Tag: A license

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From Whuffo to Licensed in 12 days

First and foremost, I apologize for not updating this page as often as I wanted to. I had initially planned on updating it after every single jump, but things happened extremely fast. As the title describes – I made 25 jumps in just under 12 days time, while still working 45 hours per week. But I can honestly say it’s been one of the greatest 12 days of my life.

Along the way there have been some very notable jumps, here are my favorites:

Jump no. 7

Obviously my first Free Fall jump would make the list. I already wrote about it in “Not Bad, for a Wednesday” but I have to reiterate it here. Freefall is breathtaking. The feeling of just letting go from an airplane is unforgettable, and so is this jump.

Jump no. 9

Two days after my first free fall jump, I started jumping my own packjobs. For someone who can barely fold a shirt, packing a parachute scared the living hell out of me. That first jump – all I could think about was “Will this open?! Will it?!” and totally lost focus on the jump itself. We went out at 6.5, and I was only able to do two 90o turns before I pulled- at 5,000 feet. My coach, Cora, landed next to me laughing, she knew exactly why I did it.

“See? It opened. I told you it would. Now you get to do two more 90o turns plus 180’s and 360’s on the next jump. You’ll have to pull even lower to get them all in on time.”

Jump no. 13 (lucky no. 13!)

This was the second spot I made (a stressful event in and of itself) but this was also my first tracking jump. For those of you who don’t get to routinely fall at terminal velocity, I’ll enlighten you.

Tracking is the art of removing yourself from the arch that was so painfully drilled into your skull during your first jumps in order to move rapidly across the sky. When doing formation skydiving (relative work) it is important that you are clear of the group you exited with when you pull your parachute. Tracking works by placing your hands on either hip, cupped down, while rolling your shoulders down, and pushing your feet together. This allows you to really haul ass away from people, it’s also INSANELY fun. The thing I love about it is the sound. Freefall is loud, but a rather gentle “swish”-ing sound as the air goes by. When you track, you accelerate even faster, which makes a “WOOOSH” sound. Every time I track for more than a few seconds, I feel like Ironman™ breaking the sound barrier.

Jump no. 18

This was my check dive. At 18 I had completed the entire Skydiver’s Information Manual (SIM) manual, and just had fun jumps til I could get my license. I loved this jump because I really feel like I nailed it. For those of you who don’t know, the last 3 or 4 jumps in the SIM are swoop & dock jumps, meaning you have to approach and grab your coach in the air – much trickier than it seems. I always had trouble falling fast enough to keep up with my jumpmaster Paul, so I blew it a couple times.

But no. 18 was different. I jumped with Cora, who’s about the same size as me.  I got to do some backflips off of the step, which were ridiculously fun, and then completed my turns, and then I saw Cora above me. I was able to get back up to her and dock with almost no effort. It felt great to finally get that satisfaction. I was so excited I did another backloop, then tracked and pulled. Awesome.

Jump no. 19

Jump 19 was a fun jump, I had a ton of fun because I got to dive out after Paul. Dive-out exits are awesome. Jump 19 was crazy, because I had also just taken apart and reassembled a 3-ring system with our FAA certified Rigger, Mike. Mike was so concerned that I was putting my side together correctly, that he accidentally put his side on 360o from where it should have been. This caused a line twist about midway up that in effect stopped the end cells on my right side from opening. It was my first true “fast” malfunction. I immediately began spinning, and was about to cutaway when I saw the single twist, and remembered that we had just reassembled that 3-ring system. I twisted at the base of my risers, and that transferred the twist from the lines to the risers, and flew the rig home. Cora was impressed that I didn’t cut it. Teddy wanted me to cut it, because that would be 3 cases of beer I’d have to owe.

Jump no. 20

This jump almost made me poop myself. Paul, Cora and I did a 3-way from 10,000. We planned on exiting in a circle, breaking and turning 360o, then reconnecting and doing it again. Our exit was great, but once we turned, Paul fell under us and I started to side-slide while holding onto Cora. Paul backslid and was starting to come up, but I was side-sliding too fast. He flew directly under me, putting me in his “burble”. I immediately dropped on his back at 8,000 feet into an inadvertent “Rodeo” – it was crazy. Once on the ground, Paul thought it was just the funniest thing.

