2 IAD jumps

Woke up, weather looked better than yesterday's forecast, so headed for Maytown.

First jump was a repeat of my first IAD jump, but this time with John Miller.  Focused on the exit count and got that about right.  Get ready - out the door, on the step, as far out as possible, look back at John.  Get set - hang, keep looking at John.  Go - look up at the wing (which I could have done better), let go and get into an arch.  All good, but need to pull my arms down a little and keep a little tension in my legs so they don't fold up by my butt.

Jed on radio for canopy.  Talked to him before.  Asked him to let me fly unless I was way off course.  He called up that I had a good canopy, asked me to do a 360 to confirm I heard him, then he didn't talk to me again.  This actually messed up Andrew K who was coming out next.  He never heard Jed give me any instructions and thought his radio wasn't working.  Just for practice, I did that 360 with rear risers while my brakes were still stowed.  I entered my landing pattern a little early.  Final was in a west direction parallel to the runway.  I flew almost to the house.  Slid in the landing in the grass on the airport property.

Second jump was another IAD 3500' jump, but this time with a practice throw of balled up newspaper.  Think I was thinking too hard about the timing of the practice throw, so my exit was a little worse.  More on my back.  Instinct was to work on getting belly to earth, but of course the canopy opened long before I could fix my position.  Tried to do a practice throw then, but really wasted effort, and the newspaper had fallen out earlier anyway.  Have to do this one again.  Still need to get my arms down and legs out.

Same story with Jed on radio.  Canopy was good, he never had to talk to me again.  Final was from the runway toward the hangar.  Adjusted my turn altitudes a little to get lined up with the X.  Passed over it and stood up a nice landing about 40' past it in front of the doghouse.

JR Sides was around.  Thought he completely retired to FL, but lives in Chambersburg in the summer.  Good to catch up with him.

First IAD jump

Had some confusion and delays.  John told me and Larry to get geared up, but I honestly thought he just meant Larry because he was in line ahead of me.  So I was manifested on a load, then taken off the load, which led to a scramble to fill the load.  And then that load came down without jumping because the cloud ceiling was too low.

Got on another load later.  Larry and I were students, John S was our instructor, Josh had the radio on the ground.  I was first.  A little tough to maneuver myself from sitting next to the pilot facing backward to kneeling next to the door facing forward, but got there.

Exit was crap for so many reasons.  I got out on the step fine, but didn't reach all the way out along the strut.  Then on "Get Ready" I didn't step off the step and hang on the strut.  Instead, I basically jumped backward off the step.  I knew something wasn't right.  Focused on that and ended up bent forward at the waist instead of arching.  Arched OK just as the canopy was starting to open up, so ended up fine, just absolutely screwed up the exit.

The canopy opening without me pulling the pilot chute was very surprising.  I have 93 previous jumps and I pulled my own hacky 93 times.

I think I did great under canopy, except for some possible miscommunication at the end.  Canopy looked fine, nobody around me, did my controllability checks, then looked around to figure out where I was.  Aimed for the holding area as Josh gave me a couple of instructions.  While in the holding area, did some turns, did some practice flares, and did some rear riser turns.  Josh asked me to do one more practice flare when I was at 1,000 feet, and just as I did that, he asked me to turn left.  Since I was in deep brakes from the flare, I let my right toggle up to do the left turn.

Then the miscommunication.  I thought I was doing everything he asked, and I got a lot of confirmation that I was.  At 600 feet, I started to turn left, which was timed nicely because I was just about to cross the runway.  John wanted me to do my base leg along the area just to the side of the runway.  Josh was aiming me back to the runway.  Not 100% sure what went wrong between us there.  At the end, I kept trying to turn a little left to avoid the runway, but Josh kept directing me toward it.  He told me to flare, I did (and I think it was a good flare), and I slid into the runway rather than PLF on the tarmac.  And I was in the crosswind base leg, not upwind final leg.

Talked to John.  He said I should have landed the way I intended and ignored instructions that didn't make sense.

I'm doing this jump over again, but it really felt awesome to get back in the sky.