First sky dive

Wahee !

today was the first static line jump, which went a bit hairy.

Basically you are trained to expect a few twists in the lines, but mine came out with about 10 of them so when

my chute deployed it was basically just a big ball behind me, ar$e.

but the training kicked in. I stuck with it trying to get the twists out. They weren't coming out at first so I though I might

have to go into reserve drill (i.e. jettison main parachute and pull the reserve), but then they started coming out so

I stuck with it.

Once they all came out, it was a clear ride down to the DZ. excellent fun.

Then we continued with the AFF training and before I knew where I was, I was in my jump suit, climbing on the plane to

be taken up to 11000 feet for my first freefall !!

that went excellent. nice clean exit, stable posiition, nice ride down to 5500 feet at terminal velocity of around 200km/hour, and then

pulled the chute. You get quite a jolt as it pulls you up compared to the static line (and also my static didn't really come out, so...).

Then a nice long ride back down to earth and a light landing on my feet.

The freefall bit is really good. You get a really good ground rush from about 7000 feet as the ground speeds towards you are 140mph.

The chutes are really stable so you can really hammer some turns into them (more than you can on the paraglider), and do some spins.

landing is also a piece of piss compared to paramotoring.

So, looking forward to jump 3. Weather is a bit iffy for tomorrow, so we'll just have to wait and see what it's like.

Certainly the freefall is a walk in the park compared to paramotoring. I'm gonna treat the sky diving days as low stress days to relax between the high stress paramotor days I reckon.

here's a pic of my ball-like chute on my static, and of the end of my freefall just after I pulled the canopy.

stu