I did a front flip (or at least a messy attempt at a front flip) and tried to track forward to dock with Kevin. In three attempts I managed to maintain my heading and reach him once. On two of the attempts I was cocking one leg to the side, which caused me to turn to the left a little. My landing went better this time. I did a few too many s-turns near the bottom and bled off more altitude than I needed to, so I actually landed a little short of the target. My flare was much better and I was able to gently stand up on the landing.

And with that I was cleared for solo and coach jumps. If there's a pilot available, I'll go back out to the DZ tomorrow evening when I get done with classes. I'm not very confident in my spotting capabilities, so I'll probably pay a little extra for a couple coach jumps so I have someone there to help me out with it. I want to work on tracking some more, and just for fun I'd like to try some more flips. If I can continue to afford jumping as often as I have been in the last couple weeks, it won't be long before I'm able to get my A license. And to think... two months ago all I was going to do was a single tandem jump.