2009-03-14 Jumps 20 & 21, packing class

I left the house early today because I wanted to get to Skydive San Diego as early as possible. I planned on doing at least four or five jumps. On the drive south, I remembered that it was the last day to take advantage of a airline mileage promotion for dining, so I stopped in at the Clair De Lune coffee shop in North Park and purchased a bunch of coffee to share with the instructors at SDSD.

I felt really good when I walked into Skydive San Diego with the coffee, and a few people were excited by the prospects of caffeine. I spoke with Vanessa about how to get the various items on my A License card signed off, as well as improving my landing accuracy. After our brief conversation, with several items signed off, I paid for some jumps and a day rental on the rig. I grabbed a 230 square foot rig and went to manifest and got myself on the next load. I had all of 5 minutes!

I ran over a gear check, got a jumpsuit, grabbed my helmet and gloves and put my altimiter on while running to the plane. Of course, there were several tandems that were late getting out to the runway, so, once I got out there, I had to wait. While waiting to get on the plane, I had the opportunity to talk with several other guys, one of whom is working on his A License too. We got ourselves organized into jump order. I positioned myself to be the third out the door, after two groups of two jumpers.

Jump 20
I watched as the previous two jumpers moved out of the way and then I dived into the flow of air just like I planned, except it didn't go exactly as I had planned. It seemed that as soon as I was out of the plane, I couldn't feel the air flow, and I didn't push into it with my hands, so I ended up flopping over onto my back. I quickly righted myself, and continued my jump. Once I was stable I did a 720 degree turn using the technique I had learned at the tunnel. It worked incredibly well, but I forgot to do the counter move to stop myself and overshot my target. More practice will be needed on that one.

My real purpose on this jump was to play with my fall rate, so after the 720, I slowed myself down considerably. The graph shows a solid, stable fall rate, so I know I was doing something. Of course, without any reference, like another jumper, it's hard to know how well I actually did.

The canopy was a 230 square foot deal, which puts the wingloading at somewhere over 1.1. I'm finding it to be a lot of fun, and while I'm not in a hurry to drop down to a smaller canopy, I wouldn't mind a bit more responsiveness. I figure I'll stick with the 230 until I feel really comfortable and can land it exactly where I want it and with finesse. My landing on jump 20 was really smooth and almost on target. I had aimed for the more westerly of the small blue tiles laying on the landing field, but I came down just past the first one.

Because of the funky winds, and my lack of experience, I was a bit affraid to go into 1/4 or 1/3 breaks to increase my glide to get me closer to my intended target. Anyway, the landing was smooth and soft. I took the chute to the packing barn and went about socializing and waiting for a repack. Ghoulie was kind enough to get the 230 packed and handed back to me, so I wouldn't have to jump a 260.

Clouds
After I got the chute back, I got myself manifested for load 6. Load 5 was on a 10 minute call, but then the clouds rolled in from the west and the wait was on. Things didn't look good. I sent a text message to my friend Audrienne to tell her to forget about coming for a jump. People were leaving left and right. I was chatting with Rocco and Jake, when Rocco recommended that we take off and do a BBQ. I had a chute packing class starting at 2pm, so I went looking for Tatoo Ron to find out if we could start the class early since no one was jumping. It was just about 1pm, so after a quick survey of class participants, it was decided to start at 1:30.

Packing Class
The packing class started with a quick demonstration of how a chute deploys and was then followed by a demonstration of how to pack the chute. After the packing demo, we were instructed to start packing our own parachute. I opened up my 230 and pulled everything out. Most of the tasks involved in packing are quite easy, so I got busy. But then it came to flaking, and that was a bit confusing because when we watched Ron, we saw it from one perspective, but with my own packing, I was looking from the opposite perspective, and things were a lot more confusing. The worse part was that I was apparently doing everything correctly but wasn't confident in what I was doing.

I ended up packing and unpacking the chute four times before I was absolutely certain I had done everything right. By this point, the sun was shining, and Ron said, "go jump it", so I got myself manifested on the next flight.

Jump 21
On the way out to the plane, one of the other packing class students was walking with me, commenting on how much anxiety he was feeling over jumping his first pack job. I was a bit suprised by how calm I felt inside me about jumping my pack job. I wasn't worried that it wouldn't work, none the less, I did go through the cut-away and reserve deployment procedure in my head several times as well as physically going through the motions.

We organized ourselves into jump order and then borded the plane. On the ride to altitude, I felt a little anxiety, but it was amorphous and not directed at any specific cause. It was just that "I'm going to jump out of an airplane" anxiety that is diminishing with each jump, but is still noticable. I was positioned to be second out the door after a group of four jumpers. I watched them in their fall until they were at the right location and I dove through the door. I ended up with some instability, but decided to just go with the roll and come out of it on the other side. It would have been nicer if I hadn't flipped, but going with the roll worked fine and I got stable really quickly.

I did some more flips and some 360 degree turns and some fall rate drills before finally getting to pull altitude. I pulled and the opening was so smooth that I thought something must be wrong. But it wasn't. The slider came down the lines and the chute was wide open, and the canopy was responsive.

On the canopy ride I went into some rear-riser turns, really whipping myself around. I had a really nice time, and the landing was right on target.

Party Time
Once I got down, I wanted to jump again, so I went about packing my chute. I just about got it into the bag when the last flight took off. Oh well...it was party time. I broke out some Chimay and shared it with Rocco and Jake. On my way out to the car to pick up another bottle of Chimay, I was pleasantly surprised to have Blake smile and wish me a good evening. Rocco invited Jake and I to his house for a BBQ. Another fellow, Brian, was invited and it turns out he's also vegetarian, so the two of us stopped in at Henry's to pick up some stuff for dinner and then headed to San Marcos. After chit-chats, more drinks, a show-and-tell involving very LARGE firearms, and a bag full of green cookie crumbs put on my plate, we settled in for dinner in front of the video screen. Rocco put on "True Romance" and the killing began. After the movie I wondered why I had such a dry mouth.

Looking Forward
While I didn't get as many jumps as I wanted, the day was absolutely perfect. I'm looking forward to the 28th of March when I'll go back to jump, and hopefully pound out my coach jumps and my A License exam and jump before the increase in license cost goes into effect.