Consol - Jumps 19 - 23 / 12,500ft

So I realized the most sensible thing for me to do today was to skip work and go jump out of a not so perfectly good airplane.  My goal is to see if i can get in 6 jumps and a Hop-n-Pop.  A lofty goal, but let see if i can get there.

Jump #19 -  First jump of the day and it’s business as usually for me.  Apologies if this is getting a bit redundant for any readers.  I do a floating exit and pull off a few 360’s and do some tracking.  I’m a little wobbly with the tracking today.  I pull @ 4000ft and land on target albeit face first.  I can’t wait for the my next jump with Gail.

Jump #20 - On this jump I’m jumping with Gail Simms. I’ve completed all my necessary RW work for my A license, but just want to jump with someone to make sure I’m not picking up a bad habits, like back sliding.

On the exit Gail goes first do a floating exit.  I (as planned) pause for a second and then dive out after her.  I go into a track almost immediately and catch up to here in about 5-8 seconds and then dock.  Next we do a 360 to the right and dock again.  She make me work on adjusting my altitude to match here.  Which for me is grabbing as much air as possible to slow me down.  We release and do another 360, this time to the left and dock again.  This time she is way up there and man did she make me work.  We’re at 5500ft by this time so I break off and track for about 3 seconds, then get stable and pull @ 4000ft.

Jump #21 - Back to my solos again on this jump.  I do another front-flip then decide to track west for while and 180 and track back east.  Tracking feels alot better this time.  must have been first jump jitters earlier in the day.  I pull @ 3500ft and land off target, abit to high on the final approach.

Jump #22 / Hop-n-Pop - Ok, time to get the hop-n-pop out of the way.  My only nerves are really manning the door for the first time.  I ask some of the guys at back of the plane if they could assist and their readly oblige.  I get the green light and check the spot.  Wait for a couple of seconds to make sure I get out where I had planned.  I’m out the door and pull in 5 seconds (as was the plan with my instructors).  I pulled a little head down, but my exit was good.  I was aware that I was a little head down, but thought that it was not too much and that it was important to pull at the planned altitude.

My chute deploys at 4500ft and I begin my long decent to the ground.  Only the winds are not cooperating.  I must have been sitting at 4000ft for about 5 minutes (no exaggeration).  At one point I was beginning to decend and was at 3800ft only to get a huge up draft and be back at 4000ft.  During all this I’m turn as aggressively as I feel comfortable with.  I’m starting to worry about someone falling on top of me as well as the rest of the load is surely almost on jump run by now.  I finally get down though.  I beat the other jumps by only 30 seconds though.

Jump #23 - Last jump of the day.  I’ll be two short of the necessary 25, but oh well.  For this jump it the status quo.  360’s, rolls, flips, and tracking.  I pull at 4000ft and have an on target, standup landing.

All that’s left for the Proficiency Card now is two more jumps.  I’ve also been cleared to move down to a 180 from a 210.  My new wind-loading will be about a 1:1.

Blues