Get ready for some high-altitude, high-speed, extreme adventures!😁 Today this travel bug and I made the drive down to the Gold Coast Skydivers drop zone in Lumberton, Mississippi to make some jumps out of a perfectly good airplane and participate in the Wounded Warrior Project benefit boogie. A "boogie" is a special skydiving event where a bunch of jumpers get together for a few days to skydive together. This boogie was held to raise funds to donate to the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity organization that gives support and aid to military servicemen and servicewomen who have been wounded while serving. Skydivers came from all over the area to participate; Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and even as far away as Ohio. This was the second year for the WWP boogie and we raised more money this year than last.
Despite cloudy and stormy weather (and work getting in the way) I managed to make four jumps today. This travel bug and some geocoins jumped with me, kept safe (sort-of) in my pocket during the jumps. We jumped from the drop zone's Twin Otter jump plane from an altitude of 14,500 feet and enjoyed over a minute of freefall on each jump before having to deploy the parachute and fly back to a soft landing at the drop zone. Then repacked the chute and did it again (and again, and again).
The first jump today was a high-speed sit-flying jump, where we fly/fall in a sitting position. It's very hard to do well, and since you're presenting less surface area to the wind than when falling belly-to-earth, the fall rate is much faster. Speeds can reach 180 mph or more and it gets hard to stay stable, in control, and in position with other jumpers in the air. Unfortunately, my video camera malfunctioned on this jump so I didn't get any footage. Too bad, because this was an awesome jump.
The next jump was a five-way formation dive where five of us exited the plane together, used our arms and legs like wings and rudders, and flew together to build a round formation in freefall. Once we had the round built, we switched positions to an open accordian formation (a line, with every other skydiver facing the opposite direction) and then took turns turning loose on one end of the formation, flying around to the other end, and taking a grip there. We lost one of the jumpers when we broke the round, and when it was my turn to fly around the formation the girl next to me dropped off and flew around too, but overall the dive worked out pretty well and was a whole lot of fun. Here's a link to a YouTube video of the jump from my helmet-mounted video camera:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKVEoDbQDRI.
The last two jumps today were more sit-flying jumps, first with a couple of experienced sit-flyers, and then with two less experienced jumpers. Here's the video of the two sit-fly jumps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHcgfD1mWzY.
Now this travel bug has tasted the beauty and thrill of flight and knows why the birds sing. We'll be back for more skydiving tomorrow.
Blue skies!
Model Citizen - Zero Discipline
This entry was edited by ModelCitizen on Monday, August 08, 2011 at 12:38:46 AM UTC.