This is the day I would return to the island of Texel and start jumping. But it turned out I still didn’t feel well. I really thought it was too distracting so I would take the gamble and wait one more day…

Tuesday 24rd July

Every day seems to start by waking up, today was not different.. I noticed I still wasn’t my old self but heck, I really want to make that first jump now. Good enough I thought and I grabbed my bags which were still pretty much packed as they were last week.

I got on the road early and drove to the boat. The weather was superb: no clouds, no wind. After the ferry crossing I noticed I started to feel like my old self again, good timing I thought! After a 15 minute drive on the island I arrived at paracentrum Texel once more. It was getting busy but I was put on a flight in the start of the afternoon. I wandered around, got some sun on my skin for a while and waited. The anticipation slowly increased.

I then heard my boarding call over the speaker so I grabbed my helmet and found my parachute again. I geared up. Fastened my chest and leg straps and performed a handle check. I got my altimeter, helmet and goggles and went in line for a pin check. This is a check of your equipment by the staff. They check if you wired yourself in properly, check you pins, your handles and more. I was good to go and received my steering briefing . They explained the wind conditions of the day and the landing pattern. The landing pattern starts at 800 ft.

I found my (main) instructor and we briefly went over the jump again before heading to the plane. At this point I felt my adrenaline starting to take effect but nervousness was under control as I was just anxious to get started. We boarded the plane and sat in rows, our backs facing the pilot. Someone shouted “OK!” and we started to taxi to the runway. Soon the propeller went on full throttle and the plane accelerated and lifted off. For a brief moment I thought of my tandem flight that had my ears popping for half a day after the jump because of air pressure. As we climbed a couple of thousand feet I hardly noticed a thing or it was easy to clear.. pfew. It now also became clear who my secondary AFF instructor would be. We had a quick in-flight introduction, a bit hard to do with all the noise so it was mainly when she smiled, I smiled and vice versa.

The plane leveled out, it was time for some static-line jumpers to jump now. Hilarity soon followed when the jumpmaster asked a student if he was ready. Something went wrong in communication here as he replied by asking the jumpmaster if he was ready to jump. Some confused faces were shown and then he fell off the plane, everyone had to laugh at this weird scenario in which things somehow turned around.

Back climbing now. After flying for nearly 20 minutes and reaching 13.000 feet it was time to put on the goggles and helmet. I performed one last gear check and said to myself, this is it now. The deliberately and unnecessarily slow opening rolling door came up.  Some jumpers went out but it was now my turn. I crawled around and waited for the secondary instructor to get in place on the outside of the plane. I then moved in the door and felt I was grabbed on both sides. Okay great, now what I thought. Then I suddenly remembered I had to initiate the exit procedure! So I went: “Check out, Check in, Propeller…  Up.. Down.. Arch (and jump)”.

There we went, I noticed we went a little head down before leveling out. I remembered what to do, and performed my circle of awareness (checking your bearings and height). I yelled it out to my main instructor and got the thumbs up. Okay, proceed with the practice pulls and feel where that handle is at. I managed to grab it and got tapped on the arm to know I actually had the handle in my hands. Two more of those and then another circle of awareness, that went well. I got my first hand signal, extend the legs. I did this a bit and got the OKAY sign after. After this.. no more corrections it I thought? I didn’t see any, okay check altimeter, still high enough. I really started to enjoy it now. I noticed my instructor to the right. Smiling like crazy and making faces. I also pulled some big smiles and crazy faces, this is amazing I thought. I suddenly noticed I was slightly rotating, in other words, my horizon started to move a bit and thought, damn I’m causing these guys to spin. Later on the video however I saw that I was released from grip completely!

Time to say goodbye now. I saw 6000 feet and shook my head to signal “no more work!”. I waved off and reached for the handle. It was still there and I pulled! After you pull you’re suppose to start counting 1001.. 1002.. 1003. In reality however when I felt my parachute starting to open I yelled out “YEAHHHH” in excitement and enjoyment. Man what a rush! I realized I did it! Wait, concentrate.. check you parachute! Was it square? Flying straight? I performed all the checks and all was well! I now did some flares in the air. I always thought flaring was tough, meaning hard to pull the toggles all the way down. It wasn’t that hard though and I noticed myself stopping completely in the air (the wind noise was gone as well).  After this I checked where I was. I was way up north of the dropzone! I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much time to play around and I should fly back to the right spot right away. Man the view is amazing, I took a couple of deep breaths and looked around. The whole island, mainland and not only one but two different sea’s in view.

