I'm a Slacker

So it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Apparently the excitement of sharing every detail about every jump has worn off. Just because I haven't posted in a while, don't assume I haven't been jumping.

A month or so ago a co-worker of mine came out for a tandem, and I rode along in the plane with her. I went out solo just before her (jump #39). She liked the jump so much that within 10 minutes of getting back on the ground, she had already purchased a second tandem that she's going to do some time this summer. She was also nice enough to stick around long enough for me to go up for jump #40 too.

A couple weeks after that, I came out just to fill the plane when another tandem was going up. Jump #41 ended up being an accidental cloud encounter. Apparently I need to work on my spotting skills when it's not clear blue skies. Falling through the cloud was a really neat sensation, though. It felt like I was spinning out of control, even though I knew that I wasn't. I had paid attention to where the cloud base layer was on the ride to altitude, so I waited until I came out of the cloud at 4k before deploying.

A week and a half ago I managed to spend most of the weekend out at the DZ and got 4 more jumps in between lots of lounging around and enjoying the sunshine. My mom came out to watch me for the first time, and later announced that she wants to try a tandem to see what it is that I love so much about this sport. Jump #42 was a two-way with Pat. She went out long, I dove after her. We never made it together--I didn't put the brakes on soon enough and flew right past her. For #43, we switched roles. Still not a complete success, but we got a lot closer. We managed to at least fall at the same rate, and were only 5ft apart when it was time to turn and track off. Jump #44 was a 3-way with Pat and Bill. Bill went long, I dove from the crotch, and Pat dove from the door. I managed to make it to Bill, but Pat went low and didn't quite make it over to us. Jump #45 was a bit of a mess. Pat, Julie, and I were going to do a 3-way. I went out long, Julie dove from the door, and Pat scrambled out after us. Julie dove down to me and went a little low. When we got close enough to dock, we both had too much speed and just crashed and tumbled apart instead. Pat watched the whole thing from above at a distance--since the exit timing got so messed up, there was no way she could have made it down to us.

I spent most of this weekend at the DZ as well, but didn't do as much jumping. Saturday was pretty cloudy, but I still got jump #46 in. For jump #47 on Sunday, I switched to a slightly smaller canopy for the first time. With the weather warming up and student activity increasing, it was about time I move off of the student gear. I was pretty nervous about the change. My landings have been picture perfect for a couple months now, but this time my nerves got to me and I screwed things up again. I started my flare a little early, and then reverted back to my old habit of throwing my arms straight up instead of punching out the last bit of the flare. So I had another PLF landing, but at least I didn't get hurt. Give it a few weeks and I'll get my landings figured out again. Hopefully I won't re-sprain my ankle in the mean time.

On a different note, I'm almost the proud owner of my first rig. I bought a container and reserve last month from a friend that I met at the boogie in Mesquite. In the next few weeks I'll be getting a used main (maybe Pat's Triathalon), and then I'll be good to go. I'm working on saving up for an AAD as well, but that will probably have to wait until summertime. Ahh... summer... can't wait for it to get here!

iFly Utah

Another month gone by, still no more jumping. It seems that every time I'm off of work and would be able to jump, the weather is awful. And every time the weather clears up, I'm stuck at work staring out the window. Ugh.

I did make it down to Ogden, UT, a few days ago to try the wind tunnel out though. I did 15 minutes on Monday, and another 7 on Tuesday. I worked on basic belly flying skills--turning, controlling fall rate, forward and backward motion, and so on. Having a chance to work on freefall skills for several minutes at a time really helped. I'll plan on heading back for another 20 minutes or so in a month and a half when I'm on spring break from school. Maybe by then I will have forgotten about how sore my upper body is as a result of the 22 minutes I did this week. Ouch.

Mesquite

The weekend was great. We drove down to Nevada on Friday, jumped on Saturday and Sunday, and drove back all day Monday. Getting away from Idaho's wintry weather to enjoy some sunshine and 60-degree temperatures was very much worth the money and the drive.

Jump #35

I couldn't believe how nervous I was to be jumping out of a new plane and over a new dropzone. After hours of watching some rather messy landings (including landings out in the nearby golf course) in the 16+mph winds, I finally got up the courage to manifest myself for a load. Pat and I each did solos. She came along to keep me company (and to push me out the door in case I got too nervous and froze up... haha). I managed to hit the door frame with the back of my right leg as I hopped out into the air, and then tumbled away from the caravan. Freefall from 13,000ft was nice. Even though I pulled high, the extra altitude left me with nearly a minute of freefall. I didn't do much on the first jump--just looked around the area, trying to get a feel for the dropzone and my potential outs.

