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.
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