Wife's 1st jump

**Kiltman** · 8th August 07, 07:45 PM

As an Air Force guy, I still don't understand why anyone would want to jump out of the perfectly good airplane.

**BonnieT100** · 8th August 07, 08:09 PM

I jump out of planes for a living. There's not much serenity involved. You have engine noise the entire time in the flight. Then there's that noise when the doors open and your heart starts racing. About this time your brain is asking why you do this and if you remember the pain from the last jump. Next you exit the aircraft, get tossed around and then yanked really hard. If you're lucky, you aren't swinging like a pendulum in a grandfather clock. Once I looked up and saw a C-17 (cargo bird slightly smaller than a 747) coming straight at me. I'm sure he was a couple hundred feet above me, but the mind plays tricks when you are screaming toward Earth at 15ft per second. Once all this fun and relatively peaceful part is over, you know what's coming next. If things are going well, you are drifting ever so slightly in a favored direction - for me, this is to the left. You make sure your feet and knees are together and relax. Yeah, relax knowing in a couple of seconds you are going to know what gravity is. Then it happens. This can be mostly summed up in one word - WHAM! quickly followed by OOOOH, and possibly some expletives. I've seen flickers of light 3 times when I hit. That would be my brain slamming into my skull. Usually this is following me hitting the ground on uneven terrain, having the wind change direction on me right at the last minute, or just general bad luck. I do this for an extra $150 in my paycheck. Crazy people do it for fun!

**MysticMead** · 8th August 07, 08:34 PM

Originally Posted by BonnieT100

I jump out of planes for a living. There's not much serenity involved. You have engine noise the entire time in the flight. Then there's that noise when the doors open and your heart starts racing. About this time your brain is asking why you do this and if you remember the pain from the last jump. Next you exit the aircraft, get tossed around and then yanked really hard. If you're lucky, you aren't swinging like a pendulum in a grandfather clock. Once I looked up and saw a C-17 (cargo bird slightly smaller than a 747) coming straight at me. I'm sure he was a couple hundred feet above me, but the mind plays tricks when you are screaming toward Earth at 15ft per second. Once all this fun and relatively peaceful part is over, you know what's coming next. If things are going well, you are drifting ever so slightly in a favored direction - for me, this is to the left. You make sure your feet and knees are together and relax. Yeah, relax knowing in a couple of seconds you are going to know what gravity is. Then it happens. This can be mostly summed up in one word - WHAM! quickly followed by OOOOH, and possibly some expletives. I've seen flickers of light 3 times when I hit. That would be my brain slamming into my skull. Usually this is following me hitting the ground on uneven terrain, having the wind change direction on me right at the last minute, or just general bad luck. I do this for an extra $150 in my paycheck. Crazy people do it for fun!

yeah... but that's a completely different type of parachute...it was made to get you down to earth as fast as possible and not kill you on impact...150 amonth extra isn't nearly enough... but then again... how many jumps a month do you make for that 150?

**BonnieT100** · 8th August 07, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by MysticMead

yeah... but that's a completely different type of parachute...it was made to get you down to earth as fast as possible and not kill you on impact...150 amonth extra isn't nearly enough... but then again... how many jumps a month do you make for that 150?

Depends. Some months 0, others way too many. We have to do 1 every 3 months for pay. The most I did was 3 in one month - all in the same week. Yeah, that sucked.

**MysticMead** · 8th August 07, 08:34 PM

Originally Posted by Kiltman

As an Air Force guy, I still don't understand why anyone would want to jump out of the perfectly good airplane.

I'm an Air force guy too... and there's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane....

**acstoon** · 9th August 07, 04:37 AM

Originally Posted by MysticMead

I'm an Air force guy too... and there's no such thing as a perfectly good airplane....

I came from an Air Force family... Dad was a pilot... everything he flew was built by the lowest bidder. That might be a contributing factor as to why he started our family tradition, back in 1940.

The story goes like this:
Dad & a buddy find this parachute, at their regional airport. They know nothing about it's condition. Being reasonable, sane

individuals, they decide to take turns piloting and jumping. Oh... it gets better: Neither knew anything about repacking parachutes. They made the jumps at a very small airfield, early in the morning, so no officials were around to get into trouble with.
Obviously, they were successful.

Every year, in celebration, members of my family go skydiving in tribute (or hereditary insanity). The number keeps growing, each year... my stepson will be joining us next time. Dad can no longer join us; at age 85, his emphysema restricts him to well below 10000'. Mom, however, is looking forward to next year.