As things were happening, I actually didn't panic. I was immediately think about what I needed to do to get out it. It was after I was on the ground that what had occured hit me, and it was sort of an OMG moment. It was a pretty wild experience. I don't think I'll ever forget the moments of deployment, from the pilot chute hitting my leg to the opening shock, to realizing my control lines were messed up. But, hey, things happen (this, of course, was entirely my fault). I wanted to do a second go at it before I left, would have been a sunset jump, but they couldn't work out the passenger loads to pull it off, since I needed a certain level of instructor as a monitor.
On my first jump, there were 5 of us in the Cesna. Me, jumping at 5,500, and four others jumping at 13.5... one the monitoring instructor who was also shooting video for the other three. The other three were a D-Pro class sky-diving and two folks trying to get their instructors ratings.... well, on that jump, *I* landed where I supposed to... the other four landed WAY outside the drop zone (mostly due to the fact the pilot inverted the wind direction (it was coming from the West, not the East) when he set up the jump run and they couldn't get back to where they needed to get. |