Back in to the game now, looking for traffic and getting my ass back to the dropzone. It took quite some effort, flying against the wind but I got there just in time to start the landing pattern. I had it planned out, let’s see how this goes. My second turn to the left was a bit late. My last turn was okay but I slightly underestimated the decent rate when turning so I was going to end a little short of designated landing area but that wasn’t a problem. Okay, final approach. I was surprised at the rate I was going down at the ground. There was hardly any wind to land in against so I dropped fast. Now my instinct was telling me.. BRAKE.. you’re gonna smash any second now! My mind however told me to wait longer. My instinct won eventually and I flared just a little to high, causing me to drop the last bit. It wasn’t high though so I kinda just hopped on my feet, made a step or two and there I was. I smiled like a idiot now, high on dopamine, serotonine .. you name it. It wasn’t after I started grabbing my chute together that I thought: “Wait a minute, I made a standing landing..!” Man, I had to wait a week for it but there it was, my first jump.

Later I checked out the video with my instructor and we debriefed. There wasn’t much to add, it all went to plan so he complemented me with the jump and talked about level two!

In level two I only had to do one practice pull as I had no trouble finding my handle on the first jump. Also since my arch and stability was looking good they would release me again and I was going to use my arms to control my heading and maintain fixed looking at one point in the horizon. If things would go really well he would go fly in front of me and if he moved left or right, I would had to turn to follow him. I was excited! We were scheduled a few hours later..

To be continued!

So, let me go through the last couple of days…

Wednesday 18th July

We woke up and the routine was to first try and check the weather. The verdict was simple, no chance at all for a jump. We expected to see rain for the rest of the day. When in the afternoon it was indeed still raining and wasn’t going to stop anytime soon we went to the (indoor) swimming pool. That evening we played some chess to keep our minds awake. It was a fun day but there wasn’t any chance of a jump for anyone. The predictions for after Friday were a major improvement. We only had the hotel until Friday however…

Thursday 19th July

This was quite the unfortunate day in multiple ways! First of all, again the weather hadn’t improved enough for us students to jump. Second of all, it turned out I ate something bad the evening before. This left me feeling not too well so I had to take it easy this day anyway. I really hoped I would feel better quickly because tomorrow could be the first day the weather would cooperate.

Friday 20th July

I woke up, and did feel a lot better. Not as it should be but there was improvement. I now faced a bit of a dilemma. I could try and extend our stay for a few more days to further get well and jump, or go home for a few days, get well and go back. If I were to stay I would go from a hotelroom to a dormitory (I wouldn’t mind). Also I was informed that students had very little jumping space because they had to catch up on their tandem jumps.

I went to the dropzone to consult with my instructor and talk to my fellow AFF students. Some of them were now making their jumps! I could probably physically make the jump as well but I also wanted to completely enjoy it and I simply wasn’t on my game just yet.

So I decided to first go home! It wasn’t all that easy though, you start to get to know people quite fast if you spend hours of training together, hanging on racks, doing the parachute landing falls or waiting on the weather. After some conversations it turned out they would probably still be there next week though so I would probably meet them then.

So that was the plan. Go home, get well, and return a couple of days later. I made some arrangements with the hotel to return on Monday the 23rd.

I’m now very ready for that first jump as you can imagine! Fortunately, the weather is looking great for the whole of the next week so if I stay away from bad food I should finally get cracking at these AFF-levels!

I’ll report back here on Monday, stay tuned…

After the airspace was cleared again I started to prepare again but soon I heard the winds were now too strong for AFF. So we had had to play the waiting game again. Slowly the anticipation grew once more, only to hear that the winds and clouds were only going to get worse. They would call us, if by some miracle things would clear up again.

So as you can imagine, the day was a little bit of a roller coaster ride. It went from yes, I’m about to jump now to there’s no chance.

We simply spent the afternoon flying a big kite on the beach. It had toggles so it was as close as it could get for that day (I actually performed a full canopy check under the square kite!). We played some soccer before dark and we called it a day.

Looking at the forecasts, in some mornings it might be possible to jump, but the real good weather is going to be here friday and the days after. I might have to stay here a bit longer than originally booked for but I’m not leaving this place without finishing my AFF course

When the course resumed around nine, it was clear we were now going to be permanently separated from the Danish static-line group. We were introduced to our AFF-instructor Tjalle. He was a familiar face, I made my tandem jump with him last year. So that’s nice! We were now getting AFF-specific instructions. We went with our faces the rolling boards. It was now time to practice the actual free-fall routine. It was divided into blocks, first you breathe.. then check your heading, altitude and shout the altitude to your instructor (Circle of awareness). He won’t actually be able to hear you while you’re falling but at least he can see that you checked your altitude and possibly read your lips a bit. Next up were the practice touches. We would practice pulling the parachute handle in the air to get a feel of where it is. After this another circle of awareness. And after this we would have.. “free – free-fall” time. Until it would be time to pull the parachute.