“I’ve never seen anybody hop off a rodeo so fast, you weren’t quite ready for that, where you?”

Nope. Not at all.

Jump no. 23

This jump went well, Teddy and I exited, but rotated head-down and held it. According to his audible altimeter, we travelled at 190mph as a top speed. The crazy part though, was deploying. This was a chute I had packed, and I had the most insane pilot-chute burble ever. I literally pulled at 4,000 feet and finally came under canopy at 2,800. It wasn’t until I rotated to reach for my cutaway handle that the parachute finally deployed. Crazy.

Jump no. 24

Under this one, in my logbook I wrote “PERFECT” in big, capital letters. Cora and I went from altitude, on the way up we changed our dive plan 3 times (She said it made me a real skydiver.) We started with grips, I then released and went sidebody. Cora held her heading, I side-slid around and got the other side, then back to front dock. We did this twice. I was so incredibly jacked. This was the first jump I did that I really feel like I nailed RW on the first try.

Jump no. 25

Graduation! This jump wasn’t all to spectacular, same plan as 24 only I would have to fall faster because it was with Teddy, who is bigger than Cora. I was only able to get around him once, but then I tracked for 15 seconds at full speed. Landing felt great, I had put the feet on target for the 8th time that day.

What are some of your most memorable jumps? Most insane? Best improvisation? Holler at me in the comments.

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All this planning and I forget to bring my gloves

So in the end, we didn’t do a jump at 20 000 feet, the DZ wasn’t able to get the permits.
So we jumped from 18000.

Everyone on the plane had oxygen masks, we were 4 loads of 8-9 people.
On my load, a buddy who’s birthday it was who they added to our load to accommodate (He wasn’t supposed to be jumping today, they originally limited the day at 30 jumpers)
Most of the load were friends of mine I had met while skydiving, 3 of which were jumping with me.

At 12 000 feet, we were told to put on our oxygen masks, and from 12000 feet until 18000 things were normal… Aside from the cold.

It’s 25 degrees on the ground, I know it’s cold in the sky, yet for some reason…. I managed to not wear gloved… I actually don’t have skydive gloves in my colors, but I usually wear my snowboard gloves instead.

We did a 4way RW (Relative Work) jump. I was the tail, first to jump out while holding in an H position. Our bodies are placed like the letter H with our arms being the middle point. (In reality, it’s more of a domino shape with the top, middle and bottom line being our arms, but it’s called an H position)

We position ourselves, exit, it’s a little unstable and the person to my right ended up coming under us but we replaced ourselves and got good grips onto each other.
We then started doing our formations, or at least tried to…. After the 1st point, (everyone turned 90 degrees clockwise) things started to lose balance, so we basically played a game of tag in the air.

Landing was a bit rough, I jumped a Sabre II 170, loaded at 1.16, wind was very shaky today and lots of people got hurt on our run, I came close.
I was hoping to get a nice swoop in, but I flared about 2 feet too late and didn’t compensate by pulling faster and harder, as I started to swoop, my feet had touched the ground, but I was still coming down a little and my knees touched the ground, then the swoop picked up, lifted me onto my feet then stopped.
I got dirty, but didn’t hurt myself thankfully.
2 people on my load had hurt themselves on the run.

One person came in very close to some trees and got some wind burble due to that, he wasn’t able to keep control 100% and landed a bit hard, another person caught some turbulence and didn’t correct it, he was about 20 feet off the ground, in the end the right side of his parachute folded in and he landed rolling.

