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!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Weekend Antics
Wow - What a good weekend!
This weekend, strangely - went roughly to plan :-)
I arrived at the drop zone at about 07:50, ready for my first set of Free Fly training!
When my coach arrived, he handed me my new Alti-2 Galaxy 2 audible altimeter that I had ordered from him the previous weekend. Once I had gone through the different points that make gear "Free Fly friendly", we went on to discuss barrel rolls while you track away, why they are so important during your track away, especially when Free Flying. For those of you who are not aware of the reasoning behind this, it is basically a safety precaution - When there are a number of people in a formation it is important to make sure that you have good separation at pull-time, obviously you DO NOT want to open your chute if there is anyone above you, or too close to you as this can cause serious accidents and fatalities.
With Free flying, this is all the more important because of the much faster falling speeds. The idea is that when the formation breaks and each person tracks away for each other, you would barrel role onto your back for a second or two and ensure that there is no one above you or around you that you may collide with.
So, the barrel role was my first objective - sequence of the jump was to go as follows:
Exit from 12 000ft and go straight into a track (Basically a dive at what I would guess to be a 45 degree angle). After 8 seconds (To ensure that you have enough speed), initiate the barrel role by positioning your hands in a way that would deflect the air in such a way, that it would turn you over onto your back.
Sounds easy hey!? Unfortunately not - I had enough time to try 6 barrel roles on my jump, none of which were successful. Instead of barrel rolling, I found myself doing 360 degree turns, as if I were belly down in a flat fly position. I was not at all happy with the way I executed those barrel roles :-(
After landing, I spoke to a few other people and asked their opinion as to why I went into a flat spin instead of a barrel role - They all very kindly offered their recommendations and gave me examples on how they each do their barrel roles. I got some good tips, but it is going to take a lot of practising.
Although I wasn't happy with the barrel roles, my instructor said "Well, you have plenty of time to work on those" and told me move on to the "Base Position". This is basically the position that you would revert back to if you got unstable during a Free Fly jump, allowing you to transition to any of the other free fly positions, IE: Sit fly, head down etc. The reason we have to revert back to this position, is because of the speeds of free flying, it is very dangerous to just go into a flat and stable, belly down position as there is a huge decrease in speed and if there are any free flyer's above you, they'll crash into you with SERIOUS consequences!
I found the base position to be ALRIGHT, I was basically in a sit-fly, but more on my ass, like I was sitting with my feet up and the back down in a lazy-boy chair!
I still wasn't entirely happy with this, but by jump 3, I was happy! Exited the plane at around 11 000ft and went straight into the base position, back more upright and arms out straight to either side, in-line with my chest and knees right up to my chest.
My objective with this base position was to be able to stay in it for the entire jump and keep a heading (stay stable enough to keep going in the same direction). At 5000ft, my new audible beeps in my ear, letting me know it's time to break away from my fictitious formation, and begin my track, then at 3 500ft, it lets me know it's pull time :-) I love that little toy!
Jump 4 was not quite as good as jump 3, but I was able to keep a heading and at no point went to a flat and stable, belly down position!
All-in-all, a great day of jumping! It feels awesome being back in the sky after a long week of work!
Unfortunately the weather would not permit us to jump on Sunday, so my Free Fly coach invited me to go with him and a few other people from the DZ to fly model gliders, I also wanted to see my prospective new rig that I want to buy from him.
After half the day of watching the gliders and throwing rocks at one that got stuck in a tree, one of the other jumpers arrived with some home made rockets! Now THIS was fun! Right up my alley as making rockets and blowing stuff up is something that I've always enjoyed! After sending a few rockets up to around 700ft, we decided to strap one to an old glider and send it on it's way :-) This, as you can imagin, didn't quite go to plan, but we had a huge laugh as it spun around in a big puff of smoke!
We then went to my coaches place to check out my new rig - it's a nice black Vortex 2 container, with a Hurricane 150 and a reserve - and it looks PERFECT! It fits perfectly and I'm very happy with it! Now I just need to come up with the money to pay for it!
By the time I arrived home, I was BUGGERED! Nick (one of my house mates) greeted me at the door with an ice cold beer...EXCELENT way to end off a great weekend!
What a good weekend! I enjoyed every bit of it - I think I need to get myself a glider for when the weather is no good for jumping!
