Last week was my 4th AFF jump. My task was to jump with one instructor with him holding onto me. Do a circle of awareness, reach touch and recover, and when he is ready, he lets go. Then I turn 90° to the right, stop, fly forward and dock. Then repeat to the left. Sounds easy enough. FALSE.
Well I was pretty excided about this jump. I would be falling on my own, turning, interacting with someone in flight. I was stoked.
Check in, Check out, prop, up, down, ARCH. The next thing I remember thinking is “why are we upside down. I’m not going to fight this ill let him flip us over. That’s his job right”. So he did and we got stable. Good, Circle of awareness. Altitude 8,500. “CRAP that burnt a lot of time” my instructor feels that I’m stable and lets go. “SWEEEEET I’m on my own” Everything is great. I’m on the column of air falling perfectly. I turn my head to the right, chin to right shoulder, and then rotated the shoulders pushing the right shoulder down. I start the right turn. When 90° comes, I stop the turn. Well kind of. Instead of turning I am kind of now slowly spiraling backwards and to the right and I can’t figure out how to stop it. It is like the column of air moved from my lower abdomen to my left peck. At this point I knew I shouldn’t try the rest of the maneuvers until I can stop this slow, slow, backwards, right spiral. And I couldn’t. I tried dropping the left shoulder to counter act the spin. Which helped, but as soon as I squared back up the spiral started again. I check my altitude, saw 5,500, waved off and pulled the chute.
The rest of the flight was fine but I was pissed off about the failed skydive.
Any advise out there to help me on the nest jump??
Thanks for reading.
FYI: incase it helps, I’m 6’4” 190lb, long and skinny
