MY AFF LEVEL VII JUMP
On Sunday, August 27th, we were hoping to do our AFF VII jump. After you graduate AFF, you are required to do a low solo jump from around 3500 ft. That scares some AFF students (me included!) because we are so used to jumping from high altitudes and we are used to being under canopy already by then. So the thought of JUST jumping out then can be a tad intimidating!
On the Friday before, I woke up after a terrible night's sleep. I had had all these mixed up skydiving dreams all night and I felt really tense about Sunday. I got really anxious about it all and thought if I'm THIS nervous 2 days before, what am I ever going to be like by Sunday?? I wrote to a few of my online skydiving buddies and that seemed to help. One told me to take things at my own pace and not hurry through this and another told me skydiving was all about self-confidence not bravery.
I thought about some of the things they told me and talked it all over with Boomer. I knew he REALLY wanted to do both jumps that same day. I told him I felt ready to do VII but thinking about that hop'n'pop was just making me crazy, so I told him I wasn't planning on doing it that day. I was just planning on doing VII and getting through that (gee... put that way you'd think I was going through torture instead of having fun!) and then, and only then, if the opportunity presented itself and I felt ready, I would do the hop & pop. If I didn't want to do it then he could decide if he wanted to do his anyway or he could decide to be nice (hehe) and wait until the next week with me!
Saturday night we went up to the lake and practiced diving from the floating dock as if we were diving out of the plane. We were lucky in that the steps up had poles above them that were about the same width as the King Air door. It had been hot all day but now the sun was going down and it was getting cold. And the water was freezing. And I'm not a real water person. I can happily go to the lake in the summer and never even get my feet wet unless it's really hot out. I'm more of a sun person. I can barely even dive normally. I'm a wimp and even try to hold my nose while jumping in if no one is looking. So to go out there and practice diving and almost killing myself and practice doing flips in the water and getting nose fulls just proved how determined I was to get this right. Luckily because it was late and cold I wasn't making a fool of myself in front of too many people! For the rest of the night I tried to think positive and kept saying, "I can do this! I KNOW I can. And it's going to be fun!"
Well it must have worked because Sunday morning when I woke up I felt great!! Just excited... not sick at all. I kept being afraid that good feeling would go away but it didn't! I was fine on the whole ride out. It was a nice day.... blues skies, just a touch of fog which was already burning off. The parking lot was mobbed again already even though it was just shortly after 8:00 AM. But a load was already coming down and someone told us it was already the second one. We hurried in to put our names on the board. There were already 7 or 8 names ahead of us. We crossed our fingers that the weather would hold (there were predictions of afternoon thunderstorms or showers) and that the loads would keep going up quickly.
We went outside and settled in talking to some of the others that we were getting to know. We knew it would be a while. Alan was back again hoping to get to do his level III. He was ahead of us on the board this time. He had left last week when it was looking too dismal to jump because of the winds. We told him how we had stuck around and finally gotten to jump.... partly in thanks to him for the idea of more advanced students going first because of the wind. I didn't feel like we had been waiting long at all when Gary walked out and asked Boomer and I, "Who's first?" I yelled out, "Me!" and he said to follow him. (I guess there had been 2 spots open on a load and he figured he could get one of us up... the other AFF's were all level I or III and needed 2 JMs)
Gary asked me if someone had already gone over the dive with me. I said, "Yes." and he asked me to tell him about it. I told him solo dive exit, check alt., front loop, check alt., 360 rt., check alt., 360 lt., check alt., back loop, check alt. If above 6,000 can do some tracking. He said that sounded good to him. He said he wasn't concerned with exact sequence. He said it was a fun dive. I already knew most of it. Now I just had to put it all together and most of all... show I was ALTITUDE AWARE! That would be the number 1 thing that could fail me.
I asked him to go over the dive exit and front loop. Sometimes different instructors tell you things a little different and I like getting all points of view. I had read to have your arms out to the side on the front loop but Gary said to bring them in and use them to help bend over to go into the flip. He said as in the back loop that you didn't have to do it perfectly... it was just another way to show you can get stable from an unstable position. I told him I had a lot of practice on that on my last jump! lol He went over the dive exit and said just go out strong, arms out in front, feet up to prevent from being flipped over from the prop wash. And he said, "If you flip... no biggie... just get stable." Gary has such a super relaxed manner and really portrays that he thinks you'll do just great that you end up believing him.
