Skydiving
I can’t believe there is nothing in this computer about Skydiving? This is one of my most signifigent early adulthood events about confronting fear. I was a sophomore in College (1970 UT Arlington) when Dennis Burt burst into our apartment on Cooper street. “Guess where I’m going this weekend?” He said. “Skydiving” “You mean We are” I said. That started a chain of events that culminated 6 weeks later in our first jump. First the weather was bad. Then the plane was broken. Then the pilot didn’t show up ( hung over again? ). We kept driving to Cedar Hill, Texas just south of Dallas.
Finally everything was ready at the same time. My log book shows that on 3/14/70 I made my first jump. It was out of a Cessna 180. Ben Gutierrez put me out on a static line. There was a voice in my head. It kept saying over and over “Oh my God I’m going to die” I said “Shut up you have wanted to do this for six weeks” and it said louder “Oh my God I’m going to Die!” I looked down and saw what looked like ants. They were cows. I got out on the step in the wind blast. I could hardly hear myself think for “OH MY GAWD I’M GOING TO DIE!!” screaming in my head. Then I jumped.
You fall a long ways even with a 7 foot static line to pull your parachute open. The canopy has to come out of the pack. Then the lines stretch. About 75 feet but you are looking down at thousands (3,000). Then the canopy jerks you upright and everything is quiet and blissful. There’s a couple of good minutes before the next crisis, landing. I hit in the middle of some field and did OK.
Strangely the first jump is not the worst. For me it was the third. On the first you don’t really understand what is going to happen. I mean you discuss it and study and observe but none of that is like the real thing. Lots of things happen real fast in those three seconds between jumping off the airplane step and hanging under an open canopy.
Even on the second jump it’s too fast to comprehend but by the third you have a pretty good idea of what is really going to happen.
By that time I had a good instructor an older man (probably 50) Langondon F Son. I made several jumps with him and he taught me well. It turns out that the Cedar Hill group are a sort of outlaw group with a bad reputation. Ben Gutierrez was one of the worst. A time later on I saw Ben make a low pull. He came so close that I could read the military style name tag on his jacket and see his boot laces in free fall. Then he pulled his rip chord and his canopy came out inflated but twisted. He untwisted then hit the ground 10 seconds later.
Anyway I made my required five static line jumps with Langdon and learned more about how to fly my canopy. On my sixth jump I did a short free fall and landed 100 yards from the target. I remember making my first 10 second free fall back at Cedar Hills. I could hear and feel the wind build stronger as my velocity increased. It takes 10 seconds before a human body in free fall reaches equilibrium between the weight of gravity pulling it down and wind resistance not letting it get any faster at about 120 mph called ominously enough Terminal Velocity.
Thirty seconds of freefall is a pretty standard jump. It takes 10 seconds to fall the first one thousand feet then 5 seconds for each thousand thereafter. With rip chord pull at 2,500 feet this means an exit from the airplane about 8,500 feet. I made my first 30 second delay on my 12th jump in May of 1970. We did relative work on that jump. In other words another skydiver flew up to me and we joined hands in free fall. On the next jump three of us joined together.
When school was over for the summer, I moved back to Houston and began jumping at Dickinson then Conroe and later at the Montgomery County airport. Along the way I met Pete Bandy. We made lots of junk jumps and learned a lot that summer.
By next year I had one hundred jumps and an hour cumulative time in free fall. We were chasing the elusive 8 man hook up jumping out of a twin Beechcraft at 12,000 feet over Waco, Texas.
One of the memorable jumps along the way was at a meet in Valley Mills, Texas. We competed on 4 man relative work. In other words, how fast we could make a 4 man star. We did it in less than 10 seconds. That was remarkable. I did some of the work. I went in second. That means that one person fell as base or just remained stable. I went to him then two others came in from left and right (which is harder). We did it all before reaching terminal velocity at 10 seconds or full speed. We were hot shots for a day.
