Banzai!
Ahh a fond memory, brought back every time it gets cold and bits of me start to creak...

As if jumping out of aeroplanes wasn't daft enough in the first place, I decided to up the ante a little. I started parachuting using the big green round army issue jobs, where you had to do the proper hit 'n' roll PLF routine when you landed. No problem. Even landed on some rough torn up tarmac with nary a scratch (except the time I left my car keys in my pocket of course). Now the big round canopies were a bit slow, and not very manoevrable, so you tended to go where the breeze took you. Booooring. And then..... we got the square RAPS 'chutes. Speed! Manoevrability! Posey 'land on tippy toes' stuff! Twirly midair stuff! Yeehaw.

Much mid-air twirliness later, we decided that we wanted to turn faster. So we decided to loop the lines a few times around our fists to get sharper turns and more dramatic (lower) flare-outs on landing.

Now the idea is that you land into the wind, with your airspeed and the windspeed cancelling each other out, combined with the braking effect of the flare. Simple, eh? Naaah.

Hop into the aircraft with the windspeed pretty much at maximum permissible. Wind direction noted and stored in brain, as we were jumping 'accuracy'. Ageing plane wheezes upwards, eventually out lobs your narrator. After the pleasing 'fwump' of the thing opening (always a relief), time to get a few wraps in the lines and hit that target...

"Hmmmm this is going badly. I'm bloody miles away, oh bollocks looks like I'm going to land on the runway. They'll take the piss for ages now... Hey ho, 'cos there's no grass I can judge my height to a gnat's and do a really cool landing."

"Floaty floaty whooooooooosh ready ready ready gosh that tarmac's getting bigger really fast ohhhhhshhhiiiiii CRUNCH.


Wind had dropped to bugger all and I estimated later I had tried to land approximately 3 feet under the runway.

After the crash wagon had picked me up (apparently had been lying facedown on the runway for a few minutes and was making the place look untidy) I gingerly unzipped the jumpsuit to find I had neatly skinned myself. Arsebiscuits. And who's the first aider? Me.

So who is the first person that a course of nervous first jump students see as they arrive? Yeah. Me propped up on a bench mopping up my own claret and patching myself up. Never actually heard a collective sphincter-tightening event before...
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:16, Reply)