I like days like this.

2-way sit with Mario to begin the day. Hmmm, nice, OK :-))) !!! I exit facing the prop, no funnelling, oops, where did that 180° turn come from? steady, control, push on my legs, nice, fly towards each other, slow down a bit, hey no backsliding please, cool, I could just touch his foot, beep beep, end of jump, Yahoo!!!

A level 2 jump next. The other instructor doesn't wear his jumpsuit. He wears a jersey and one of those old leather hats. I have a flash back. This is how we were flying last century :-). The jump is OK.

And another 2-way sit, another good one. I really enjoy this stuff. My sit-to -track transition sucks. Have to pay attention there.

Next is the older man from a few weeks ago. He's back for his level 5. On the ride up, we fly over the factory where he works. He points it out to me, it is one of those real heavy industry factories. I say "Glad I'm up here, rather then working down there" and I give that factory the finger. He grins, says "yeah", and also waves his middle finger to his work place. I have a good feeling about the jump. And indeed, it is a good one.

The new load of students from this week's FJC is ready by now, so it's two more level 1's and that will be it for today. First one is a middle aged man (right, that's about my age, maybe even a tiny bit younger), nervous, quite a bit of work in the air, but in the end he does OK, and like all of them, he really loves it. His 9 year old son is waiting for his dad when he comes back, and with his eyes full of admiration, he says "I want to be here on my 12th birthday". 12 is the minimum age for a tandem here in Belgium.

Second student is a girl. A bit of confusion on exit: she doesn't position herself correctly in the door, she grabs the bar above her head with both hands and holds on to it, I am outside, and my inside colleague doesn't react, so I have to let go of her harness grip to take her arm, and position her correctly for the exit. No problem there, but if she chooses this exact moment to exit, we have a (likely) funnel, with me having only an arm grip on her. But she doesn't do it and we make an uneventful jump. After this initial confusion, she 's really good, very aware, doing all the stuff she has to do, and really enjoying it while she does it. Under canopy, she even listens to my instructions (and lands fine)!

I am thinking about something, it starts with the letter "J", it rhymes with "upiler"... Any ideas?

AFF

At last, a beautiful blue-sky day. The summer we are having, our climate is really getting confused. I guess we are the last generation that will be allowed to burn fossil fuels just for fun, so we might as well enjoy it, no?

It's busy. The bad weather made for a lot of funjumpers that still have some money left, there are lots of tandem bookings that we had to cancel, and of course lots of AFF students, eager to continue and complete their training.

First there is Mieke, she took her FJC end of june, and only now we can do levels 5, 6 and 7. 5 is a good jump. 6, at one point she funnels, gives me a sad look, I can see her mouthing "sorry", than she turns belly to earth again and continues with the dive. I like it when my students are polite ;-)). On her final level, nothing works: she funnels the exit, funnels her frontloop, funnels her tracking, but apart from looking frustrated, she handles it all and she pulls, at the exact altitude, stable. She repeats the dive for her first solo, and this time, it all comes together. I know it went great before she tells me, just by looking at her smile.

Then there is an older man with whom I already made a few jumps. He is stuck at level 3, it is (if I remember correctly) his fourth attempt now. He has resigned himself to wasting his remaining jump tickets on level 3 jumps, and quitting after that. When he tells me this, I refuse to jump with him, and tell him to come back only if he really wants to give it a try. It takes a bit of time and a bit of peptalk, but we do two jumps today: he passes his levels 3 and 4. I am rather proud of myself. Look at it:



Maybe he's not a natural, and maybe he'll never be a skygod, but he will be able to stay safe and have great fun.

A quick level 1 after this, and then finally, beer!

Zwartberg

My usual DZ is closed this weekend. There's an old timer fly in on the airfield. So, let's make some jumps at Zwartberg. Immediately when I arrive, manifest asks if I can help out with AFF, and of course I can :-)

The student is a super light weight (52 kilo) mexican youngster, and we do levels 3, 4, 5 and 6. A quiet day for me, the day of a life for him. He arrived in the morning, looking shy and stressed. After his first jump of the day, he started smiling. By the end of the day, he face was frozen in a big, happy, not-of-this-world grin. This is his level 5. Good exit, floating around a bit in the beginning, confident on his 360°, flying forward is difficult at first, but than he gets it, great altitude awareness on his second turn, good pull. A very nice jump!



What I don't like about this DZ is the lack of beer at the end of the day :-(

some shit, some fun, some beers

The day starts with low clouds. Some people could argue that they are too low, but enough people are willing to try their luck, so the first load goes up. I am not on it. The cloud deck is under 2000 ft. To clear some trees, Polleke lands with the wind, on a rough far-end of the DZ. He only just started jumping again after he had both his hips replaced. And he is under his mini-Katana. And he is unlucky. Shinbone fractures. On both his legs. What a lousy start of the day...