He was on the next load and they would be doing a back-to-back and we were on the second load so I would have to go get ready and be waiting for him. He asked if I could do that and I said, "Sure." He said he'd have Tom, another JM, come check me out when I was all geared up. He picked out a rig for me and checked it out and off he went. I put it on and got all buckled in.... triple checking that chest strap. Tom came by and introduced himself and checked me out and went over some stuff and then I went outside to wait. I was happy to find our friend S/L John was on this load. (We call him that because there are a couple Johns and he had recently graduated from S/L).
Before I knew it, the King Air was back down and we were ready to load it. Gary gave me another once over and off we went. I again got my favorite seat and John was right next to me so that was cool. It was the first time I had a "friend" on a load. There were 3 tandems all with video, John and then us. I would follow John, who would be first. Gary was spotting. He pointed out a few landmarks to me. Because of the King Air (and it's a FAST King Air) we don't get to really spot on these jumps. We would be spotting on our hop & pop's and they stressed they really wanted us making some more Cessna jumps after that when we were on our own and get some good practice in spotting.
Soon he gave John the go ahead and off John went. After he made sure enough time had gone by Gary gave me the nod to go. (Geez! My hands are sweating just typing this the memory is coming back so strong!) I got in the door, looked out and started to get a little panicky thinking, "What the fuck am I doing?" I then just kind of threw myself out before I could get any more doubts figuring if I went unstable... so be it... I'd just fix it after. And that's just what happened. I didn't tuck my legs up enough and got tipped right over. I tumbled a bit but no where near as bad as last time. I got stable and checked my altitude. I then tried a front loop. I went over but got stuck on my back. I kind of turned towards one side and arched and went back over BTE. I checked altitude and then attempted my turns. At first it wasn't going well and then I saw Gary fly around and give me a thumb's down signal. Ahhhh Arch!! I used to be good at arching! What's happening to me?? I arched and it immediately felt much better and my turns went much better. I'm not sure I did 360's but I did start and stop when I planned. I checked my altitude and it was a little above 6500. I was trying to decide if I should attempt the back loop and by the time I looked up at Gary it was almost 6000 and he shook his head no so I just hung out until 4500.
Since I had quite a bit of time I got to really look at the ground. We were pretty much right over the DZ and it seemed to be SCREAMING towards me!! It was the first time I really got a sensation of just how damn fast I was going! It was a little intimidating! (But kind of exciting, too! lol)
At 4500 I did a big double wave off and pulled. My canopy opened fine and I had a nice ride down. At first I was a little disoriented looking at the landing area. I was coming in from a different angle than I ever had before. It threw me off a bit. It took me a few seconds to make out which side was which of the triangle. And Boomer was wrong. From up here there are buildings on 2 sides of the triangle. I finally got myself correctly orientated and heard Dan ask me on the radio to flare now if I was going to be flaring myself. I wanted to, so I flared. Since I was right over the landing area already and there wasn't much wind it was easy to know what to do. The only thing was there were a lot of other canopies in the air. I was lucky that they were all landing in the other landing area and none were too near me but the thought of having to deal with them soon made me feel uneasy and unprepared for it. I know I need to learn to be more aware in free fall and under canopy of others around me!!
I just flew around in the parameters of the bowl until I got down below 1000 ft and then started planning my landing. Dan gave me a few tips but mostly let me try to do it myself. I judged it a little long on final. I think the heavy winds from the week before were still stuck in my head and I was remembering not making it into the bowl. This time I was going to land in the bowl just fine except I would be a ways into it and I'd have that walk back to the truck. I took that as a positive sign that I was thinking that way..... not wanting to just land in the bowl but land in the bowl close to the truck!! (which is also where the X is that I'm going to have to start trying for) I was just thinking about flaring and starting to when I heard Dan say, "Flare!" so I flared fast and ended up being early. The canopy stopped then kind of dropped me the last few feet. I landed a little hard and got a bit of sand in my face but I was fine.
Little Jay came running over and Dan was still talking to us on the radio and started telling Jay to do something and he clicked off my radio! lol That kid is so funny. He is always cracking me up. (Hmmm he's 10, my daughter is 9.....) I started my daisy chaining and he tightened it up and got it off to a better start for me. Boomer came over and asked me how it went and I told him I thought I had done OK. We headed back and Dan gave me some more helpful tidbits on canopy control but said I hadn't done too badly. We hopped on the truck and headed back.
