Some find winter hobbies: skiing, ice skating, or snowboarding. Some travel: mostly to boogies all over the south and out west – though this past winter many jumpers I know jumped the ocean and landed in Puerto Rico! (lucky bastards) But mostly, we just sit around, look at the sky, and pout.

So when does it end? Well, when the new season begins of course! But when is that, exactly? Is it the big get together all the skydivers had in the winter where you discussed some of the changes coming this year? nope. Was it a couple weeks ago at Safety Day when we all got together and figured out how to keep our asses alive this year? nope. Is it the “opening day” date on the website? nope. So when, when do you ask? When is the moment that new season begins? Well here is a clue.. First you hear someone yell “DOOR”, then a few seconds later…

A little green light comes on. Your trusty S&TA checks the spot and you look outside of that open airplane door for the first time in months, only slightly scared (not that you would admit it), and you remind yourself that you’ve done this hundreds of times before. Your friends climb out, you know they’re waiting on you to start the count, so you take a diving stance, look up at them, smile and nod.

The 2010 season is here!

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!

As soon as I got to the DZ I could tell the day was a little more hectic than most, Franz was running manifest himself, and it seemed the phone was ringing off the hook.  Rather than bug him to see the next load I could jump on, I just hung out for a moment, next up to the counter was a student looking for coach, good timing. We were quickly manifested and starting some ground training for his jump. Kent had a good jump and was able to get an adjusted fall rate & dock and a swoop and dock checked off his A card.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEsQJuQCEV0

After that, Dale was putting together a small way with some of the newer jumpers around this year, I of course, was glad to jump into the mix!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Z_ffcRcYw

The sad part about days like these?  For me, I know they’re numbered.. my boys will be back to school in a few weeks, and I’ll be back to a weekend jumper :(

Starting back two weeks ago I had a great day jumping at Tecumseh – as I’ve been jumping out of town a lot lately, I really appreiciate the days that I get to jump back at home.  On a Wednesday, the weather was great, and the Otter was flying!  As soon as I drove into the dropzone I saw people gearing up so I rushed out of the car to see what the call was.. 5 minutes!  Sure, I could make that ;)

I jumped with Rob, whom although still on student status was just knocking off the last few jumps to 25, he already had his A license card filled out, so we just went up and did a simple dive, sidedock, round, sidedock, round..  he is still working on staying in control of his levels, but the jump went well with four points.

As soon as I got down on the ground Manifest pointed Ben, a fresh AFF grad student my way.  After going over his log book we decided we would be doing a Category G dive.  We had to wait for the gear he needed to be avaible, so while he waited, I jumped the next load to go up with Dale, Jon, and a few less experienced jumpers.  It was a fun jump – one that pointed out that the amount of fun has nothing to do with the number of points.

Once back on the ground, I went through the ground prep with my student Ben and we got geared up for the next load. He did really well, completing both docks requiring an adjustment in fallrate, as well as one swoop and dock.  Then at the bottom end of the dive, signaled breakoff right on queue and turned his 180 and had a great track away.

After landing I thought that would be the last jump of the day, but Dale was trying to get one last load up before sunset.  It was about time I finally figured out what was going on with my camera, it had some how filled itself with just the canopy flight (not the freefall!) from the first jump, nothing else had been recorded!  Anyway, with the days video’s lost I thought I would test out the picture mode on the GoPro for the last jump, we ended up doing a sunset six-way full of experienced jumpers – 4 points :)

A great way to end the day.

The first jump was with Larry and Glenn, a classic three way Larry special skydive -- a circle into an open accordion, then breaking the grips, and rotating the pieces.. over and over.. :)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kYqtAo9UK4

On the previous jump Neil was on the plane doing his last student status skydive to jump his first pack job.. upon landing he earned his A license and was able to jump with us for his first licensed jump, his first jump with non-instructional staff, and his first four way… (haha, can we say BEER!) This was the first time I’d seen him jump and was really impressed with both of his docks. Also, watch his exit at about 12 seconds into the video, he had his legs out a bit too much which was causing him to roll forward and loose stability, but with some quick thinking on his part he grabbed his knees and tucked into a front flip and then came out of it right back into a dive.. very nice Neil -- but next time keep your feet on your ass when diving! ;)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aimUDjIRFpQ

Not sure what happened to Glenn and Neil after the last dive, but it was down to me and Larry for the last dive of the night, we tried the same dive plan that me and Jon scored 29 points on a few weeks ago, and it went off well, not quite as many points, but still a great dive. The video cut out just before we got the 12th point, but as i recall we finished that cycle right before the end of the dive, would have been 15 points.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5eazjDaXnE

