Marc's Public Blog - Flying


All | Aquariums | Arduino | Btrfs | Cars | Cats | Clubbing | Computers | Diving | Dreamstate | Edc | Electronics | Exercising | Festivals | Flying | Halloween | Hbot | Hiking | Linux | Linuxha | Monuments | Museums | Oshkosh | Outings | Public | Rc | Sciencemuseums | Solar | Tfsf | Trips

This is a collection of my blog entries and experiences with flying, and learning to fly. Something I had been wanting to do for quite a while.
You can find all the pictures I've taken here, and read below for my experience.
Specifically, I have a page for my Trips to Oshkosh, the mecca for pilots

>>> Back to post index <<<

2006/06/27 Tandem Jump in Lodi
π 2006-06-27 13:59 by Merlin in Flying, Nflying

Well, since my local flight club had a fly in event to a drop zone, I decided to give it a shot, and flew to Lodi (1O3) with Jen to do tandem jumps out of a perectly good plane.
The flight to Lodi was somewhat interesting leaving out of Palo Alto as the ceilings were quite low (about 500 feet or less in some places) over the bay, but luckily, it cleared up when I reached Fremont. The rest of the flight was smooth sailing...

The tandem jump was easy, the jumpmaster does all the work for you, and just takes you along for the ride. His rig has two chutes as usual, and the backup chute is linked to an altimeter that auto-deploys it should he fall unconscious or be unable to deploy it himself.
Of course, those are the new sport chutes, not the round one like the army used ages ago. So, you have an airfoil that you can steer, and you can even flare at ground level so that if you're good, you can stop the decent and just put your feet down with no problems.
I brought my wrist garmin forerunner GPS for the ride, and got some nice graphs out of it, when plugged into Google Earth (the first color is the plane ride, and the second one is the end of the plane ride, the jump, and rest of the way down after the parachute has deployed).
Interestingly enough, despite severe agrophobia, I was not really afraid. It's just good that I didn't have to stay on the edge of the plane, and decide to jump myself: the jumpmaster did that for me :)
On the way down, the wind in your face is pretty extreme (well duh!, I guess, but still), and once the shute is deployed, you can steer pretty easily, and do loops (which are basically steep turns)
Kudos go to the cameraman/photographer that jumped with us, and did an amazing job of capturing the entire thing while freefalling himself.
In a nutshell, good time was had by all :)
I then got back to PAO just in time for a lesson in a 177RG :)

Here are the rest of the pictures of my first jump in Lodi , and don't miss the nicer and bigger Google Earth pictures at the end of the gallery

You can also download the garmin gps track of the jump , or the Google Earth kml equivalent (I used google earth linux and the kml was generated with gpsbabel. No windows were harmed in the making of those shots thanks to help from google :)




















More pages: November 2023 October 2023 April 2023 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 May 2021 November 2020 August 2020 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 March 2019 January 2019 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 June 2018 May 2018 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 April 2017 January 2017 December 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 February 2016 January 2016 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 February 2015 January 2015 November 2014 September 2014 August 2014 June 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 January 2012 November 2011 August 2011 July 2011 April 2011 March 2011 November 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 May 2010 March 2010 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 March 2009 November 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 December 2004 September 2004 August 2004 May 2004 March 1999

>>> Back to post index <<<

Contact Email