About an hour later, the sky is almost blue, and I go up for my first jump of the day. It's a level 7. The guy is a fireman, a medic too. I like working with people who are trained in handling stress and emergencies. He is rather nervous in the plane, and at 11000 ft, I tell him to bring down his hartbeat in the next few minutes. He looks surpried, then smiles and just does it. And that's the start of a great jump! Congrats on graduation!

Next is a level 4 with a very big guy. Well over 2 meters, over a 100 kilos. Exit is good, but then he doesn't arch, and since he has a lot of surface, our average speed for this jump is a mere 105 mph. He is not unstable, he makes a good jump, but without arching. OK, good enough for me. But over a 100 kilo and only 105 mph: I don't think I know any other skydiver who can do that...

On to the next: a level 3, an older man I jumped with last week (or 2 or 3 weeks ago, I don't remember). He has over a 100 jumps from 20 years ago, most of them static-lines, but over 30 freefall jumps nonetheless. Last time, he held on to his PC, so I brief him again on the difference between ripcord and PC. And this time, I make him actually do it a couple of times. Up we go. His exit is not very good. Rather than taking control of the jump rightaway, he more or less falls out of the plane. His body position is not good. Much worse than the previous jump we did. We manage to release him for something like 20 sec, so it's not that bad, but at 6500 I start signalling him to check altitude, at 5500 I give him a shake, Gert gives the pull signal, but there's nobody home. 4500 Gert pulls for him, and only then, while he is pulled out of my hands, I see him waking up and giving the 55 hand signal. And this for somebody with over a 100 jumps?? During debrief, he tells me that next time, he will put on his reading glasses so that he will be able to actually see his alti. ????? Some people, I really have a hard time believing...

To end the day a level 5 with the big boy again. Look at it. What a great jump!



And as always, a few well deserved beers to round up the day. Get well soon Polleke!

What a day!!

I did a level 3 today where I was "out of my comfort zone". Minimum speed was 104 mph: I can handle that. Max speed was 128 mph: I can handle that. But compensating for those speed changes in the same jump, and at the same time having to side-slip, fast... I got out of position three times. No good.



Two jumps with Inge, levels 4 and 5. She really is incredibly cool. Look at her level 5. A spin is scary for a student (even a small one like this). The first time a student really experiences the force they are dealing with. The speed with wich a jump can go to pieces. The helplessness of being out of control. Well, she doesn't make too much of all this. She just picks herself up, and makes a good second part of the jump. Something I don't see very often. By the way, video is an incredible tool to debrief jumps like this one.



Now look again at the video. The last bit. Her pull. I don't know what to think about this. The gear is OK. The pull is good enough. And nevertheless this happened (or, luckily, didn't happen). I didn't see it in the air. During debrief, I noticed that the bridle went through her burble, but only later at home, I looked at a slomo of that part of the video and realised how close this was.





Lets move on to a more pleasant picture. There was also the last jump of Wesley's AFF course. He did a great level 7. And he enjoys it. Just look at that face :-) It's witnessing moments like this that make my day, that make me love being an AFF instructor.



To end the day (and before celebrating his AFF graduation) one more solo freefly. A funnelled exit, but a nice stand-up for the rest of the jump. The feeling of speed and freedom is incredible!

Have a great skydiving career, Wesley. Cheers!

The season starts

4 AFF jumps today, then it started raining. So plenty of beer time afterwards.

A level 4 and 5 with Wesley. On the first jump, we averaged 134 mph. He weighs a little over 50 kilos, and I had my sweater on, in case we would be going slow... My back aches. I want to show you his level 5. It is a good jump. The problem I had was that in his levels 3, 4 and 5 he never showed me a jump that was OK from start to finish. He showed me everything I need to see to pass him, but I prefer it when they show me at least one jump without shaky bits. In this jump, it takes him over 720° after his (very good) exit. Then there's the good part. Then, when I signal legs-out, he misunderstands this as a second turn-sign. And he doesn't really stop this second turn, and the turning before his pull is not controlled.



The other two jumps were level 3 and 4 with Inge. Level three was a bit shaky (she didn't jump for almost a month) but good enough. Her level 4, she needed most of the jump to sort it all out, but her smile when she is finally flying in front of me says it all.



Under canopy, she is in the right spot at 1000 ft doing her last wind check, but then she flies a circuit that is much too short, so when she is in final, at 800 ft or so already, she realises this is not going to work. She takes a bit of time to decide what to do, and then decides wrong: she starts another circuit, too low. But now that she goes for it, she is determined (and quick) so it works out OK. But her final 90° is (I guess) around 100 ft. Way too low for a student, not something I like too watch. On debrief, she gives a very good account of where she went wrong, and where she lost time. The only thing I have to add is the better way out of her situation: 10 or 15 sec of crosswind flight would have given her all the space she needed.