Jump #36

Later in the afternoon Pat and I did a 2-way... or we tried to, anyway. I dove out after her, got down to the same level, but then started backsliding away. We didn't get back together, and ended up just falling level from a distance.

Jump #37

Sunday morning, Pat and I were on the first load for another 2-way. We went out together, stabilized after a couple tumbles, but as soon as Pat started to turn to do a side-body I backslid away again. I need to pay more attention to where my legs are to stop doing that. The morning winds were virtually nonexistent, and I overshot the gravel landing area by probably 50ft. Thankfully, I flared at the right height, landed on my feet, and easily ran off the leftover speed. I ended up on the asphalt between a couple airplanes and one of the hangars. As my canopy collapsed and fell to the ground, it got caught up on the roof of the hangar, but came down without any trouble so no harm done.

Jump #38

The plan was to do a 3-way with Kelly and Pat. Kelly and I went out together, but I let go of his gripper as I started to tumble. After I stabilized he came back over to me, and we just fell together while Pat worked to get over to us to dock. She didn't quite make it to us, so the jump ended up being another 2-way. To avoid dealing with other canopy traffic, I landed on the strip of gravel between the taxiway and the runway. The wind was really strong (gusting around 20mph), and it almost pulled me over. As I pulled my steering line in, I ran across the gravel and through a small drainage ditch before finally getting the canopy collapsed. I really thought I was going to face plant as I ran across that ditch.

My landings on the four jumps from the weekend were a lot better than those I've had in Star recently. I was comfortably on my feet on all of them. Part of that had to do with the fact that there was some wind for me to land against in Mesquite. Also, I'm getting back in the habit of looking out in front of me instead of down as I'm landing. I'm not sure when the change took place, but somewhere between the nice landings I had during my student training and the rough rolling ones I've had recently, I started looking straight down, which makes it a lot harder to gauge my height above the ground. Hopefully this weekend wasn't a fluke and my landings will continue to improve instead of getting worse again.

Brr!

Finally (after over a month of miserable, snowy weather) four loads went up today to give us all our fix of sky.

When I got out to the DZ after work (or rather... after I convinced my manager to let me leave work 6 hours early), my car thermometer said it was 31 degrees on the ground. The first load didn't go up until about an hour after that, so I figure we probably gained a few degrees. Because of the cold temperatures, we stuck with hop and pops.

Jump #33

On the way to altitude, I was struck by how pretty the valley looked, still sprinkled with snow. Everything was in shades of gray. I ended up a little far out with my landing pattern. Although my flare was still not quite right, I think I could have stood it up if the ground hadn't been so slippery. My feet touched down and slid out from under me, and I gently plopped down on my butt and slid to a stop in the mud. Kevin had to sweep me off with a broom so I wouldn't track a mess into the building.

Jump #34

Another hop and pop from 5k. I did a poised exit, watched the plane long enough to see the pilot start to dive down for his descent, and was under canopy just below 4k. I ended up landing in almost the same spot as on my first jump of the day. I slipped and slid in on the mud again, but before my canopy had even finished floating to the ground I was back up and trying to wipe the mess off of my backside.

Next weekend I'm headed down to Mesquite, NV for their Blue Skies Boogie. I'm both excited and nervous for the trip. It will be fun to jump out of some new planes, and of course it will be great to meet some more new people. Several people from my DZ are going as well, so there will also be familiar faces around if I start to feel too out of my element.

Three weeks later...

...and I finally managed to find the time to make it out to the DZ again. I'm all for conserving money so I can pay off my credit card and start saving up to buy my own rig, but three weeks really was too long. Between the crappy weather and my financial situation, odds are good that it will be another three weeks before I get to jump next time.

Today was nice--a tad cold (45ish on the ground), but sunny at least. We had a grand total of three loads go up for the afternoon, and I made it on two of them.

Jump #31

The first load was me, Pat, Kevin, and a tandem passenger. This was the first time I've been in the plane with a tandem, and it was kind of amusing to watch him and think back to how nervous I was and how much of a rush I got from my first tandem, which really wasn't long ago. Since it had been a while since I'd been in the air, I went solo to have a chance to re-orient myself and relax a bit. I've been somewhat unstable on deployment in the past, so I took the opportunity to do practice pulls the whole way through freefall until I was totally stable in them. I think I've been bending at my hips when reaching for my hackey, which puts me into a slow turn... not good for on-heading openings. Once again, I screwed up my flare for a rough landing. I also misjudged the winds and ended up a few hundred feet away from my target landing area.