When we got back everyone was coming over and asking how I did. I thought I had passed but I wasn't sure. Gary was out with his 4 way group dirt diving and I didn't want to bother him. He soon came over though and asked me what I thought. I told him I thought I had done well and he shook my hands and said, "Congratulations!" I was psyched!!!!! He had me get my logbook and we went thru the debrief and he pretty much agreed with me about everything. He said I just had to work on getting a really good arch. He said I had been a bit flat and I knew that. I had felt such a huge difference in stability after responding to his thumbs down signal. I think I've been a little more tense on the last few dives being completely on my own and it is showing up in my arch. But I think after this when I don't have to do specific maneuvers that I can just concentrate on relaxing and arching, that the good feeling I had before will come back. He said I had great altitude awareness. This is what he wrote: "Tumble exit (that's getting to be a reoccurring theme!), stable, front loop OK, turns - slightly flat arch but otherwise nice skydive, alt aware, wave off 4500, nice pull, onto level VIII"
After that I was standing in front of manifest talking to some others who were congratulating me.... (oh ya... and they had announced over the speakers about my graduating AFF and everyone cheered and welcomed me and it was so cool! I felt official somehow now! Oh and Don from manifest called me in and asked if I wanted to become a member and I signed up for that, too!) and I mentioned how I was really nervous about doing the low solo. This girl, Leslie, who had recently graduated AFF (did some up here and some in FL) said I didn't have to do it next.... that she hadn't done hers yet. I was starting to feel better when we saw Gary and I asked him what was next and he said the low solo. Then he said Bob was taking up a S/L student and I could probably go do it right now. Leslie said she would do it with me. I really felt I wasn't ready. Everyone was encouraging me to just go get it over with but I was just still too jazzed up from my first jump and couldn't think straight yet and needed time to go over it all in my head and to practice the exit, so I turned it down. I figured I could go up with Boomer later after his jump.
I did go over with Bob to the Cessna while he briefed the others on it and went over spotting. We would each be responsible for our own spots this time. Bob went over how we had to really get our heads out the door and look straight down. He said NOT to use the edge of the plane like some people say because unless the plane is absolutely straight and not going up or down that it would throw us off. We were to give the pilot corrections if we thought we should be more to the left or right. Then when we thought it was the right spot we would tell him to cut and climb out. We could either do a poised exit off the step or a hanging exit. While Bob took them up I went over to the mock up and practiced my exits since it had been a while since I had been in a Cessna. I got my climbout down and then exit but then after arching I would kind of go blank and then think... oh, yeah... I gotta pull! I was just not used to thinking about pulling so soon!
Finally they called Boomer to go get ready. He was going to be having Tom for a JM. Tom was on the load before also so he brought Boomer in and got all his stuff together and went over the dive with him. I went back outside and out of nowhere all these clouds... ummm industrial haze... started moving in. Boomer... the cloud magnet! Alan was on the next load and I wished him well. That load took off and I went inside to check on Boomer to see how he was making out.... had to double check his straps etc... ya know? I didn't tell him about the clouds. We went back out and I talked to a girl about to do her level 1. The jumpers on the previous load had gotten out and had a bad spot. Some of them were landing off. I found out later that one of them was Alan and he landed in a small field behind a motel. I was very impressed. He wasn't nervous at all and landed just fine. He had just followed one of his JM's there. Anyway they decided to stop all AFF until the sky cleared a bit though. Boomer got permission to go because he was level VII. Tom had landed off, too, so Boomer was going to go with Jay instead. Jay has been great to us. He was always looking out for us and making sure we got on loads. We had gotten to feel like he was our own personal JM and Boomer was happy to be having him. Not that he didn't want Tom.... just that we were so used to Jay and really liked him. They headed out to the plane as it came in but the pilot shut it off and said the clouds were just moving in too quickly and we'd have to wait and see if they moved through. (Boomer... aka Cloud Magnet)
Not too long after that the clouds started breaking up and some big holes appeared. They decided to try again. Boomer got geared up again and off he went. I headed out to the bowl with Dan to watch him land. The plane had to circle around a bit to find a good hole. Then most of the jumpers got out but Jay had the pilot circle around again before Boomer and he got out. It worked great.... missed all the clouds. Boomer had been a lot more positive about this diving exit than I had but he ended up tumbling, too. I guess he kind of over rotated on the way out and went over on his side. He tumbled around a bit but finally got stable. He did his front loop. I guess it was OK but not great.... no where near as nice as his back loops last week! He did his turns, did his back loop then remembered to wave off and had a great pull. He said it was the most stable he has been on pull yet so he was happy! Under canopy he did great again. On landing he flared a little early and you could see him come to a dead stop 3-4 feet off the ground. Then we saw him let the toggles back up and flare again. There was a bunch of us in the back of the truck watching and we all went, "Oh, no!" But surprisingly he pulled it off! He ended up with a nice stand up landing!! He was pretty sure he passed and he did. This is what Jay wrote in his book: "Dive out exit, tumbled - then stable- F/L, Rt 360, left 360, B/L - wave, pull, cleared to VIII Off Status."