Some other people just landed in the middle of nowhere.
On the bright side, I landed exactly on target 😛

The wind picked up not long after the jump to 23 naughts (about 26 mph), so they grounded the planes by the 11th load of the day.
I decided to call it a day and head home to relax.
“You know you’re a skydiver when… You’re able to wake up at 5 am to go to the drop zone and skydive to be there for 7 am, but you have a hard time being up at 6:30 to go to work for 8.” 😀

Blue skies everyone

– Adam

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Jumping in SA is cheaper than here =(

Well, as far as I’ve been able to read, as it stand, Lance has got it way better than I do in Canada…

A jump ticket here is 35$ Canadian (34$ us give or take)
Packing is only 6$ though. So if you have your own rig, it’s 41$ if you have your rig packed. Add another 30$ if you rent a rig.
It’s July, I’ve done 2 jumps this month so far, (Not kidding)
I’ve done 48 overall this year, 10 of which were my AFF, 10 were my RW course, 2 were with camera men to film my “flip” attempts and the rest fun jumps and have easily spent 6000$ so far… This doesn’t include buying a jumpsuit or helmet.

As it stands, my money can go much farther in Lodi California than it can here or in South Africa, but it’ll cost me a fortune to go there in the 1st place. (In Lodi it’s about 9$ a jump+ packing) But given the choice, I’d rather jump in South Africa… Lodi isn’t exactly the nicest looking part of the world.

As for wing loading, the DZs here don’t limit you with anything, they just want to make sure you’re comfortable jumping with whatever loading you choose.
Right now, I’m jumping a 1.16 loading and am looking at downsizing to 1.32 by the time I buy my rig next april (We can’t jump in the winter, so it’ll be the equivalent of downsizing in October).

So I stick to my grounds on saying that SA’s got it somewhat better 😛

Then again, I’m not really sure of the average income/cost of living there though but judging from all the “sponsor a child in Africa” commercials, I guess I can see why it’s not affordable for most people.

Fill me in Lance!
– Adam

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Skydiving in South Africa

Right – I guess I should start off with describing how EXPENSIVE skydiving is here in relation to the general income (I’ll try make this as easy to understand as possible).

Skydiving in South Africa has unfortunately reached a point where it is reserved for professionals. I am sure not why this is, but it a major factor behind skydiving here not being as accessible as it is in the rest of the world.

To put it in context – A jump ticket cost me R200 (roughly $26.50), gear hire and packing – $9.90 each jump. Considering I normally take home around $2000 per month after TAX (Which in Rands is a fairly decent salary).

So – By the time I pay for my car, rent, food, cell phone  etc, I am usually left with around $260 to jump with 🙁

I can’t really compare the cost side of things to the US as I don’t know how much it costs relative to the average salary, however – In South Africa, jumping is out of reach for the general public 🙁

Other than the costs involved, Jumping in South Africa is pretty much the same as anywhere else in the world, just on a smaller scale. We only have about 6 Drop Zones in the whole country, but I plan to jump at all of them 🙂

As for BEER FINES, yes – we have them 🙂 but on a smaller scale. For passing my AFF progression, I was rewarded with having to buy a case of beer, and while everyone sits around drinking my beer, they laugh at all my AFF videos. I then had to tell a story that begins with “Oh SHIT, there I was – I thought I was going to die…(insert story here :-))”  Then had to down a beer within 5 seconds, and if you don’t finish it – pour it on your head. Haha – Good Times!

For our “Firsts”, we have to do down-downs, not buy cases of beer – This suits me just fine because two cases of beer is equivalent to one jump ticket, and I’m sure everyone knows – when you first get into the sport, there are A LOT of firsts!

Things are looking very promising for the skydiving future of South Africa as; recently a very wealthy business man decided to invest in uplifting the sport. So far he has built and upgraded various drop zones around the country, bought 6 ex South African Air force planes (Previously known as Atlas Kudu’s) and is currently in the process of having them all converted to turbine engines. The first three have been rolled out (My DZ currently has one). These are now called Atlas Angels and have a wicked paint job :-). The idea is that once all 6 have been converted, 5 drop zones will each have one and there will be a spare for when one goes in for a service! I love these planes – it takes just 12 minutes from take-off to 12 000ft, and about the same time back to the end of the run way.