In the mean time my buddy Ralph arrived to join me on the vacation. He made some pictures.
Next up was the plane exit procedure. We practiced this a couple of times out of a simple plane model.
Now it was time to put on a real parachute and do all the things we practiced again. We simulated the free-fall part and actually pulled our pilot chute to get a feel for it. Now again the plane exit. Ralph later made a picture of me practicing it by myself.

This is what that looked like:

Practicing the plane exit

Then we were hooked up to a rack, hanging on our parachute rig and harness. This was the harness test and we would have to make the right decisions and follow the right procedures. I luckily didn’t hesitate too much or made any mistakes so I was passed to jump. Now we just had to wait, and wait. The winds had really picked up so we weren’t allowed to go up just yet. It wasn’t going to improve, so I left my number if the winds would magically drop again. So we went back to the hotel and played some soccer that evening.

Better luck next day!

Man that would be a bad ending of this blog! In reality I just started my morning routine and put the bags in the car. I waved the folks goodbye and set off. It would be a 2 hour drive to the ferry. The sunrise was great and after an uneventful drive I arrived and crossed the sea (“Waddenzee”). I then arrived at the island of Texel. It was around 9 AM and the course started at ten so I took it easy.

I parked my car at the dropzone (Paracentrum Texel) around 9:15. I went to the hangar and they were starting things up: Rolling planes out of the hangar, performing checks on the planes, vacuuming the hangar floor. The atmosphere was good, everyone was looking forward to a nice day of jumping.  I noticed, however, that the weather turned for the worse now. There was some drizzle of rain. They weren’t worried however, after this one rainy cloud things would clear up nicely according to the radar.

Soon I found some other students dropping in. Soon after, some kind of military force invaded the area as well. It turned out they were a unit from the Danish military that wanted to get their wings. As things moved on, we were placed into classes. It was now pretty busy and they asked if I was okay with an English class instead. I didn’t mind so I ended up in the group with the Danish people along with a few other (Dutch) AFF people. Some of us wondered why the Danish army would come all the way out here to get their wings. It later turned out they just came here because the quality of education and the high safety standards. That’s a pretty reassuring idea I thought.

So, the training started! The group sat in a classroom and the flow of information started and went on for a couple of hours. After a short break we continued and had to go through the canopy check procedure. They wanted the whole group to stand up, do it and say it out loud in perfect harmony like a group of Chinese schoolkids. After a few tries we got this right. I realized there’s a big difference between knowing what to do, and actually doing what you know. You have to translate what you learn into an automatic, muscle memory kind of skill so that you don’t have to think about it. Repetition is of course the key!

We now covered a lot of procedures about how to check the canopy and the reserve procedure. I had a thought that was pretty much like this: “Wow I’m now not just reading this in Wikipedia here or something, this is the real deal now.” This realization made me smile though, because this is the path I wanted to be on, and now it’s here!

After a lunch break we did some PLF (ParaLanding  Fall) training. Then we went out on the field towards the landing area. After getting told where to land and where not to land we standed in a circle and performed the PLF’s in a wave like fashion. It was a fun experience, the sun was now out and it was funny to see all people make their roll one after the other. After this scouting experience there was more classroom time and more and more information. We now had to draw up landing patterns and learned all about steering and flaring. During the day we all had to recite the procedures at random, they really got nailed in.

After a long day of about 7/8 hours of all kinds of training we were done! But.. only for today. This was just the basic training that’s the same for static-line and AFF. We were expected to return the next morning at 9 am for AFF specific training.

I discovered one of the AFF students was staying in the same hotel nearby, as well as the Danish unit. It now really felt like not only this dropzone is about skydiving, the whole area is like a skydiving community, awesome! I returned to the car and checked into the hotel. I had dinner, relaxed and recited my procedures. This was mainly in preparation for the harnasstest we would have to pass on the next day in order to jump. After this I preferred some relaxation in order to process all the information given on this day. I went to bed after that. I was lying there wondering if my anticipation of jumping would keep me awake. I can’t remember anything after that so I felt asleep right after

Soon.. day 2!

In the last couple of months I was doubting to visit a wind tunnel to better prepare myself for AFF. At first I decided against it, the nearest tunnel was exactly at the opposite end of the country. The Netherlands isn’t exactly a very large country but it would take around 4 hours by train to get there for only a few minutes of flight.

