Consol/RW - Jump 11 - 12,500ft

So I’m heading up with Gail to do a coaching jump.  This will be jump #2 for the day.  We decide that I will follow her out the plane and then I’ll move towards her and dock.  Next we release and I do a 360 to the left.  When I come around she is about 10 feet away, I move forward and dock with her.  We release again and I do a 360 to the right.  This time when I come around she is about 30ft away.  I drive forward and dock with her.  I’ve gotten much better control of my forward movements now by using my legs more that my arms.  Gail also says that I did a good job of flattening out my track to keep the same fall speed and altitude as her on the last dock.

It’s 6000ft I turn 90 degrees to the east and track forward.  This is my best track yet, not a bit of instability and I get up to about 156MPH.  I pull stable at about 5000ft, at 4000ft I look around, signal and pull.  the chute comes out and as I’m checking everything I can see some line twists starting.  I was stable at pull time, so it was just one of those times for this to happen.  This is by far the worst case of line twist I had yet encountered, but I felt I could get out of it fairly quickly, which I was able to. 

Now I’m looking for the holding area and holy crap it is far away.  I see the north field is a bit closer though.  I’m at about 3000ft and the wind is at my back so I decide I can make it to the south field, which I’m able to do.  While under canopy and over the holding area I start to experience a ton of turbulence.  I takes me pulling the left toggle half way just to keep myself heading straight.  I check my chute again to see if there are any problems, but no it is just turbulence.  I’m heading in on my final approach and directly on target, but having to keep my left toggle and half brakes to keep it straight.  As I get close I’m reminded that I should not be in a braked position prior to flaring as I won’t have anything to flare.  As I do this I immediate turn to the right, I quickly flare, but hold on this is going to be rough.  I bounce a little, but all in all am ok.  I know now I should have kept that brake on.  There is saying I will come to learn as a result of this.  “Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from poor judgement.”

 Even though I bounced I was still on target so Gail gives me credit for an on target jump on my proficiency card.  Let’s head on up for jump #3 of the day.

Blue skies!