Although the Angels only hold 9 skydivers, they are normally on their way back up with load 2 by the time the tandems from load 1 are landing 🙂

See below pic’s of my favourite jump ship 🙂

One thing I love (Especially now being winter here), from about 7 000ft and up the view is amazing! To the right of the plane, we can see the Drakensburg Mountains, covered with snow, and to the left, we see the entire Durban coast line and even the arch of our new stadium!

Those are the main differences that I know of – the only other minor difference is: Here, the maximum wing loading for a “Beginner / intermediate” skydiver is 1.0 as opposed to the 1.1 in the US, not a huge difference, but for me – it’s the difference between being able to fly a 170 vs. a 150. Meaning that now (Because I’m in the process of buying my FIRST rig) I have to buy a 150 canopy, and look at it in the cupboard while I jump a 170 till I get my B-License 🙁 as the 150 is going for a great price and don’t want to lose out!

I haven’t been able to jump anywhere other than in South Africa, so I’m just going on what I’ve read. Please feel free to add a comment if there is anything specific that you would like to know about.

Blue skies everyone and happy days!

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Nine Signs of Obsession

It’s been a hectic month, with two vacations and lots of travel. I’ve spent countless hours on airplanes, but sadly, not the kind you can jump out of.  The end result: I’ve only logged six jumps in the past 30 days. Bummer.

These are the signs of my increasingly obsessive behavior and its sad consequences:

1) I know exactly how many jumps I’ve accrued in the past 30 days. (Well, I guess that’s pretty normal for a newbie like me.)

2) I spent ten days in a tropical and exotic place (Okinawa, Japan) where I climbed a waterfall, camped on the beach, rode a Ferris wheel, and went snorkling, yet feel the trip was missing something because there was no sky jump. (There is no DZ on the island or I would have gone!)

3) I was yapping endlessly about skydiving to people around the world. People feigned interest. I didn’t care. I yapped away.

4) Every time I flew in a commercial plane I wanted to click my seat belt through my (non-existent) harness.

5) My dropzone friends barely recognize me. I think they might be calling me a whuffo behind my back.

6) I kept nearly driving off the road because I wanted to see all the cloud formations and then daydream about my plans to fly around them.

7) 46.3 % of my vacation photos feature cloud formations. Really.

8) I brought a copy of Parachutist with me everywhere in case there would be a good location to shoot a “I took my Parachutist to…” pic to submit for publication. (And yes, I do have some fun potential submissions.)

9) I checked this blog obsessively to see what you all were up to. Look at how we’ve grown! Awww. So sweet.

So, I’m back. My A License is complete. The DZ beckons. The Mary stories will resume.

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High altitude jump woo hoo!

Only 6 more sleeps until I get to do a high altitude 4 way jump with some friends.

For those of you who don’t know what that means… Normally, when you do a skydive, you jump out of the plane at 13500 feet. Or in some cases 10500 feet (if in a smaller plane).

If the plane is between 10000 and 13000 feet for more than 30 minutes, then they have to have oxygen available for the skydivers with a minimum of 1 mask for every 10 jumpers.

If above 13000 feet, everyone needs oxygen for the duration of the flight. (Exceptions are made for the first 500 feet at most DZs)

Above 20000 feet, each skydiver needs oxygen for the descent as well. (An oxygen bottle to jump with)

Now, because of all these regulations, Drop Zones reserve high altitude jumps for special occasions, plan it out months in advance (to be sure to have oxygen available) and take reservations as well.
I’ve been waiting 2 months for this coming Sunday.
Why?
Because this Sunday is gonna be my 1st experience with it.
What’s so special about it?
Well, when you jump at 13500 feet, it takes about 1500-2000 feet to stabilize, and an extra 500-1000 feet if you’re in a group to start doing formations. Leaving you about 11000 feet to play with right?

Wrong!
You separate at about 4500 feet and release your canopy at about 3000-3500…

So that leaves only 6500 feet of freefall to “play” in…. Falling at 174 feet per second, that’s only 37 seconds…

When falling from 20000 feet, you still need the 2500 or so feet to stabilize and start formations, plus separation at about 4500 feet, but that still leaves you 13000 feet to have fun with… OR 74 seconds of freefall with which to do your formation… You’re effectively doubling your play time…
Now that’s a LOT of falling =)

It’s costing 85$ plus canopy rental (Unless I can convince a buddy to lend me his :P)
And it’s gonna be 85$ well spent!

