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Exhilarating!

Who would be crazy enough to leave a perfectly good airplane, accelerate for eleven seconds to reach a terminal velocity, where the pull of gravity equals wind resistance, of almost 200 kilometers per hour (125 miles per hour)? Quite a few. In fact about 130,000 people in North America alone, perform an average of 18 jumps per year.

Most people have experienced flying in their dreams. The quietness and peace they enjoy asleep is close to what is felt in skydiving. Skydiving is exhilarating. In free fall, you merely feel the pressure of the air against your body. Then the parachute opens. With the modern rectangular parachute, you feel a gentle pull on the shoulders. The air resistance against the one square meter of your body has increased dramatically now that the 25 square meters (250 square feet) of the canopy is also subject to drag. You now fall at only 6 meters per second (20 ft per second), slow enough to perform a tiptoe landing.

I started jumping in the spring of 1970, at the time when parachutes were round like mushrooms. Training was intensive and took several weeks, including the performance of at least 40 sit-ups without interruption to strengthen the back. I needed to study a 200-page manual and undergo a serious medical examination before being allowed to perform a static line jump. I rehearsed extensively the Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) technique, which converts vertical movement into a rotational movement upon landing, as there was no way to land standing up. While I was preparing for my "brevet," two members of my club (Paris University Club) were killed (one by getting into power lines, one by failing to pull the ripcord that opens the parachute). We had to drive 245 kilometers (150 miles) to an airstrip which was deemed safe by the club.

Our first jump was fantastic as we had no clue of what was going to happen. The fact that our shoulders were badly bruised when the parachute opened during the static line jump was not a concern but the following jumps were filled with more apprehension. Jump number six, the end of this first campaign, I was dropped too far away from the drop zone and had to land in the wind at maximum speed to avoid a 2-story house. I really hurt my lower back as I rolled on the ground. I decided to leave skydiving on the back burner.

In 1995, my 21 year old daughter was talking continuously about skydiving so one Saturday morning we attended a static line jump training course, now reduced to five hours. Jogging shoes had replaced the heavy army boots that were compulsory for skydiving twenty five years earlier. The mushroom parachutes had been replaced by the rectangular canopies. The reserve parachute was no longer located on the belly but on the back under the main parachute. While I had jumped before through the airplane door, I now had to climb onto the wing of the small aircraft, look straight in the eyes of the jumpmaster, wait for his question, "Are you ready?" say "YES" and JUMP! Looking at the Earth from the wing of an airplane was an altogether new experience. The glide with the canopy was much smoother and more controllable than with the round parachute. You could not really change much of the direction with a round parachute, while you can really sail the rectangular canopy. I could land standing up as the approach speed was about half of what it had been with the old round parachutes. It was a very smooth ride except for the concern about my offspring, who fortunately did very well.

This second series of jumps went well until, on my ninth jump, when my lines were badly twisted .I disentangled them without any panic, but my radio did not work and I had to use my 25 year old experience to glide the canopy, completely by myself. As I was landing, I saw the crowd of club members running in my direction. They were very concerned that I would impale myself on a fence 65 meters (70 yards) away.

The advent of the AFF (Accelerated Free Fall) technique motivated my tenth jump. While static line jumps give you the autonomy of canopy control, AFF adds real free fall to the pleasure. But, one cannot just jump out of a plane, spend a minute going at 200 kph (125 mph), pull the ripcord, fly the canopy and land. A person exiting an airplane has a good chance of rotating in loops, seeing sky, ground, sky, ground… possibly blacking out and being unable to open the parachute. The process is tamed if you jump from the plane with two jumpmasters, not attached to you, but holding on to you. They play the role of training wheels on bicycle or outriggers on a canoe, stabilizing you. And they DO help you in case of emergency until you pull the ripcord YOURSELF. Then YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.

AFF starts at 13,000 ft, at which altitude I jumped with my two monitors. I was unable to see the airplane as I left it and experienced a split second of complete unconsciousness. Then I realized that somebody, a fourth person, was waving at me so that I would smile as he took pictures. I was out of the plane and felt hardly any movement, although I had already reached a speed of more than 160 kph (100 mph). I also realized that my arching body position was quite good while it had seemed so difficult to achieve it during training on the ground. I performed a "circle of awareness," looking sequentially at my monitors, then checking my altitude: 12,000 feet. I then simulated three ripcord pulls without losing my overall arching position. After a second circle of awareness, I checked my altitude again; 5,500 ft. Time to pull the ripcord for good. The canopy did not open too well, but after a few seconds, it looked stable, steerable and shapely enough to eliminate any need to use the reserve chute. The end of the glide was smooth and I landed standing up close to the target.

*Statistics cited from Parachuting, The Skydiver's Handbook. By Dan Poynter and Mike Turoff, Para Publishing, Santa Barbara, California.