Jay took us both aside and gave us the official off student status talk... mostly about how we were totally responsible for ourselves now. He told us all that was expected of us. Gave us suggestions on some kinds of jumps we should be doing and things to be working on. He suggested that for quite a while we should only be doing 2-ways and then only with an instructor or coach. That we shouldn't be talked into anything we were uncomfortable with or thought was above our abilities. He gave a lot of good sound advice that I agreed with. He also said never be afraid to speak up and ask them any questions we had. Then he brought us over to the Cessna and went over spotting and the solo jump as Boomer hadn't been there when Bob did it.
I went to go call our kids to see how they were doing and find out if I thought we could hang around and do our hop & pop. While I was doing that I missed Boomer's announcement! The kids were fine so we decided to go for it. We went out and practiced the climbout and exit a bunch more times and I felt ready for it now. we put our names up on the board but had to wait for 2 loads of S/L students and for the plane to drop off a couple of jumpers for a demo. Finally it was time for us to go get geared up.
We went in and picked out rigs. Boomer was going to be jumping a manta for the first time because the big boy rig had just gone out with a S/L and we would have had to wait for it to be packed and we were losing daylight fast so they talked about it and decided he was ready to try the manta. Usually the JMs had already gotten our gear out for us and done a check on it. But now we were on our own. I put mine up on the counter and tried to remember everything they had told me to look for in a gear check. I wasn't that nervous like I thought I'd be. Before I didn't even like to rip open any velcro for fear of screwing something up. But now that I had a little more clue as to how everything worked I was kind of looking forward to checking everything and being responsible for me. It was a good feeling.
First I checked the front. I checked the RSL. We were suppose to look for yellow, metal, blue on these student rigs. I checked both sides. Looked good. I then checked the 3 rings on each side. Then I checked the 3 handles... rip cord, cutaway and reserve. I turned it around and opened the top velcro. I checked the RSL strap and made sure it went thru the ring. Slid the wire cord to the reserve back and forth a bit to make sure it slid easily. Checked the pin, made sure the loop wasn't frayed, and checked the seal. All looked good to me. I then checked the main. Everything looked good there, too. Then I checked the leg straps to make sure they were hanging even.(Now don't go by me here that I did it correctly. I didn't run it by my instructor yet. I plan to go over it very carefully next week and make sure I'm not missing anything.) I had 2 very knowledgeable people check my gear after it was on me plus I asked Jeff to give it a quick check before I got on the plane and he said, "No, I won't give it a quick check I'll give it a good thorough check."
I was a little nervous about going up in the same plane as Boomer.... have always had this thing about the plane crashing and our kids being orphans but this was the anniversary of our daughter's death 14 years before and I really felt her presence with us and just had this cool feeling that she was looking out for us. We decided I'd go first so I got to sit right at the door in the JM position so I could spot when the time came. It was kind of fun being in the small plane and being able to see out so well. Since we were only going to 4000 it felt like it took no time at all to get up there. We turned onto jump run and Jeff threw open the door. I stuck my head out and tried to see exactly what we were above. It wasn't scary in the Cessna but it seems like it might be in the King Air. At one point I thought we should be going to the left a bit more but Jeff shook his head. Later he told me when there is so little wind and you are basically over the landing area like that that it is OK. When we were approaching the runway over which I was suppose to exit the plane I nodded to Jeff and he nodded back.
I got really scared for a minute and almost let panic overtake me but I squashed it down (especially after remembering a certain person's comments from the rec.skydiving NG about me doing this dive!) and climbed out. It felt really weird being on the Cessna again. So strange and different... but much less windy. I got all set on the step and looked at Jeff and he nodded and I step off to the right and tried to arch. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I've never been so scared. I very quickly looked, reached and pulled for all it was worth!! I could feel myself just starting to tip sideways and go slightly unstable when I got the pull. My chute opened fine and it was all such an incredible experience. The adrenaline was madly surging through my body. I never felt so high! Man, what a rush. It was exhilarating! I loved it!! I really think I'm turning into an adrenaline junkie!! I was so psyched!