I’ll share my experience with you when I get home afterward!

Blue Skies!

-Adam

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A quick welcome to…

The newest addition to the family!

When I spoke to AJ, he seemed very very very enthusiastic about his future addiction….
He’s starting his skydive lessons tomorrow.

So this is both a good luck, and a welcome to the family!

Blue Skies!
-Adam

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WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Sorry for the long delays in between postings, I’ve just been so busy with my new job, with my summer plans, with getting Skydive Addiction on the map, with making excuses as to why I haven’t been posting, with procrastinating posting, and with a bunch of other stuff.

Seriously speaking though, getting Skydive Addiction on the map is my #1 priority…
Behind skydiving of course 😛

So anyways, this past weekend, I managed to convince 8 of my friends from a couple of DZs I jump at to join me on a bungee jumping road trip.
Needless to say, I heard at least 20 skydivers say:
“Are you crazy? How could you jump off a perfectly good bridge… WITHOUT a parachute?”

Yes, that’s right… Skydivers asked me the most God awful question in the world…
Why wouldn’t I? It’s quite a different rush from skydiving, and it’s a welcome change from the regular routine… Given, it’s not something you’d find me doing every day, but it’s fun once in a while.

So we headed to the Great Canadian Bungee which claims to be the highest bungee jump in North America. It’s 200 feet over a very very blue lake. Beautiful place actually.
I jumped there last year (as you can see on one of my 1st posts). And it was a lot of fun, so I decided to head back.

Turns out that when you’re 8 or 9 people, it’s actually cheaper to pay for 10 then it is to pay for 8 or 9… Group discount… So that’s exactly what we did.
And since I organized it, my friends were quick to put my name down as the person to do two jumps.
S-WEET!!
So the 1st person to jump is a girl named Stephanie, she’s done 5 tandem skydives, but doesn’t have her license yet. She’s never done a bungee jump however.
(They went by weight)
After 7 minutes of her standing at the edge not jumping and 7 minutes of myself and one of the other guys yelling at her to hurry up, she finally took the plunge… Ok, well she held hands with the instructor and he slowly lowered her backwards until she finally fell. HI HI =)

The others jumped right away, which was a welcome sight =D

My first jump was a normal forward dive with my ankles strapped in, didn’t give me the same adrenaline rush as the 1st time though (Which pretty much proved that once you face a fear, you never get that same rush again =( )

I even tested it… I started running back up the hill to get to the top… Half way up, I couldn’t breathe anymore… If I had an adrenaline pumping through my veins, I probably would’ve made it up without breaking a sweat.
So on the 2nd jump, I decided to strap myself in by the shoulders. The instructors at the top told me that since I was so comfortable with jumping off the bridge that I could do a flip this time.
We decided that I’d do a back flip. That back flip then turned into a double and if I had known how much more time I had, I probably would’ve been able to get a third in. Damn me and my dissatisfaction!!!!!

So after spending 2 and a half hours at the bungee jump place, we then decided to go grab breakfast at some random place in town… This place was on the 2nd floor of a supermarket… And I can say one thing… If we thought waiting for Stephanie to jump was a lifetime wait… Waiting for sunny side up eggs and toast to be prepared was an eternity.

Fast forward an hour and we arrive at Go Skydive. It’s one of those DZs that you wouldn’t be able to find if you didn’t know where to go… We didn’t know where to go.
We parked in the Gatineau airport’s parking lot, looked around for signs, but couldn’t find any.
We were given directions on how to walk there by a girl who had just completed her 1st tandem =).
So we get there, they check out our paperwork, the rigs we’re jumping, and so on.
Then they tell us that even though we’re regular jumpers who have jumped together before, they want us to jump with a coach ?!?!?!?!

