As usual, before I release a travel bug or geocoin to travel around from cache to cache it first has to go skydiving with me. Since this traveler is about to be re-released, I took it with me to the Gold Coast Skydivers drop zone in Lumberton, Mississippi today to make a few jumps. We made three jumps together, jumping out of the drop zone's Super Twin Otter jump plane from an altitude of 14,500 feet AGL. On each jump we got over a minute of freefall time, followed by a five-minute parachute ride. We landed back at the drop zone near the packing area, packed the chute up and went again and again.
The first jump was a high-speed sit-flying jump. On this jump, two other skydivers and I fell in a sitting position. Since less of our surface area was presented to the airstream the freefall speed was higher and the freefall time was shorter. Sit-flying speeds can get up to 180 mph or even higher. It is much harder to fall stable and control your position relative to the other jumpers in a sit, but we managed to stay together fairly well. My helmet-mounted video camera recorded the fun and I posted the video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJqRav8TaQo
The other two jumps were formation skydives; four of us falling belly-to-earth, trying to build different formations during freefall. The exit from the plane was a little screwed up on both jumps, but we managed to get all four of us together and get a little done before we ran out of altitude and had to separate and deploy our chutes. Here's the video of both jumps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bntcVezgvPk
Now this replacement traveler has experienced the joy and thrill of flight and knows why the birds sing! I'll get it into a cache soon.
Blue skies!
Model Citizen - Zero Discipline