Super Girl
Except for the Otter going down with a bad starter/generator on the busiest and nicest day of the summer so far, GRRRRR! I had a great weekend. What made it great was getting my daughter her last two student jumps and taking her on a four way jump with two of my friends. She is such a natural in the air that she was done with her training in just three jumps where it normally takes at least seven. Ok I admit that I had her on my own special training program but she earned her solo status by being simply great in the air. That girl can really move.
Anti Gravity Check
As a big science fiction fan it was always my dream to go into space. Of course I didn’t really want to do the hard work in school that would make my dream a reality so I had to settle for being a pilot and skydiver instead. In retrospect I think I ended up with a pretty good deal.
That’s My Co-Pilot
My daughter came out to the drop zone yesterday to get a few jumps in but decided that it would be more fun to do a bit of flying with dear old dad. She figured that because she will be flying with me on a few ferry trips across the pond this fall she might as well get in a little stick, (yoke) time on something bigger than a Cessna 172. She climbed into the right seat of the big Twin Otter like she flew it every day and aside from the time she spent taking pictures of the beautiful sunset was on the controls for everything except the landing, with jumpers landing all over the runway I figured that it would be best for me to be on the controls then. Today she will be doing three or four jumps and hopefully getting off student status. I guess we’ve got another airhead in the family.
F-35 Pron
I’ve never been a fan of the F-35 (Too expensive) but it is a pretty cool aircraft.
Vulcan’s Are Just Too Cool
More Oops
Navy: Skydivers lucky to have not landed in highly restricted areas on Kings Bay
The Navy get’s it’s panties in a bunch just because two jumpers land on it’s softball field because of a bad spot. If they can’t handle a couple of guys dressed in neon pink flying a bright red parachute in the middle of the afternoon they might need to review their security procedures.
Gravity Check
I already posted one of the great shots of my son Connor’s first tandem skydive with me but I couldn’t resist letting you all see this snapshot of us just leaving the plane. Connor wanted to do back flips on exit but as you can see his form needs just a little bit of work.
More Oops
Wow, was that dumb! The plane was over loaded with four big adults, dirt runway in the mountains, hot mid-day and a high density altitude. Doesn’t get much worse than that. Oh, except that he had the mixture knob all the way in (full rich) a definite no no when operating at high altitude. When the plane lifted off, settled back on the runway then lifted off again that should have been the pilots clue to abort, but no he just had to keep going. Lucky they’re not all dead.