My worst jump had to be when Pete got hurt. We had a put together junk load at the end of the day without a full load. Six people went up in the twin Beech at Valley Mills. One of them was a student with about 30 jumps. He borrowed a parachute from Gary Lewis. Gary kidded him telling him that it was an old parachute and would probably work. This kid got separated from the group in freefall. Normally we separate at 3,500 to open at 2,500. The kid didn’t see anybody (we were above him) and pulled at 3,500 because he was worried about that old parachute.
The rest of us had made a five man hook up. We had just broken up and were turning away when I saw a flash of color go by me. Pete hit the kid’s open canopy. At 120 mph it was like hitting concrete. He also hit the kid and it broke Pete’s leg in freefall. Pete still had to open and land with a broken leg. Meanwhile the kid is knocked unconscious with a stremering parachute. He hits another jumper. Ken Gillespie had just watched his Paracommander open with a frontal tuck (pretty typical of PC’s). The kid comes right through the opening and nails Ken’s left wrist against his reserve breaking his wrist. The kid keeps falling and spinning and falling. From above it appears several times that he must have hit the ground. He is falling about 60 mph under a torn up parachute. Suddenly he wakes up, sees where he is, pulls his reserve (without cutting away his main) and has a 10 second canopy ride to the earth. Whew! But he did have broken ribs.
Meanwhile we land and Pete lays there in the grass yelling “Help, I’ve got a broken leg.” Sure you do I say. I walk over to him and he really does have a broken leg! Half that load went to the hospital with broken bones that afternoon. Pete’s leg wasn’t set well and he walked with a limp ever since.
Well that’s depressing. Let me tell you some good stories. John Mincher and I did a water jump for our C license. It was summer in Dickinson Texas. We wore life jackets and each had a trick. John jumped his ParaCommander and landed so close to the edge of the lake that he barley got his feet wet. His good parachute landed on the shore and didn’t even get wet. I made a giant handkerchief type parachute out of a shower curtain. I flew off line and released my reserve under the rig and it floated clear of the lake and remained dry, hence did not need a repack ($30). I went for a swim.
The best jump ever occurred in Valley Mills. We loaded 30 great jumpers in the DC 3 and climbed to 13,500 feet. I was one of the last out. The hardest position. By this time I had over 200 jumps and hours in free fall. As I stood up in the aisle, I felt slightly dizzy from the altitude. Our objective was to make a large star. The world’s record at that time was 20.
The exit is one of the key points. In freefall one falls 1,000 feet in 5 seconds. This means that if I am 5 seconds behind the first person out the door, they will be 1,000 feet or almost a quarter of a mile below me when we all accelerate to terminal velocity and about 500 feet behind because of the forward motion of the airplane. So we practice getting all 30 people out the door in 5 seconds. For me this means jumping 10 feet before I get to the door with 3 people still in the way just figuring that they will all have a clean exit(not bump the edge or slow down) and leaving the door already diving head down.
Immediately after the exit, you pass through some rough air from the airplane but you try not to alter your head down position very much because it will slow you down. The wind noise grows until it is screaming at 200 mph. You have to watch everybody else. At these velocities people have been killed in free fall collisions.
I don’t dive right at the forming star knowing that as I flare there will be lots of forward throw. The wind tries to pull my arms off as I come out of the dive. The forward throw has me closing on the star at up to 80 mph horizontally now. The star does not stay still. It floats up and down and breaths in and out and slides sideways. Six or eight jumpers are making simultaneous approaches. I have to watch them too. If one gets under me, his burble will cut off my air and I will fall on him. I bide my time. My job is to come in last. As I get near I can see that the other side is in danger of breaking up. The star slides under me and suddenly I am coming straight down right between two jumpers. The hardest approach you can make with a burble on each side.
Usually you grab two jumpers arms, shake, then they let go and you are in. Today with the star breaking up I punch in, slam into the arms and break them open in one motion. I look right and left. I am sandwiched between two of my mentors, Curran Phillips and Phil Mayfield. The 18 man star holds the required 5 seconds. We break at 3,500 feet track away from each other and the thunder of 30 parachutes opening rumbles through the air. That’s a good day.
Stephen hazen