Jump #32

Pat and John went for a 2-way, and I did another solo. I dove out and did a couple somersaults on exit, which was new and fun. I practiced doing turns with my legs--something else I haven't tried before. I dipped a knee and went spinning one direction, straightened back out, dipped the other knee, and went spinning the opposite direction. I'll have to play around with that some more to get the hang of it so that I'm under a bit more control. I was on target for canopy control, but my landing still sucked, and Kevin was there to get it on video again. I'm used to having new things come easily to me, so all this difficulty with flaring is rather irritating.

I'm going to be working full time instead of part time for the rest of the school year. That will be great for saving money, not so great for having free time. After New Year's I'll have to go back to taking Sundays off from work so I can still jump every once in a while.

On another note, I'm hoping to do a bit of travelling next summer and in my year off from school. I've grown rather fond of the little Cessna-182's I've been jumping all this time, but it would be fun to get some jumps out of larger planes... and maybe a hot air balloon or helicopter too.

I'm Really Uncoordinated

Today I turned down my manager's request to stay and work a full shift (I was only scheduled for three hours but one of the other cashiers called in sick) to go rack up some more debt at the drop zone. It's a good (or maybe bad) thing the DZO lets me run up a tab and pay it off every couple weeks. Otherwise my jumping would have to be really spread out.

The weather was actually pretty nice. Some scattered clouds, but mostly blue skies. The only problem was that so few people showed up that we had to sit around waiting for enough jumpers to fill a load.

Jump #29

Eventually some other people arrived and Brad, Dan, Pat, and I went up. This was the first time in a long time that I felt nervous on the way to altitude. Last night I had my first very vivid dream about a malfunction and a hard reserve pull, and I guess it shook me up a little bit, but still didn't stop me from going ahead with the jump. Pat and I did a 2-way again, and Dan followed close behind practicing his camera flying. Our exit went fine--no tumbling or anything of that sort. We planned on releasing and then doing some more fall rate adjustment after just falling face to face for a couple thousand feet. For the majority of the free fall, though, we were in a slow clockwise spin, most likely due to some of my leg asymmetry, so we didn't release our grips until just before time to turn and track off. Despite my best efforts to focus on holding my flare, I let up again about 5 feet from the ground for another rough rolling landing. It's really irritating how I continue to mess up my flare without even realizing what I'm doing.

Jump #30

After taking my sweet time at packing the gigantic, new, and slippery 260sq-ft student canopy I've been jumping, I went up on the third load of the afternoon for a hop-n-pop. Brad got out a couple miles from the DZ--right over his house so he could swoop into his rather tiny back yard. Impressively, he made it into the yard without hitting any houses or fences, and Kevin got it on video. My jump went better that the last few I've done. Although I flared about 5ft early, I managed to actually HOLD the flare all the way through for a decent landing. I stood it up, despite the fact that I had not planned on standing up any landings for a few more weeks.

So I made it through the day without injuring my ankle again... that is until I went to walk to my car to leave. I nearly re-sprained my ankle while walking out the DZ door. Doh.

Bad Habits

Despite the fact that I know I should wait a good six weeks (doctor's orders) before jumping again, I went against my better judgment and drove out to the DZ today to meet up with the few brave souls who were undaunted by the clouds and rain. I came away from it unscathed, so naturally I hope to jump some more this weekend, weather permitting.

Jump #27

The first load of the day made it to 5000ft. Unfortunately the clouds prevented us from going above that. I was apparently a little asymmetrical in the 10 seconds or so of freefall I got. I went into a slow right hand turn and managed to relax and stop myself just a couple seconds before deploying. There was a little bit of precipitation, and the feeling of the rain droplets hitting my face was pretty unpleasant, to say the least. Also, my flare pretty much sucked. I flared early, would have been fine, but then let up on my toggles just before touching down. I didn't bother trying to stand it up--in fact I've decided I'm not going to stand up any landings for a while so I don't put unnecessary pressure on my ankle.

Jump #28

The second and final load went to 4000ft. More rain, and even a little snow this time. My canopy opened into a right turn. Maybe my packjob wasn't so great and therefore the left break came unstowed during opening? The condensation that accumulated on my goggles was so bad that I couldn't even see through them, so as soon as I was under canopy and got both brakes released to stop my turn, I took them off and left them around my neck. Once again I flared early and let up just before landing. Kevin got it on video, so I was able to see what I messed up. Seeing my hands go up when I was supposed to be holding the flare, all I could think was "What the heck?!" I didn't even realize I was doing that... all I knew was that my landings had been kind of rough recently. So I need to work on staying focused and making sure to hold my flare. Strange how bad habits like that can develop... early on in my student training I was doing fine with my landings. It's also strange how oblivious I was to what I was doing.