After a good couple of skydives on Thursday (Levels 3 and 4) I headed back to the DZ on Sunday to hopefully finish my AFF jumps.

We were in a different plane this time, with a taller door, so we’re stood up a bit more, and easier to actually jump from – usually we’re squatting a bit.

So, AFF Level 5 skydive, jumping with one instructor holding on. The exit was a bit dodgy, when leaving the aircraft I immediately went into a downward facing position, rather than facing the wind (directly ahead) and waiting for gravity to point me down. A bit of a fumble with the instructor, and it’s the first time I’ve felt my legs go from under me, but we quickly got stable.

The instructor gave one instruction to straighten my legs, then he let go and moved around in front of me. Then gave the instruction to do a 360 degree turn to the right. Once I’d got back facing ahead (with a nod to check my altimeter), I got the next instruction to do another 360 degree turn to the left. Slow, simple movements of literally lifting the opposite elbow a few millimeters, amazing how little movement you need, although when you’re travelling at 120mph you probably don’t need much to change your position.

At around 7,000 feet the instructor came around to my right hand side (when watching the video later I realised I hadn’t stopped turning left when he was in front of me, I finally stopped with the instructor on my right, well, that’s where he wanted to be anyway), ready for the pull, which I did successfully at just above 6,000 feet.

A little breezy on Sunday, so just had to stay facing into wind and wait for the altitude to drop off before it was time to come in for a landing. I did get a couple of sneaky 360 spirals in though before being told to just stay facing into wind.

I did my own landing again, but flared way too high so had a bit of a heavy landing – nothing serious, and learnt from it. I was actually a bit surprised cos my landing on Thursday was pretty darn good!

And now onto my AFF Level 6 skydive, a backflip, followed by some James Bond style tracking across the sky. The briefing went well, tho I was certainly a bit apprehensive about doing a backflip, I’ve never done one, anywhere, ever, so how the hell am I supposed to react when asked to do one at 12,000 feet!

Throw into that the tracking, which seems simple enough, but this skydive is starting to pick up in complexity and general things to think about.

I got kitted out with my previous parachute, and was ready at the manifest area waiting, feeling OK about the whole thing at this point.

Then comes the “lift”, the 15 minute ride up to altitude. This is where things just went downhill for me.

I’ve gotten used to the usual thoughts during the ride, such as “why am I doing this?”, “I think I’ll call it a day after this jump”, “maybe this skydiving stuff isn’t really for me”, etc, etc. These thoughts have been shared with most students I’ve been jumping with too, who all agree (strangely), if you have these feeling doing your own AFF, rest assured you not alone!

However, on this ride those thoughts just built on each other, over and over, until at the drop height I would’ve been happy to take the plane ride back down to earth, or at least have a simple skydive with no tricks.

Clearly not quite with it, and not fully focused, I get into position at the door, this is like automatic pilot now, you just seem to do the motions, which is good. “Check out!” to my instructor who’s hanging on the outside of the door, but not holding on to me this time – did I forget to mention, this is also my first solo exit!

The usual rocking motion of “Out!”, “In!”, and “ARCH!” as I throw myself out the door, but again, not into the airflow coming from the front of the plane, but facing straight down again, quickly went flying through the air unstable, trying to re-gain the arch position.

The video is coming, but it’s just like the others you see on YouTube, with arms and legs all over the place, trying to kick or pull yourself into the right position.

I was actually amazed later at how clam I was during this, my only concern was “arch, get stable, arch, arch, arch”, but nice and calm, the training paid off, if you’re ever unstable, you arch, simple. Within a few seconds I had managed to get stable again and waited for my instructor to appear in front of me.

Now, the whole basis for doing a backflip on this skydive is to show you can get stable after going unstable, well, I’d just been unstable thank you very much, so I didn’t go straight into a backflip. My instructor however was having none of it, and quickly gave me the signal to do the backflip. Arms out, and knees up and I did the backflip, well, what seemed like half of one, came back out into the arch position a bit too early, but was quickly stable again anyway.

Check heading, then altitude, make sure I’m arching enough, and wait for the signal to track. A small turn, check altitude again, and then slowly swing arms back and track for 5 seconds, 1-thousand, 2-thousand… Well, straightening your legs really rigid too is part of the technique – my legs had completely forgotten about that. So instead of tracking in a nice straight line, I just ended up doing big circles, which I quickly came out of since that wasn’t quite the desired effect, or what I was expecting. Back into the arch position and check heading, and altitude.

6,000 feet came along, so pull, and another long canopy ride down.

All the way down I’m still thinking “that’s it for me, I don’t think this skydiving is for me afterall”.

The strange thing is, this is after jump 6, not jump 1! As I say, over 95% of other students all share these thoughts, they’re all thinking it as they ride to altitude, so I’m not alone, not by a long shot.

I’d really got it into my head on Sunday, but after asking on the UK Skydiver forum, I think I just need a bit of a break to get my head in gear again. The weather looks a bit windy for the next week or so anyway, so there’s no rush to get back to the drop zone.

Lots of YouTube videos I think for me, to get psyched up again. It would be a shame not to get the 8 AFF skydives done, plus the 10 consolidation jumps, people have said I should get all that done, get my license, THEN think about whether or not I want to continue.

I’m sure I will, just need to warm up again 🙂

By the way, I have to re-do level 6, which was no real surprise, think legs on the tracking next time!