Blue skies everyone and happy days!
This weekend, strangely - went roughly to plan :-)
I arrived at the drop zone at about 07:50, ready for my first set of Free Fly training!
When my coach arrived, he handed me my new Alti-2 Galaxy 2 audible altimeter that I had ordered from him the previous weekend. Once I had gone through the different points that make gear "Free Fly friendly", we went on to discuss barrel rolls while you track away, why they are so important during your track away, especially when Free Flying. For those of you who are not aware of the reasoning behind this, it is basically a safety precaution - When there are a number of people in a formation it is important to make sure that you have good separation at pull-time, obviously you DO NOT want to open your chute if there is anyone above you, or too close to you as this can cause serious accidents and fatalities.
With Free flying, this is all the more important because of the much faster falling speeds. The idea is that when the formation breaks and each person tracks away for each other, you would barrel role onto your back for a second or two and ensure that there is no one above you or around you that you may collide with.
So, the barrel role was my first objective - sequence of the jump was to go as follows:
Exit from 12 000ft and go straight into a track (Basically a dive at what I would guess to be a 45 degree angle). After 8 seconds (To ensure that you have enough speed), initiate the barrel role by positioning your hands in a way that would deflect the air in such a way, that it would turn you over onto your back.
Sounds easy hey!? Unfortunately not - I had enough time to try 6 barrel roles on my jump, none of which were successful. Instead of barrel rolling, I found myself doing 360 degree turns, as if I were belly down in a flat fly position. I was not at all happy with the way I executed those barrel roles :-(
After landing, I spoke to a few other people and asked their opinion as to why I went into a flat spin instead of a barrel role - They all very kindly offered their recommendations and gave me examples on how they each do their barrel roles. I got some good tips, but it is going to take a lot of practising.
Although I wasn't happy with the barrel roles, my instructor said "Well, you have plenty of time to work on those" and told me move on to the "Base Position". This is basically the position that you would revert back to if you got unstable during a Free Fly jump, allowing you to transition to any of the other free fly positions, IE: Sit fly, head down etc. The reason we have to revert back to this position, is because of the speeds of free flying, it is very dangerous to just go into a flat and stable, belly down position as there is a huge decrease in speed and if there are any free flyer's above you, they'll crash into you with SERIOUS consequences!
I found the base position to be ALRIGHT, I was basically in a sit-fly, but more on my ass, like I was sitting with my feet up and the back down in a lazy-boy chair!
I still wasn't entirely happy with this, but by jump 3, I was happy! Exited the plane at around 11 000ft and went straight into the base position, back more upright and arms out straight to either side, in-line with my chest and knees right up to my chest.
My objective with this base position was to be able to stay in it for the entire jump and keep a heading (stay stable enough to keep going in the same direction). At 5000ft, my new audible beeps in my ear, letting me know it's time to break away from my fictitious formation, and begin my track, then at 3 500ft, it lets me know it's pull time :-) I love that little toy!
Jump 4 was not quite as good as jump 3, but I was able to keep a heading and at no point went to a flat and stable, belly down position!
All-in-all, a great day of jumping! It feels awesome being back in the sky after a long week of work!
Unfortunately the weather would not permit us to jump on Sunday, so my Free Fly coach invited me to go with him and a few other people from the DZ to fly model gliders, I also wanted to see my prospective new rig that I want to buy from him.
After half the day of watching the gliders and throwing rocks at one that got stuck in a tree, one of the other jumpers arrived with some home made rockets! Now THIS was fun! Right up my alley as making rockets and blowing stuff up is something that I've always enjoyed! After sending a few rockets up to around 700ft, we decided to strap one to an old glider and send it on it's way :-) This, as you can imagin, didn't quite go to plan, but we had a huge laugh as it spun around in a big puff of smoke!
We then went to my coaches place to check out my new rig - it's a nice black Vortex 2 container, with a Hurricane 150 and a reserve - and it looks PERFECT! It fits perfectly and I'm very happy with it! Now I just need to come up with the money to pay for it!
By the time I arrived home, I was BUGGERED! Nick (one of my house mates) greeted me at the door with an ice cold beer...EXCELENT way to end off a great weekend!
What a good weekend! I enjoyed every bit of it - I think I need to get myself a glider for when the weather is no good for jumping!
