Well, I did get my first 2 jumps in yesterday! Wow. Indescribable. It certainly was scary being the last ones out, taking position at the door, and praying your instructors help you out.
Just for clarification, I was in the Accelerated Free-Fall Program. My first jump was me piloting my own chute and two instructors basically keeping me stable throughout the jump. Really amazing to watch how fast you are falling. Not necessarily the ground rushing up to meet you, because we deployed at 5K feet. More like you falling through the cloud layers and the ground just gets clearer. On the second jump, I passed an airliner on the way down. We also waited a little long to jump out of the airplane, so when I deployed my chute I was WAY north. I had to do my drills and track back to the holding area until 1 thousand feet.
Both landings were decent for a first timer I would say. Nothing broken, landed on my feet both times, but stumbled both times to eventually settle in on my ass. Found a couple of blades of grass wedged in a couple parts of my sneakers. Fun stuff.
So it’s too bad it is so expensive to get your “A license”. I’d follow through with the next 25ish jumps and get it, and then get some gear and that is when it gets fun. Maybe sometime in the future=85 I’ve got my logbook, and I might decide one weekend to get a jump in, but as it stands for right now, the money is saved for other things, pilot school being one of them. No-one won the lottery again, maybe I can get some help there!
So anyway, if you are looking to skydive ANYWHERE in the North Texas area, go to Skydive Dallas. Those folks are amazing, everyone there is very friendly, the food is great and the skies are blue!