I heard Dan on my radio saying, "I'm here but I'm not here." I laughed. I had wanted a radio just in case and gave Boomer one too even though he didn't want one. Then I felt bad when I heard some of the guys giving him shit for it. I told him to go and put his back if he wanted. I knew he was just being nice so I wouldn't feel bad wearing one when he didn't have one. I give this guy a LOT of credit. Not many people could have put up with me through this whole course. I knew I had wild mood swings and drove him crazy with little details and with how neurotic I am about things and he's been so great supporting me the whole way. He put up with a lot of shit and I can't thank him enough. Anyway, it had been too late for him to run his radio back so he still had his on, too. Which was a good thing because (I hate to say it) I had forgotten all about him! I heard Dan talk to him and looked up and saw him above me. I figured he would come down a lot faster than me so I decided I should do some spirally (well for me and my manta) turns and get down a little quicker.
I felt really confident about landing since the conditions were the same as this morning. (Oh... btw... ALL the clouds had disappeared and it was beautiful out again. Weird... only clouds of the day were right when Boomer was jumping before!) Dan gave me a little advice when I was down low but I think I could have managed alone. It might not have been as good an approach but I felt I was really ready to do this alone. I came in a lot better than my earlier jump and landed the closest to the target yet.... and it was a stand up landing!!!!!!! I think I flared perfectly! It was so cool! I was so damn excited that I started jumping a bit as the canopy came down and it ended up landing right on top of me! I dug myself out of lines and canopy finally and when I did I saw Boomer was already down. Dan said he wanted to catch the last King Air load and asked us just to gather everything up quick. I grabbed my stuff and hurried over to Boomer expecting to see him happy like me!
He wasn't. He had that awful shaken up look on again! Oh, no! I guess he did good spotting and climbing out but after he let go he kind of panicked and went in for the pull too quickly and had turned on his side and had a bit of a messy opening with risers and lines whipping by him. Then he thought there was a huge difference in how the manta flew. On landing he felt he was coming in really fast and he flared too early and it dropped him down hard and he hurt one of his knees. I felt bad for him but I was still so pumped over my jump. We went and jumped on the back of the truck and headed back.
We put away all our stuff while everyone was hurrying to get on the sunset load. They were planning on doing an 8 way and a 6 way. We went and paid for our jumps and signed Boomer up as a member, too. At least jumps would start being quite a bit cheaper now and maybe we could start saving for some gear. People had been asking us if we were going to hang around and have a drink after but we were worried about our kids. Our daughter had called and asked if she could go over a friend's house and we said OK and when we tried calling our house no one answered so the boys must have taken off with their friends. It was now getting late and they still weren't home and our daughter wouldn't be able to be dropped off by her friend's family because no one was home to be there with her. But we had to stay and get Jeff to sign our log books. We went out to watch the last load come down. I love when they are doing formations and you can see them. I especially love break off and when they track away. Shortly after they landed this other airplane buzzed us and it was so cool!
Everyone was in a great mood and they started breaking out beer (and yes, we had already both brought ours in!). We were waiting for Jeff and everyone was coming around and welcoming us and congratulating us and were being so nice. We found Jeff and he wrote in our books. In mine he wrote: "OK spotting. Good climbout. A bit unstable but good pull. Work on being stable right off the plane." I had already written in FIRST STAND UP LANDING! YAHOO!! Boomer had already written in his: Poor exit. Got pull. Jeff added: "A bit tangled in canopy as it opened. Good spotting by the way."
People were trying to talk us into staying a bit and Boomer kept saying, "Just one?" lol I was worried about the kids but dying to stay. Just then Doris, who had done my AFF I video, came over and started talking to us. All of a sudden this cold, wet, foamy stuff was all over my face!!! I was shocked as hell!! I cleaned off my eyes a bit and I saw Boomer covered in pie!! I started laughing my ass off! So was everyone else! They said we were too easy! I said I had heard of pieing at 100 jumps etc but not after graduating. They go... well we keep that one real quiet so we can surprise you! I grabbed Jeff's shirt and wiped some of the pie until he got away from me. When Boomer asked again, "Just 1?" How could I say no??
When we left a little while later I was so damn happy. It had been such a great day. I am so looking forward to coming back next weekend and jumping again. I know I'll be nervous on my first jump alone but I'm really excited about it. I love my DZ and love all the people there. They have been so great and friendly and helpful and welcoming. I'm so glad I decided to do AFF here. We ran into shitty luck with the weather and the only on Sundays thing didn't help but it was all worth it!!