With that dive done, it’s put me at 275 skydives so far, so I’m starting to put some thought into where and what I want to do for my 300th skydive.. any ideas? Also, yes I’m aware there is an awful whistling sound in some of the video’s this week. The locking mechanism of my GoPro camera got a small crack in and I’m waiting for the company to send out a replacement part. Until I receive the part to fix it, when the wind catches it right… well, you can hear what happends.. :(

The month started with jump number 229 on the 3rd, a pseudo coaching dive with a Christian, a jumper back from a 7 year layoff.  He’d already done a recent recurrency jump with an Instructor at another dropzone and then another with an Instructor at Skydive Tecumseh.  But on this jump we were still working on some basic fall rate and docking skills.  This jump definetly cemented my decision to enroll in the coach course later in the month.  Later that night we did a 13-way dive that had experience levels from 43 jumps to 12,142 – I remember there was a plan, but the video just shows a big ball of shit!

The 4th of July was very special – a six point nine way, a five point nine way, a four point eight way, and one of my best sunset tracking dives!  Thats my camera on the leader and it’s me docking on the left.  Most importantly, we did night jumps on the fourth, and no matter how much I try, I can not explain how patriotic I felt watching hundreds of fireworks and dozens of grand finallies covering the ground beneath me.  I got video of my solo night jump, but you can’t really see much – hey, it was night time!  But I forgot to turn on the camera for the following four way group jump on the next load!  That Sunday continued the many more bigways, up to a fourteen way skydive!

USPA Coach Rating card

Jump number 250 was my first jump flying outside camera for a four-way (they got three points).  Being a part of Brian’s 1200th, Margret’s 1200th, and Mike’s 1800th skydive was very rewarding, and was a very well done skydive!  On July 16th & 17th I was able to enroll in a Coach Course by Bram Clement at SkydiveRatings.com and got my Coach Rating card in the mail a few days later!

The next day brought my first experience as a Coach – telling my student they were grounded due to weather – even while everyone else was still jumping :(  But she took it well and I was able to do my first Coaching jumps the next day on the 19th.

The jumps got lean towards the end of the month, but the quality surely improved.  There was a 29 point two way with me and jon;  and finally ending the month with Greg back in the air and a five way missing man dancing spider!

All in all a great month… Night Jumps, Big ways, Coach Rating course, my first (and so far only) student, first outside camera jump, and a lot of quality fun jumps in between for a total of 38 skydives!

The first jump was a five way, first point to be a round, then open accordian, then break the two pairs of the ends, rotate them 180, then bring it back into the round.  After getting a four way together our fifth man was just too low to get back up to us, so I keyed the point to move into the open accordian, that went well, but Greg on my left had to clue what to do when I keyed them to do the rotations as he was flying solo on that side!  As you’ll notice, there is no exit in the video, as I’d somehow forgotten to turn on the camera before exit, but realized as I came down the hill and just waited for a good opportunity to turn it on!

The second jump was a bit better, Ian had come into the dropzone saying he needed a real fun jump, so he gathered us all together and decided on a “dancing spider”.  This is a great jump for a five way, one I’ll have to remember and try again.  There is a single man in the base, with each of the other four jumpers taking a single handed grip (an open accordian off the front, and a wedge off the back).  With each key, the jumper off the base’s right leg becomes the next base and everyone else rotating clockwise into the next slot.  There is a lot of flying for everyone!  We lost a man after the first point, so the four us tried to finish in “missing man” style, holding the empty slot for him on each rotation, not the easiest thing to do with this dive.

Without further ado, here are the video’s, hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed the jumps!

Had to wait two weeks for this one, then on Friday the day before I was going up, Mike at NSC calls me and tells me they won’t be flying for the weekend… Thought about letting it drop at that… but could bare to make myself wait another week. So I started looking for another DZ in the area that was open… I found my way to Tecumseh Skydiving… decent place… busy for sure. I got my jump in, but it took awhile though, it seemed like I had to wait in line behind any tandem jumper that walked in. Stayed the night out there, but Sunday morning the winds were to high for me to jump (as a student I can’t jump in anything past 15 mph) so had to go home with only one jump in for the weekend… better luck next time I guess.

Was nice to use some different equipment though, I used a 235 sq ft main chute this time, rather than the 288 sq ft I had been using, also the deployment method of the rig was different, BOC vs. the rip cord. I do have to say I preferred the equipment at Tecumseh…

I think after a day of waiting around for them to find instructors for me kind of blew my nerves. The jump wasn’t so great, I kept “potato chipping”, rocking front to back, so they could never let me go, I’ll have to repeat this jump again :(

Other than that… I’ll just say that there is a difference between DZ’s and there is a difference between different teams of instructors… and next weekend, I.ll find my way back to NSC.