Accelerated Free Fall, AFF for short sounds like fun doesn't it, well it did to me about 15 years ago anyway. I had just watched Point Break with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves and thought it was the coolest thing ever, especially the skydiving part. So I did some research on skydiving, looked in the phonebook, didn't have this fancy inter net back then, and I ordered some brochures. I found a place about 45 minutes form where I lived called Atlanta Skydiving Center.
They offered three different options for beginners. The first was to start out jumping while attached to an instructor (tandem jumping), you were pretty much just along for the ride. Seemed kind of wimpish to me, Patrick Swayze would never be seen doing such a thing! The second was the static line jump where the parachute was opened by a cord attached to the plane as soon as you jumped, and you would do so many of these over a period of time and eventually do an actual freefall jump. This was a little better but and maybe good enough for Keanu but still an insult to the Swayzmaster. Ah but there was the third option, something new, apparently introduced to fuel the need of Patrick Swayze inspired nuts and the growing extreme thrill seeker crowd, the Accelerated Freefall. This bypassed all those sissy training jumps and went straight to the good stuff, jumping out of an airplane all by yourself with about 6,000 feet of freefall on the first day, of course it was the most expensive, but surely this was the one for me. “10,000 feet of pure adrenalin” as Bodhi would say.
So I showed up bright and early one Saturday morning at the “jump zone” for my morning crash course in skydiving. Cow pasture would have been a better description of this place in the middle of nowhere off some dirt road. There was an old doublewide trailer that served as a classroom and a couple of port a potties. Two planes sat out in the field that had obviously seen their better days. One was an old Beechcraft twin engine and the other was a tiny Cessna that looked as if it was held together primarily by duct tape. I wrote out my check for $450 and was introduced to Schven my instructor and to my one other classmate a fairly attractive blond girl a little older than I was. Schven had learned to skydive in the Swiss army and had a cool leather helmet like the ones you pilots wear in those old movies. I resisted the temptation to ask him if he still had his Swiss army knife too. Schven taught us all about skydiving or at least as much as he could in four hours and then we broke for lunch.
After lunch the three of us met back at the jump zone and Schven quizzed us on what he had taught us earlier. Then we went through a dry run of what we had to do when we jumped. We had to learn the “hotel check” which is where once you are in position to jump you check with your instructor for the final thumbs up. Then we learned the “arch,look,reach,pull”exercises that we had to do during our freefall to help us remember the right time to pull our ripcords. And most importantly we learned to arch properly when we jumped so we would just “tumble around like clothes in a dryer” as Schven put it. If you’re tumbling it makes it almost impossible for your chute to open properly. We both demonstrated these skills to Schven’s approval and we were ready to skydive, after we signed a long document saying we or our surviving family members could not sue the center if there was an “unfortunate accident”.
Schven ask who wanted to go first because we were jumping out of the Cessna and only one of us could go at a time. Of course me being the gentleman I said ladies first and my classmate gladly accepted. I watch what seemed like forever as the small plane climbed slowly to the desired height of 10,500 feet. My classmate did perfectly even had a fairly good landing considering it was her first time, now it was my turn.I put on my jumpsuit they provided which smelled like sweat and urine and put on my helmet with the radio shack receiver duct taped inside so I could hear instructions from the instructor on the ground who would guide me to the landing zone once the chute was opened. I climbed inside the tiny plane which had only one seat and that was for the pilot. The rest of us , Schven, me, another instructor, and another student who was going to do a static line jump from 5,000 feet all huddled in the small space made by ripping other seat and the interior. Once we got going it was extremely noisy because there was no door on the plane, so no one really talked. It was a slow climb in the little plane, I think we just had to fly around in circles until we got high enough. When we reached 5,000 feet they gave the signal to the other student that it was his time and out the door or opening where there once had been a door he went. A terrible noise followed and the plane shook violently and I really thought the kid had gotten caught up in the propeller and was now being ground like hamburger. Schven must have seen the look on my face and yelled into my ear that was just the static line dragging on the side of the plane, “I should have warned you about that ! "
I recovered from that and sat there for the next 15 minutes or so as the plane climbed higher and higher and was actually quite calm when the time came to jump, maybe a little too calm, it was almost like I was in a trance of some kind. The pilot gave Schven a signal and Schven gave me the thumbs up. The other instructor climbed out of the plane he would jump before just before me and Schven just after me. I climbed out and put my feet on the small footstep on top of the landing gear and held onto the wing strut as I checked in with Schven one last time.The first thing that struck me was the sheer force of the cold wind outside the plane and I was amazed that I was able to stand there at all but I did until I got that final thumbs up and then I pushed off the strut and was free of the plane. That’s when I made my first mistake, I didn’t hold that arch immediately and I just started tumbling “like clothes in a dryer “ like Schven had said. But in a second or two the training kicked in and I assumed that arch that had been so emphasized to me earlier and am I glad it was. As soon as I assumed that arch position I straightened right up. And that’s when the tunnel vision kicked in I don’t think it’s so much being scared as being in awe, it really felt like I was flying. Then I thought wasn’t there something I was supposed to be doing, oh yeah, the arch, look reach,pull exercises. We were supposed to do about 3 of these on the way down and check our altimeter which was strapped to our chest on each one. They were basically test runs for pulling you ripcord, you had to do it a certain way to keep from throwing off your form. Anyway about the time I realized this I felt something hitting me on my shoulder, quite hard, what the hell I thought. I looked over and it was Schven he had dove down to meet me and now seemed to be desperately trying to tell me something, he kept doing the reach pull thing, and it finally dawned on me he was trying to tell me to pull my cord. I hadn’t even looked at the altimeter yet but just as I tried to I was jerked so violently I think I passed out for a second. Schven had reached over and pulled my ripcord apparently after spending some time spinning around it had thrown my timing off and I had gotten too low before I realized it.
This is the first time I remember really noticing the ground I remember seeing Lake Jackson and it looked like a mud puddle and interstate 85 looked so small I could barely make out the individual cars. This was the best part of the experience for me I could sit back a few minutes and relax and enjoy the view. Then I heard the ground instructor over the radio telling me to grad the control cords. There was one cord on each side velcroed to the harness. I reached up and grabbed them and the instructor told me which side to pull and how long to hold it and I had to pull both sides several times in order to get lined up with the landing zone.
The last part of the jump was of course the landing and as we were taught you had be aware of where the wind was blowing and not have it to your back as this could cause you to plow into the ground. You also had to “flare” your chute at the proper altitude; I think it was 500 feet because this is what really slows you down. Even with the chute you’re still going about 15 mph which can make for a pretty rough landing if you don't flare at the right time. The closer I got to the ground the more I noticed it and the faster it seemed to be coming at me. The radio was one way only so I had no way to talk to the instructor but as the ground below rushed at me I thought surely it is time to flare this thing, and I pulled down on both cords as hard as I could, now I heard the instructor shouting NO!, and just before I plowed into the ground with the wind to my back and apparently having flared my chute about 400 feet too soon I heard him yell OH SHIT! Not the kind of thing you want to hear just before hitting the ground. Luckily one thing I did remember from the lessons was how to fall properly and roll into the fall to reduce the impact. As everyone came running over to check on me and onlookers looked on like someone watching a car crash I bounced up like a jack in the box, much to everyone’s relief. Schven soon arrived and gave me my post dive critique, which he started by saying it was one of the most exciting dives he had ever had, I felt kind of proud of that in weird way. I guess it takes a lot to screw up that successfully. That was my first and last skydive experience, figured maybe I should quit while I was ahead.
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