AFF Program - Stage 1/Jump 1 - 13,000ft

Ground Training

We started the day off early, kicking off our ground training at approximately 8:30am PST. There would be only three of us in today’s class, Seri, myself and Ryan. Ryan works as an instructor at the wind-tunnel, but up until this point had never jumped out of the plane.

I won’t bore you with all the details associated with the training, but rather just give you a quick summary. The entire training took about 4.5 hours. Our instructor, Mary, was great. At this point in her jump career she’d jumped 2000 times and had not yet had to deploy her reserve chute. Needless to say they drill safety into you from the get go, especially how to pull your reserve chute. That was probably the most intimidating thing about this type of first jump. Once you pull your main chute you are on your OWN!.

The Plane Ride

SO we board the plane ad you are literally packed into it like sardines; there are about 20-25 people total on the plane. During the ascent our Jump Masters (JM) have us basically do the jump in reverse telling them at set altitudes what we will be doing. This whole time I’m going over the canopy deployment checks in my head and for some damn reason I keep forgetting one of the checks (float). I ask on of my JM’s to go over them one more time, ok all set now. I look over at my friend Seri and he is sweating like crazy from being nervous. As we get closer to our jump altitude we put on our goggles. Seri is sweating so bad that his goggles keep getting fogged up.

We’re at our jump altitude and everyone starts jumping out. I see Seri and his JMs get into position at the door (Seri and I played a few games of darts to determine who went first. He lost). Then just like that he was gone. I say to myself, holy crap he did it… oh crap now it is my turn!

The Jump

All right then, it my turn now. I move into position, trying not to look out or down mind you. I report into my main side JM (main side refers to the side from which you pull your mail chute Your other JM is called your reserve side JM referring to to the side from which you would pull your reserve chute). Checkin! Ok! she replies. I look forward, then rock Out, In, Arch, and with arch we have now left the plane. Looking back on it I found the hardest part was moving to the door way. You have rehearsed the actual jump so many times by now that it something that you just do and don’t even think about it.

So were out of the plane now and falling fast. I must admit that for about two seconds I totally forgot what the hell I was suppose to be doing. Then I remembered. I count to 5 then take a deep breath (yes, you can breathe while falling to the earth at 120MPH!). I check my altitude and report to my main side JM. 11,000 Ft! (they can’t really hear you, but just want to ensure you are aware of what is going on and where you are at). Next I do a practice pull. Then report altitude again. 10,000Ft!. I continue shouting out the altitude every 1,000Ft (about every 4-5 secs) until we get to 6,000Ft. During the plunge to 6,000Ft my JMs proceed to spin me around in a 360 twice. When they do this it feels incredible fast, however, when I look at the video it is pretty slow. I get down to 6,000Ft and shake my head indicating no more maneuvers (except falling of course!). Once we get to 5,000Ft I wave off and pull the chute. I struggle for just a second to find the pilot chute ball, but was able to grab it and pull without assistance (once on the ground I’m told that while I was pulling the chute I punch my main side JM in the face).

After I’m safely on the ground the next 5 minutes I’m in another world. you fee so many emotions. The one thing I distinctly remember is a overwhelming since of pride for what we had just done. During the debrief, done by my reserve side JM, I’m told that the jump went extremely welland that I had done everything I was suppose to do. He said that it was the first time that he had actually enjoyed a stage 1 AFF jump.

Now on to jump # 2