The swoop club event was scheduled for Monday morning, but alas, the clouds and rain just didn’t want to let it happen. Well the rain paused for a moment, so we decided to quickly get the Cessna up and test the ceiling. Well, we were able to get up to 4,000 feet, but it sure hadn’t stopped raining up there! I’m sure someone might have considered not proceeding.. but the next load was already manifested.. and they had already setup the swoop course.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHq_xvoDWY

Now for a bit of my personal history, I am not a swooper. I hadn’t ever participated in swoop club before. I was on the load for a quick hop-n-pop and I saw the course setup, I thought I’d just use it for a bit of accuracy practice. Of course when I landed, Ryan said I was the only one that had even scored in the round, putting me momentary in first place, so I decided I should stick around and finish it -- couldn’t hurt to learn a bit more about my canopy! Many thanks to Ryan for answering all my questions that day, the rules, scoring procedures, the different rounds, etc.. I really learned a lot.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNgoHY24g-4

Mostly I focused on just hitting the gates with an accurate approach. In the first round (above) I had a 77′ swoop followed with a 42′ swoop in the second round. The rules changed in the third round (accuracy) so I just tried to land in the square Ryan showed me and in the process I hit three of the four gates. At this point, I was the only person to score in each round and I might have had a chance at placing first or second.

Hellfish Swoop Club 2009 - 3rd Place Medal

However for the final round I decided to put a bit more effort into it and hit all four gates, which I did, but landed 10′ early in the “no mans land” area just before the target landing area! Oh well -- How much can you learn if you don’t try hard enough that you might fuck up? All in all, it was a good end to the boogie weekend. One that will be well remembered by myself at the least. And, after a few calculations by Ryan (you’ve gotta love a weighted scoring system) I ended up placing third -- in my first try at swoop club!

Just for reference, out of my current jumps, I’ve got 40 on student canopies (from 288 to 210) the next 100 on a Sabre-1 190, and the next 150+ on a Pilot 168. For the day I decided to demo the Pilot 150, as that would be my next logical step down. However, the Aerodyne guy, after watching me land a few times, though I’d be fine with the Pilot 140, not so sure myself, what do you think, with my progression and an exit weight of 190 pounds?

Anyway, on to the days video’s! In the first one Jon does a backflip, Chris does a half barrel roll, I do a strut curl exit and wave goodbye to the pilot!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkwwkamcqLY

Here are to good examples of stable cessna exits: Jim does a diving exit, Ian goes out poised.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSZ4X0F6-P4

I had plans to drive down to Ohio for the weekend to meet with Ashley Mead from SkydiveChick.com and take a small tour of the local dropzones in her neck of the woods while helping her check off the last few items on her progression card and hopefully to be there when she got her license!

The first stop was Cleveland Parachute Center for a few jumps from their Cessna 185, the first jump was Ashley’s hop-n-pop from 5,500 feet followed by my exit.  Watch carefully – you can see how I figured out that the step on a 185 is about six inches higher than a 182!

The second jump was an interesting one.. but no story about it here (go watch the video, be observant), you’ll have to come find me around the bonfire to hear me tell you the story about it!

After the second jump we took off back to Cleveland to meet up with Shawn at http://www.voodoomonkey.org/.  We know how many skydivers wear  a closing pin necklace.. but how many of them would put that pin on them permanently?  Only two that I know of..  but who among us couldn’t use a little good luck charm on that pull hand?

After the tattoo’s it was back on the road the Canton Airsports to meet up with the crew there just after sunset.  I got to meet a lot of great people and couldn’t wait to come back Sunday morning to jump with them.  First jump was with Rick, Christa, and Tkoa – we never quite built the first round, but a fun jump anyhow!

