Near miss

5 jumps today. 2 jumps with Thomas. He asked me to jump with him and to film his body position and his excercices. First jump I briefed him a linked exit, but apparently he didn't get the part about relative wind. Second jump I tried to explain it a little more, but the result ... Well, look:



Maybe next time I'll just throw him out of the plane and see what happens :-) You don't have to be a skygod to have fun!!

On one of those flights, we had two people exiting at 5000 ft. Just under 5000, the pilot made his 90° turn into jump run, the swoopers exit, and suddenly appears a Boeing. A big Boeing. Close. Very close. Heading straight towards us. It was in approach to land at Brussels airport. It had to abort this landing: TCAS said "climb - climb". That was, apart from (planned) formation flights, the closest I have ever been to another plane in the air. Officially a near miss. Traffic control took over 5 minutes to clear us for the next flight level.

I also did level 6 with Lesley. 6 is my favourite level, and yes: fun for the both of us! The jump itself was not great, but more then good enough. Solo exit OK, back loop not OK, but nicely recovered, in tracking he forgot to de-arch, slight turn to the right in hovercontrol.. But at ease and in control all the time.

In between all this was a 2-way FF. I suck :-(

And to end the day, we quickly briefed a 4-way (with Harry, Sus and Karel). To make absolutely sure there would be brainlock-beers afterwards, we made it something special. Instead of going round, doing points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then the same again, we briefed it up-and-down. So that makes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, etcetera. We made a good jump, we had fun, and we achieved our beer-goal :-)