My buddy Alex lent me his rig (Sabre I 170 in a Javelin J2 rig), he spent 15 minutes checking the gear making sure that everything was ok even after a rigger took a look at it and I had inspected it too… His reasoning was that he didn’t want my death on his conscience. I laughed, told him that I’d pull the reserve on purpose then went into the plane 😛

In the end, they decided to put 5 of us on a Cessna 182 (TINY plane!!!) instead of their Navaho (Still tiny, but bigger than the Cessna) but this time, we didn’t need a coach.
For those of you who don’t really know the difference, with a Cessna, you have to get out of the door, hang onto a strut below the wing, stand on a step and hang there before your jump.
On the Navaho, you jump out of the door. On the Twin Otter and the Caravans that my home DZs have, you not only jump out of the door, but you have a bench to sit on 😛

Anyways, the DZ’s landing area is bigger than the one at Parachute Montreal but the planes, much smaller.
The staff was nice, but the rigger who packed Alex’s rig after I jumped took ages… He also asked us different questions about the rig and forgot to collapse the pilot chute (a fairly dangerous mistake that can sometimes cause a malfunction). Anyways, all in all, I’d jump there again, but I’d also pack my own rig 😛

Blue Skies everyone!

-Adam

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My original plan for this year… My actual results

My original plan for this year: To have 40 jumps done by October (The end of the season here)

My actual results: It’s only the begining of July and I’m already at 47…

My original plan for this year: To spend no more than 1000$ on jumps after completing my solo course in florida…

My actual results: I’ve spent 3337$ (not counting the 1750$ for the solo course, the 350$ for the jump suit, or the 1200$ spent going to Florida to take that solo course)

My original plan for this year: To prepare myself for my A license and then possibly take the RW and packing courses at the begining of next season.

My actual results: I’ve not only completed my RW and packing course, I’ve already done the A license exam and sent it in, and am already somewhat started on getting my B…

My original plan for this year: Maybe buy a jump suit once I had some experience and start looking at gear for next year.

My actual results: I’ve had my jump suit since I took my solo course (before even completing my 1st jump, I had already bought a pit special with canvas grips and vented booties), I now have a black factory diver on the way (It’s still on back-order), I’m also waiting to demo an altimeter, and I have a packing tool already in the mail on it’s way to me… Yes, I have a packing tool on the way before even having a rig to pack 😛

My original plan for this year: To get comfortable with landing a student canopy and maybe try out a big sport canopy next season.

My actual results: I’m already bored with those slow student canopies, have been jumping sport 190s and am now looking at downsizing what I jump to a 170, to then possibly buy a 150 for myself… (For those of you who think 190, 170, 150 is all gipperish, it’s the size of the parachute, the bigger the parachute proportionally to one’s weight, the slower you descend, for example, a 190 is 190 sq ft, with a 1.0 load, it would be 190 lbs of weight, so the weight of the person + equipment would be 190 lbs. a load of 1.5 for the same weight person would be a 126 sq ft parachute (which would go down VERY fast). I’m right now looking at going to a 170, which would be a load of 1.088)

As you can see, and as I’ve noticed, I haven’t at all been in line with my original plans… I’ve surpassed all of them, which in some cases is a good thing… I.E. my level of experience, which is great. I still know NOTHING about the sport, but I know way more than I had originally hoped to :).
However, I’ve also spent more than triple my original budget for the year (For next year, I’m actually setting aside 4 times the money that I had set aside for this year, plus I’m putting 5k aside to buy a rig, so I’ll get double the jumps for the same money… I’m just hoping that I don’t overshoot THAT budget as well :-/)

– Adam out.

Hopefully your blue skies aren’t as smog filled as the ones I see outside my window right now =D

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I passed my A license exam!

So after all that stress, the annoyance of having to read boring books, and people telling me that I had a 3 hour long exam ahead of me… I spent 2 hours answering multiple choice questions, and finally, I got my A license 😀
There were a lot of trick questions, as well as stuff that aren’t even inside the damn PIM (Parachute Instruction Manual)
But whatever, I passed, it’s over and done with, and now I begin studying for my B 😛

-Adam