Blue skies everyone and happy days!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Things that get lost in Freefall
This is a bit of a sore topic for me because I lost a pair of prescription Oakley sunglasses while doing my ISP's. As I didn't wear contacts that the time (I do now!), I used to jump with my sunglasses on, under a pair of those sh!tty, flimsy plastic goggles (I thought they would hold my sunglasses on).
It was ISP #5, one bright, hot, sun shiny day at the drop zone, and the first jump of the day. While doing the required maneuvers for my ISP level, the goggles decided to slip up, off my face and somehow onto the front of helmet. (Keep in mind that I had worn my sunglasses in exactly the same way for my entire AFF course and 4 previous ISP's). My poor sunglasses did not stand a chance at resisting the wind that was forcing it's way past my face at 200+ km/h, and before I realized it (Around 7 grand), they decided they didn't enjoy the freefall with me, and went on to do to a solo jump without a rig :-( RIP 21st birthday present (sorry dad!).
The worst thing was that the instructor noticed this and held onto me all the way down to pull altitude, then pulled my pilot chute for me as he wasn't sure if I could see my alti.
Entry in my logbook reads "...lost sunglasses - BUMMER!". And yes, it was a bummer, especially since I battled to work out which way the wind socks were blowing and took a little tumble on landing :-(
Thankfully I passed that level as I had pretty much completed everything that was required of me.
Side note: ISP#6 is the only ISP / AFF level I've ever failed and SUCKED!
Our manifest lady (Noogs) has an awesome habit of losing shoes whenever she jumps (Don't ask me why she doesn't tie the laces?). Apparently she has lost a good few shoes, always only one of the two!
Besides sunglasses :-( and shoes, I also know of a few camera's, alti's and even entire canopies that cannot be found after a cutaway.
What have you lost in freefall?
So - look around your local DZ, you'll be surprised at what you might find!
Blue Skies everyone - happy days!
It was ISP #5, one bright, hot, sun shiny day at the drop zone, and the first jump of the day. While doing the required maneuvers for my ISP level, the goggles decided to slip up, off my face and somehow onto the front of helmet. (Keep in mind that I had worn my sunglasses in exactly the same way for my entire AFF course and 4 previous ISP's). My poor sunglasses did not stand a chance at resisting the wind that was forcing it's way past my face at 200+ km/h, and before I realized it (Around 7 grand), they decided they didn't enjoy the freefall with me, and went on to do to a solo jump without a rig :-( RIP 21st birthday present (sorry dad!).
The worst thing was that the instructor noticed this and held onto me all the way down to pull altitude, then pulled my pilot chute for me as he wasn't sure if I could see my alti.
Entry in my logbook reads "...lost sunglasses - BUMMER!". And yes, it was a bummer, especially since I battled to work out which way the wind socks were blowing and took a little tumble on landing :-(
Thankfully I passed that level as I had pretty much completed everything that was required of me.
Side note: ISP#6 is the only ISP / AFF level I've ever failed and SUCKED!
Our manifest lady (Noogs) has an awesome habit of losing shoes whenever she jumps (Don't ask me why she doesn't tie the laces?). Apparently she has lost a good few shoes, always only one of the two!
Besides sunglasses :-( and shoes, I also know of a few camera's, alti's and even entire canopies that cannot be found after a cutaway.
What have you lost in freefall?
So - look around your local DZ, you'll be surprised at what you might find!
Blue Skies everyone - happy days!
Monday, July 19, 2010
When things don't go to plan, but are still AWESOME!
Wow - This weekend was one of those weekends and it WAS awesome (well, parts of it anyway).
Lets start with Friday: As you know from my "Friday write-up" I was planning to jump on Saturday, no such luck I'm afraid! Unfortunately there was a terrible tragedy on Friday, one of the skydivers partaking in the Durban airshow died while practising for the jump that was going to take place on Saturday. I won't go into detail, mainly out of respect for the unfortunate skydiver and also because the investigation has been completed yet, so it would all just be speculation.
As this was jumper was part of the South African Military jump team, they would not allow the rest of the jumpers to use a military aircraft for the airshow as the incident was under investigation. This means that they borrowed our Angel on Saturday to drop the jumpers for the airshow.
