Headed down to the drop zone yesterday, on the promise of decent weather, the winds were calm, but there was a certain level of cloud at 5,000ft, not very good if a student opens their canopy in a cloud and can’t see which direction to head in.

A few students managed to get on a lift in the morning but nearly had to land again without jumping.  Thankfully for them they did get to jump.

Unfortunately for me, it ended up being another day sat around chatting waiting for the cloud to clear.

By 4pm we could see blue skies in the distance, but my god that took a long time to drift over to us!

At around 16:30 we got the all clear, got my parachute on and headed over to the manifest.

A couple more drills for the Level 2 skydive, consisting of 2 practice pulls, then a 90 degree turn, and maybe another turn in the opposite direction, if time/altitude allowed.

We all then headed over to the aircraft which was just coming down from a previous list, got on board, a run through of the exit at the door, then got strapped in.

The ride up was pretty chilled, still got the usual thoughts of “what the f*ck am I doing this for again?”, then before we know it, we’re at 12,500 feet and getting ready to jump.  A couple of students were out before me, then I got into position at the door.

The usual “Check In”, “Check Out!”, then “Out”, “In”, “Arch!”, and we’re out.

Check headings, check altitude, and report it to the secondary instructor for any directions, 2 instructions to straighten my legs (they didn’t work the first time), then told to arch more, and we’re good to go.  My secondary instructor just gave me a thumbs up, so I headed on to the 2 practice pulls.

Then we still have enough altitude for a turn, so I get the direction from my instructor, begin the turn, but had no idea it was actually happening, we were above cloud so little reference points.  I’d obviously stayed a bit too committed to the turn as I then checked my altimeter and we was already at 5,500 feet!

Considering we should pull at 6,000ft it’s safe to say things got a bit rushed to pull. No arch, so the toggle wasn’t where it should be anyway, then a fumble, then we’re in the middle of a cloud, so my instructor pulled for me.

Totally gutted as my canopy opened, clearly it was the best thing to do instead of fumbling some more, but got myself worked up about possibly failing level 2.

On to the canopy ride which was great, did a couple of quite steep turns, pulled one toggle enough to get a good steep turn going, then a bit more, then a case of “ok, that’s enough!”  🙂

The ride back in to the landing area went perfect, landed running, tho a little too fast, so didn’t manage to stay standing, but better than Level 1 anyway!

The debrief was interesting, I rushed the “Out”, “In”, “Arch”, so I need to keep a bit calmer, the rest was OK, and I over-reacted about possibly failing the level, passed it fine.

Level 3 is next, where the instructors will hopefully let go for a bit if I’m stable enough, so now it’s a week of just concentrating on body position, if I don’t get any directions from the instructors on the jump that’d be pretty darn good.

Onwards and upwards…