However, about two weeks ago I talked to another pre-AFF student and his experiences were positive. I figured it would give some more confidence had I already experienced floating on air. So I booked myself a couple of sessions at Indoor Skydive Roosendaal.

So back to the train, it’s 12th of July and I’m relaxing in the train. The clouds provided a nice view to stare and daydream at. I got of the train and on the bus. After a couple of minutes walking I saw the building. On top of building I saw this piece of tunnel sticking out and I thought to myself: “No way that the actual diameter of that thing is that big!”
Here’s a picture of the building:

Indoor Skydive Roosendaal

I went inside, checked in and went to the visitors area in the tunnel. It wasn’t operated yet but it was nice to see how the actual diameter was and how high it was. More and more people started to appear and we got our suits and got dressed up. After this, earplugs, helmets and goggles.

The group now went to the instruction area where a video was show about the procedures, handsignals, tunnel entry and of course, body position. After the video, our group of about 14 people went to tunnel area. Just as I wondered who would go first, my name was called out I thought, great I’m gonna set the stage here.. If it looks like I’m fighting for my life in there I would probably freak out the rest!

I was soon gonna find out. The instructor stepped in and I were to follow. The amount of wind noise and trust in physics convinced me that I was not gonna just fall flat on my face at this point. So I looked up, stretched out my hands and there I was on this cushion of air. My first thought was: “awesomeee”.. soon followed by: “Arch arch arch!”. Then I received some signals, expected to get the common extend your legs signal but I got the exact opposite. It was hard to really get a feeling for the position of my legs with all the wind pressing against it all. It was over before I knew it.

In the sessions after this I tried improving my body position. I messed around with my legs, often extending them a little too much, causing me to grind my face repeatedly into the wall and the camera that was recording the dvd. How charming! However somewhere between the 4th and 5th session something clicked and I found the right combination of extending my limbs in the right way. I was reasonably stable! I got the signal to make a turn. I gently made a turn, hurray! And another one. It felt great to finally have some degree of control. In the final session I did okay, and the instructor then took my flying up and down the tunnel. At this point I just enjoyed the ride.

Overall I think it was not only fun, but helpful as well!

I put a short movie together of some of my tunnel flying:

Hope you enjoyed!

I am now off to pack my bags! Tomorrow is the big day.. the start of AFF

Introduction
My name is Adriaan, I am 22 years old and I live in the Netherlands.
For a quick overview of who I am, check the “About me” page here.

I am starting up this weblog to document my experiences while learning how to skydive!
This will serve multiple purposes. First of all: I imagine it will be fun to read these stories myself in say, a few years.
Second of all: It will probably be a good source of entertainment for you people!

I will be doing the AFF (Accelerated Free Fall)-course.
To learn more about the course, click here.
My course starts 15th of July and from then on I will post daily updates here.

But why fall out of an airplane on purpose?
I can think of multiple reasons actually! I will try and explain how I came to the decision about why I want to learn how to skydive.
This fascination is made up out of different interests. Some interests developed at an early age: for as long as I can remember I really enjoyed sticking my hand out of the window of a moving car to play with the wind rushing by. Or messing around with those controllable kites.
Later on I saw series like Band of Brothers in which paratroopers would jump out of planes behind enemy lines in France in 1944. I just had a bunch of admiration for doing something so daring.
Around age 15 I started to get interested in the weather. I enjoyed thunderstorms, watching the clouds and wanted to know how it all worked. Not too long ago I set up my automatic weather station (you can check it out here). I went up to those clouds in a few vacation flights and I started looking at planes as well. (Is the big picture beginning to show now?)
As might become apparent now, I have a bit of a geeky side. In the last few years I started to take general interest to physics. And in that period a guy I knew told me in detail about how he made a static line jump, and landed on an island, having a great view.
I then started connecting the dots.. it occurred to me that this was an activity that had it all:

• Wind flow
• A big controllable kite
• Paratrooper awesomeness
• Studying the clouds up close as an amateur meteorologist
• Airplanes
• Physics/aerodynamics, I mean it’s just amazing that you can fall out of a plane at 13.000 ft and that there’s this carefully engineered device that puts you back on the ground in one piece.
• A great view

Later, after I made my first and only tandem jump on Texel in August 2011 I found out there’s more:

• Adrenaline rush, feeling alive
• The serenity of floating around between the clouds
• Fun people!
• And a lot more (some are left to discover!)

So basically, that’s why I want to learn how to skydive!
And I hope you’ll be enjoying reading my updates