It’s been three years since I’ve been skydiving. Once Richland Skysports closed, I no longer had a local place to dive. It took the desire of a coworker to jump to motivate me to get back into it. I went the weekend before she was supposed to go so that I could take care of all the things I needed to to be able to jump with her the next weekend. After talking to the instructors and getting a refresher quiz, they let me do a hop and pop, jumping at 7000 and freefalling for ten seconds before pulling. It wasn’t the cleanest exit, but I didn’t hesitate to do it. I had no problem jumping out, but I didn’t have the best posture and struggled for a few seconds to get right. It happened quickly enough, though. I had no problem pulling my chute, and was happy playing around under canopy. I was a little high on the approach but still landed on the grass a very happy guy. They showed me a photo of me exiting the plane, and it was very embarrassing how bad my body position was on exit. It was no wonder I struggled on the first jump.
That was enough to satisfy the instructors, though, and they let me jump at 12500 for my next jump. I was excited to practice freefalling, and took the opportunity to do flips forward and backward, a barrel roll, turning, and some tracking. I had good altitude awareness and didn’t have any problem pulling at the right altitude. I landed on the grass again.
I had some help packing my own chute this time, and got back on the plane for the next ride. This time I played around some more with flips, adjusting my fall rate, tracking, and heading control. I had no problem with my opening. The wind changed, and the landing pattern was different; we were going left handed turns, which brought us over the top of the building. I was a little nervous about that and ended up going over the building a little high and overshooting the grass by a few feet. I landed on the dirt and slid to a stop.
There weren’t going to be any more loads, so I paid and came home, ultimately very satisfied with my day.