Today I did my first static line skydiving jump. The scariest part of it for me was climbing out of that plane!! The reason being (no, not because its stupid to jump out of a perfectly good plane
, ) the wind was roaring up there and you had to force your legs over and set them on a small metal plate. Then when the jumpmaster told you, you had to pull yourself up, using the strut of the plane, and had to hang from the strut in mid-air, plane going 80 mph, wind blowing HARD, and legs dangling, till told to go. In the air, I did fine till it came time to land. Your supposed to pull down on your toggles (steering mechanism of the chute) at around 10' to brake the chute, which lifts you up and slows down your fall. Guess what I did? NOTHING!! I never what they called flared or put the brakes on my chute. There is a circle of 2b stones about 8'in diameter that I was going for that the more skilled divers land in. I was so preoccupied with that, that I didn't do nothing but landed and rolled pretty hard. I did make it to the edge of the circle.
Well I had to redeem myself, so I had to do it again. Everything went well again, climbing out was still somewhat scary, but I did it. Landing time I flared the chute but at about 25'. Another hard landing but way less than the previous one. Again i didn't get hurt at all. They do put a radio in your velcroed shut pocket but I don't know, I overcompensated cause when the jumpmaster said 1 on the radio, I was supposed to just pull the toggles to my shoulders, instead I pulled them all the way down. he said if I would of listened to him, I would of made the experienced circle. I had a BLAST, only wish the radio was in the helmet, had a little bit of a hard time hearing him. I don't know, maybe I had sensory overload. Was a heck of a great time though!!
My sister is small and when it was time to hang from the strut, she couldn't hold her weight in midair and went before they had a chance to tell her to go. It didn't affect anything and she did well.