Next I got to fly outside camera for a hybrid attempt, it was the group’s second try at it and they were pretty sure they were going to get it.  The were so sure, they made two of us squeeze onto that camera step to do the video for them!  I couldn’t keep up with the fall rate once Rick stood up under the two way, but I love the footage I got of the first camera guy colliding with group at exit!  I tried to go into a sit, but I just couldn’t hold it stable, I need to practice my free flying abit more for these situations…

And finally, the last jump.  All during Sunday we’d worked on getting Ashley card checked off, three ring maintenance, packing (I got to jump her pack job on the first jump of the day), and she was on the plane during the second jump during her check dive to get her A license!  We thought that was the end of the day, but a few more tandems walked in, and we had just enough to send the plane back up.  For her first licensed jump, she said she just wanted to do something fun.. no learning, no practice.. so I offered to just spin her around and see how far I could throw her across the sky!  This was a great end to a great weekend.. A great new dropzone to visit, a newly licensed skydiver to jump with, a new skydiving tattoo.. it doesn’t get much better than this.

Wow… getting very close! Only one left to go.

This jump was very similar to the last one, another clear & pull, only this time, from ONLY 3500 feet. (Let.s do some math…) I’m sure everyone remembers a mile is 5,280 feet (right?) and 3500/5280 = .663, so my just was from LESS THAN two thirds of a mile… and let me tell you, it looks very close! There were a few clouds up there, so it took us a minute to find a clear spot, then the door opened and I had to lean out and spot the plane (make sure we’d be jumping out exactly over the ground where we wanted to). I climbed out, held onto the strut for just a moment, and then let go.

This time I got my arms down a little more (like I should have last time) and I was deployed within two or three seconds. It really seemed like I was so low that I needed to hurry, although my math tells me I really had at least about 23 seconds until I would have hit the ground! (yeah I know.. to a whuffo, 23 seconds till impact might seem like you’re knocking on deaths door, but really, 23 seconds is plenty of time, an easy margin of safety).

Anyhow, I got this last jump marked off on my A card and got the “spot w/o assistance” and my third “land within 20m w/o assistance” for my Category ‘H’ at the same time!

Right after the debrief, my coach, Allison, let me dis-assembly and re-assemble the three-rings on her rig. (The three ring assembly is what hold your main parachute onto the rig, it’s very strong, but designed to be very easily cut-away at the same time). Then we pulled out her closing loop and showed me that two, my last two check marks off my A card…

Now, just one week away, next Saturday I’ll be taking my 25 jump; my “check ride”. This will be the first in 15 jumps that I’ll have to do with an AFF Instructor again, and basically just show him all that I.ve learned from the AFF jumps and all the coaching jumps… and that.s it… I’ll be a licensed skydiver!

Well, I bummed around the house for an hour or two, and then finally decided to head over to Tecumseh for a few dives. I got there just in time for a caravan load going up, so I started to get my stuff together and be ready. I ended up using a Falcon 215 sq ft parachute, my smallest to date.

The winds were really high at altitude, about 35 mph, and I could almost fell the ‘drift’. For most of the jump I just stayed in a neutral freefall position and tried to measure my drift across the ground… while up there i think i did one front flip and a few 360′s. Only other difference was the handle to deploy my main parachute… instead of the standard orange cylinder, it was a round ‘hackey-sack’ design… no big deal, i just did a few more “handle-touches” in the airplane on the way up to altitude to make sure i had the ‘feel’ for it.

I pulled at 4k and the landing was great, about 15m from target. I think it’s a lot easier for me to land the smaller chutes on target than the larger ones (like the 265 I had to use at Midwest all weekend).

Jump #22

Apparently, once I got to the DZ, that made enough jumpers to fill the caravan for a few more loads, I got on the second load, planning to do another solo, but in line while discussing what everyone on the load was doing, Keith and Karl mentioned they were doing a duo, I asked if I could join is (as they are both AFF Instructors, I could jump with them even though I’m still un-licensed) so I made my first three way.  Some might say my first three-way attempt! But I’ll count it because we did make one point!!!

On the ground we had a few seconds to do a quick dirt dive, we were going to do a “three-way drive-thru”, basically, we make a circle first, then those two would open up there hands and I would ‘drive’ thru the circle, turn on the other side of it and rejoin the circle between them, then each of them would go, then me again. I’m sure ‘experienced’ jumpers could each have four or five rotations doing a simple formation like this.

