Friday Write-up

Well, I think a good place to start would be my week so far.

Lets start out on how I got my new rig :-) Well, I originally wanted to buy an audible altimeter so I could begin my free fly training. After I got one from Michael, he mentioned to me that he has a nice Vortex 2 rig, reserve and main for sale. This obviously striked up some interest and got my brain ticking, after chatting to my dad about weather he thought it would be good idea, chatting to Steve, my Safety Officer and advise guru, I decided to buy it, yes - it was an unexpected expense and not budgeted for, but I made a plan. Later in the week Michael emailed me to let me know that he has a 4 year old Vigil for sale with only 26 jumps to it's name - At half the new price, I had to have it (Naturally)!

So, now that I had sort of committed myself to a large amount of cash, it was time to get everything in order. This began with first researching all of the products I was about to buy! There's a wealth of information on the net if have the right facts about what you're buying. I read article after article on everything from Vigil's occasional fires for no reason to the fabric design of the Hornet 150 main canopy I was about to buy. The fabric spec lead me to then start reading up on flying canopies made from ZP (Zero porosity) verses F-111. Shew canopy design and manufacturing is a hugely complicated process with a lot of research involved, makes me feel better considering it is the only thing stopping you from plummeting at 250Km/h into the hard earth below!

Unfortunately, because I'm still an intermediate jumper (only 43 jumps so far), I cannot jump anything with a wing loading of more than 1.0 : 1.0. For those of you who aren't aware of wing loading, basically, it's your exit weight in pounds (your weight + the weight of all of your gear), divided by the size of your canopy in square feet.

IE: My exit weight is roughly 77kg's (170lbs).

Unfortunately, my wing loading on a 150 sq ft canopy is 1.1 :-( this means that until I'm a bit more experienced, I have to jump a 170 canopy which will not fit in my rig.

This posed a bit of a problem: Do I spend all this money to have a rig that sits in my cupboard for a few months? Also - I'm currently jumping a 185 sq ft canopy so it wouldn't be a good idea to downsize from 185 to a 150.

Thankfully, Michael had the answer: He is going to give me a loan rig with a 170 canopy in it to use until I can jump my 150, this solves all my problems as 77kg's is just shy of 170lbs, meaning that my wing loading on a 170 sq ft canopy is 1:1:-)

So, now that all the research was done and plans were made, I got confirmation from Steve to down size to a 170 (provided I have an advanced canopy briefing before my first jump on it). Arranged with the banks to allow me to transfer that amount of cash in one shot and bought my reg :-) WooHOOO!!!

Last night I met up with Michael (my free fly coach who is also selling me the gear), we attached and packed my brand new reserve into the container, attached my canopy to the rig, repacked the reserve and installed the Vigil into my loan 170.

My rig is now completely assembled (besides having to change the risers and install my Vigil before I jump it).

Today I have decided to take half the day off from work, go down to the DZ to get the risers attached to my loan rig and pack the main, all ready and prepared for tomorrow. Then I'll have my advanced canopy briefing tomorrow morning with Steve and hopefully be in the sky bright and early.

I have a bachelors party tomorrow afternoon, so I will have to cut my jumps short, but my plan of action is:

Practise my free flying and open a bit higher than normal to get a feel for the smaller canopy, I've also read a lot of good tips on flying your canopy better so I'm going to be trying a few of those tomorrow as well. Depending on how out of hand the bachelors gets, I might be back at the DZ on Sunday for some more jumping :-)

So, After wanting to buy an audible altimeter, I've ended up with a complete rig, a loan rig and of course, my audible :-) Now I want a camera and camera helmet :-)

Here's to the weekend!

Blue skies everyone and happy days!