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30,000 Foot Skydive, 9/19 - 9/20 2003, Davis Calif.


Whats it like to jump out at 30,000 feet?  First, its really cold in the plane. There was ice on our oxygen hoses and parts of the airplane cabin. During the ride up, people read books or look out the windows at the view. You can't talk to the other jumpers since the oxygen masks don't have an intercom system. The jumpmaster checks everyone every couple minutes to make sure they are getting enough oxygen. You'll keel over in about 30 seconds if your air supply gets cut off, so this is really important! Your ears pop constantly as the plane climbs. The last few thousand feet seem to take forever, since the air density is so low the plane wings have very little lift.  The pilot gets a lot of incredulous comunications from the Air Traffic Controllers: You are doing WHAT at FL300 in WHAT kind of airplane?!!! ATC has to clear out all the commercial jet traffic from the area while we do our jumps.

The sky was crystal blue (a bit like the darker parts of the background on this webpage) and looks a lot like the view out of your comfy commercial jet's window - since we were jumping out at the same altitude that commercial jets fly.  Once you jump out and start your freefall the cold is actually not that bad.  You get really sweaty in the plane and that just makes it seem colder as you sit there unmoving for 90 minutes. Once you get out in the wind... Zap! you are dry again. Tad, the Jumpmaster had us exit one at a time with farily wide separation for safety reasons. I would have liked to do some 2-way RW with one of the other guys, but Tad strongly discouraged it. We did diving exits so as not to mess up the pilot who had his hands full keeping the plane flying straight and level.

Compared to a jump from 12,500 feet, you are moving much faster than normal, since the air is thinner.  I fall on my belly at about 120 MPH during a normal skydive.  I got up to almost 170 MPH on my belly during the HALO jump! I "potato chipped" a bit, since it was hard to get stable with the increased fallrate, mask on my face and oxygen bottle strapped to my leg - nothing a harder arch couldn't take care of.  Potato chipping is when you rock back and forth during freefall - Usually its caused by bad body position. The jump itself took waaay longer than normal. The freefall part of a regular jump from 12,500 feet is about 60 seconds. This one took about 2 minutes due to the higher speeds and the higher than normal altitude I opened my main parachute (4000 feet as opposed to 2500). It really feels weird freefalling from sub-sub zero temperatures to 70-80 degrees in a couple minutes!

For the non-skydivers or "wuffos", skydiving does not feel like falling.  You feel like you are flying in a very windy airplane and you are the pilot.  The ground does NOT rush up at you. Even at 30,000 feet, its easy to see the dropzone and airport. You do have to keep it in sight and aim for it, since at that altitude it would be easy to fly several miles away from the airport. A skydiver can fly their body horizontally about 1 foot for every foot of drop, so do the math :-) During practice we look at aerial pictures of the airport and landing areas so that we can recognize the dropzone from high altitude. The landing was uneventful - other than the part where I started following John under canopy. I knew he had done 28 some odd HALO jumps before and figured he knew the winds and landing pattern better than I did. What I didn't know was that he saw me moving towards him and flew his canopy further out to give me room. We both ended up landing a hundred yards or so off the normal landing area. Well, I got my nice photo finish the day before when I landed right on target during practice.

Blue Skies, and I hope to see you out at the Perris dropzone! Write if you find any errors or omissions.

Kevin McCoy D-26752



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First load, in plane doing 45 minute pre breathe
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Skydance sign
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Home of the 30,000 foot skydive
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The parachute landing area at dawn
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Some wild geese sharing the airspace above the dropzone
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First load  - pilot lighting up the engine
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Taxiing out
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First load, takeoff!
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First load HALO jumper opens canopy above DZ
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First load, HALO jumpers landing
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First load, HALO jumpers landing
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First load, HALO jumpers landing
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First load, HALO jumpers landing
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Kevin, waiting for second load to board plane
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Kevin, waiting for second load to board plane
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Kevin, waiting for second load to board plane
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Kevin, waiting for second load to board plane
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Tom and Kevin
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Tom and wife
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Tom, Kevin, Hans and John - second load about to board plane