However, (lol, like you thought this would go well for me on my first time!) Karl was exiting on the rear float position, and I would be diving out right on his chest, and Keith was diving out right beside me, I watched Karl’s count and went with him, that part went really well, I stuck right next to him down the hill then docked once we were stable. I looked up to see where Keith was coming from so we could ‘let him in’ our circle, when I looked up, the wind caught my goggles (my new ones) and pulled them up, the wind instantly teared my eyes and I was probably down to about 40% vision capability. Keith docked in the circle and we had our point! (Yay! my first point!) Those two released their grip on each other and me, for me to drive thru, i drove across the circle but when i turned my 180, i lost a lot of altitude. I spotted them above me, so i de-arched to slow down and rise back up, and rise i did! Right up under Karl slamming into him and pushing him up and out of the circle and he flipped over onto his back before recovering. All this time, my goggles are still on my forehead (letting the wind blind me), so I thought I’d try to pull them down quickly while we waited for Karl to rejoin. When I pulled my hands into my face I front flipped into the partial circle and the whole thing just broke up at about 7000 feet, so I tracked for while (now with my vision re-stored!) and pulled at 4k.

Parachute opening was perfect (my pack job) and landed standing up about 15m from the target again… I would have been spot on the beans; except I flared a bit early and it seemed to give me a little bit of lift that carried me past the beans.

Jump #23

This was a jump I was and wasn’t looking forward to at the same time. My first clear and pull (AKA hop and pop). The idea is that you should be able to exit and immediately deploy your parachute at low altitude, in case you ever need to, such as an airplane emergency. The first one you do (this one) is from 5500 feet, compared to the 13,500 feet I.ve been jumping from, after this one, I have to do another from 3,500 feet!

Also, because it’s a low altitude jump, you do it from a Cessna 182, rather than a caravan (appearantly its more fuel efficient for the smaller plane to go to that altitude). So this was also my first jump from a Cessna.

The idea is, you get to altitude, open the door, climb out onto the landing/wheel assembly while holding the wing strut (so you don’t get blown off!) Then you inch your hands out on the strut to a point where your not over the wheel anymore, and take your feet off the wheel, and just hang there for a few seconds until your body isn’t swinging around anymore.. The wind is strong enough to push your body back at about a 45 degree angle! Once you’re stable… you let go!

The part that had me worried, was I though the strut would be hard to hold onto (clammy hands couldn’t help!) however, once I got out and in position, I paused for a good six or seven seconds just amazed about how oddly natural it felt for me to just be hanging from an airplane wing strut a mile above the ground and just be loving it!

Suddenly the notion of time struck me and I was like “oh yeah, I.m supposed to let go!”

At this point I had one tiny error, my coach had told me before the jump that doing the hanging exit put you in a nearly perfect stable position, except for your arms, and you have to pull them back into the 90 degree ‘goal-post’ position. That part I missed, as I let go of the plane, I kept my arms extended, but also I kept my legs strong in their position too. The result is that when I let go, I stayed in a vertical ‘feet-to-ground’ position, rather than belly-to-ground. But just for a second or two while I lost forward speed and my body leaned forward towards the ground, that.s when I pulled, just as my body went from upright to about 45 degree (about half-way from feet-to-ground to the belly-to-ground position).

The parachute ride was nice… it’s been a long time since i’ve had so much time under canopy… as i’ve progressed from my first jump (wave and pull above 5500) to my last few jumps (wave and pull at 3,500) i’ve gained about 10 seconds freefall, but lost about a minute and a half canopy time.. It was a nice and relaxing (and slow) drift back to the ground.

And now I.ve VERY close to being licensed; only two more jumps! One more clear and pull (from 3500, only about 2/3′rds of a mile high!), and then will be my Class A check ride… AND THAT.S IT!!!

Next weekend, or perhaps the next one for sure… we’ll see!

So what a day it’s been for Labor Day…

My first…
…perfect opening on my own pack job!
…three-way.
…point in a formation!
…jump from a Cessna.
…hop and pop!
AND, no one made me by beer! I love it.