This turned out to not be so bad after all, in terms of my plans to jump on Saturday as my entire Saturday was spent digging up my driveway looking for a massive water leak, replacing pipes etc. Upon my house mates and I returning home from drinks on Friday night for a friends birthday, one of my house mates (That was completely sober and driving my car), accidentally drove over our water meter and broke it. We quickly turned the water off as it was spraying like crazy all over the place.
Once the municipality had replaced the meter on Saturday morning, it was ticking over at an alarming rate (something like 250ltrs in 15minutes!).
Worried that we had possibly broken the pipe somewhere further down, we decided to dig up the drive way and replace the pipe! Unfortunately, after an entire day of hard labour, we still hadn't located the leak. So we decided to call in the professionals on Sunday morning to sort it out. Thankfully, this meant that I could go jump on Sunday :-)
So Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to go to my mom's to shower (as we still had no water), and also to pick up my A-License card and certificate :-) I then arrived at the Drop Zone, kitted up, and waited for my slot!
It wasn't a particularly busy day at the Drop Zone, so after my 1 solo, and 2 two-ways, we were done for the day. For some reason all the regular fun jumpers left early which meant that after all the tandems, we didn't have enough people to fill the loads :-( But the two ways went well and I thoroughly enjoyed the day after having not jumped for close to FOUR WEEKS!
I decided not to get my CI to take some photo's and instead decided that I'm going to start training for my Free-Fly CAT II & III tests :-) I found an audible Alti that I can buy from my Free-Fly coach and my first briefing will be next weekend!
I'm really excited for the free-fly coaching, and getting my CAT's done as they are one of the requirements for my B-License, which I am hoping to have by the end of the year (budget permitting).
All-in-all, this weekend was NOTHING like I had planned for it to be, but it was still an AWESOME weekend and it feels GREAT to be back in the sky again!
Blue Skies everyone and happy days!
Lets start with Friday: As you know from my "Friday write-up" I was planning to jump on Saturday, no such luck I'm afraid! Unfortunately there was a terrible tragedy on Friday, one of the skydivers partaking in the Durban airshow died while practising for the jump that was going to take place on Saturday. I won't go into detail, mainly out of respect for the unfortunate skydiver and also because the investigation has been completed yet, so it would all just be speculation.
As this was jumper was part of the South African Military jump team, they would not allow the rest of the jumpers to use a military aircraft for the airshow as the incident was under investigation. This means that they borrowed our Angel on Saturday to drop the jumpers for the airshow.
This turned out to not be so bad after all, in terms of my plans to jump on Saturday as my entire Saturday was spent digging up my driveway looking for a massive water leak, replacing pipes etc. Upon my house mates and I returning home from drinks on Friday night for a friends birthday, one of my house mates (That was completely sober and driving my car), accidentally drove over our water meter and broke it. We quickly turned the water off as it was spraying like crazy all over the place.
Once the municipality had replaced the meter on Saturday morning, it was ticking over at an alarming rate (something like 250ltrs in 15minutes!).
Worried that we had possibly broken the pipe somewhere further down, we decided to dig up the drive way and replace the pipe! Unfortunately, after an entire day of hard labour, we still hadn't located the leak. So we decided to call in the professionals on Sunday morning to sort it out. Thankfully, this meant that I could go jump on Sunday :-)
So Sunday morning I woke up bright and early to go to my mom's to shower (as we still had no water), and also to pick up my A-License card and certificate :-) I then arrived at the Drop Zone, kitted up, and waited for my slot!
It wasn't a particularly busy day at the Drop Zone, so after my 1 solo, and 2 two-ways, we were done for the day. For some reason all the regular fun jumpers left early which meant that after all the tandems, we didn't have enough people to fill the loads :-( But the two ways went well and I thoroughly enjoyed the day after having not jumped for close to FOUR WEEKS!
I decided not to get my CI to take some photo's and instead decided that I'm going to start training for my Free-Fly CAT II & III tests :-) I found an audible Alti that I can buy from my Free-Fly coach and my first briefing will be next weekend!
I'm really excited for the free-fly coaching, and getting my CAT's done as they are one of the requirements for my B-License, which I am hoping to have by the end of the year (budget permitting).
All-in-all, this weekend was NOTHING like I had planned for it to be, but it was still an AWESOME weekend and it feels GREAT to be back in the sky again!
Blue Skies everyone and happy days!
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