First Night Jump

Night Jump Video (Not Mine)

Date: November 11, 2012
Location: The Ranch, Gardiner, NY

I just did my first (non-military) night jumps, and it was familiar and new and scary and exhilarating all at the same time.

We did the jumps at "Cavu," which is also known as Wallkill Airport, the same place I had done my helicopter jumps. The opportunity arose suddenly. I had thought my season was over -- it is November after all -- but suddenly two clear days with highs near 60 popped up on the forecast and several emails hit my inbox from the Ranch that basically said, "It's going to be gorgeous this weekend! Come and play!"

After debating with myself (I won), I decided not to go. Sunday was going to be the best day, but Sunday is our family day. A 60-degree day is also the bare minimum in terms of temperatures in which I will jump. At 14,000 feet, the temp at altitude is well below freezing. Even with the latest high-speed gear from Under Armor, I don't cherish the thought. My conclusion was that being miserably uncomfortable would ruin the fun.

I explained all of this to Asieya, who responded by questioning my manhood. A few minutes later, I was on my way to the Ranch.

Arriving around noon, I found it was a bit nippy in the shade but quite pleasant in the sun – and the sky was nearly cloudless. The place was also packed! I had to wait an hour to get up and, when I did, I was surprised at how comfortable it was at altitude. Not miserable at all. Quite comfortable, in fact, with gloves and a few layers. I had a great first jump and then another one.

When I got back on the ground and checked my phone, I had a new email from the Ranch. Night jumps that had been scheduled and cancelled (once because of Sandy and again because of snow!) where suddenly on for that night at Cavu. Apparently, doing a night jump is a requirement for the highest license level (a 'D' license, I'm a 'B') and some guys were desperate to get it done. They were also taking fun jumpers as long as you had a 'B' license or higher and had jumped Cavu before, which I had (see above).

My first thought was: Sounds neat but if it's chilly now, it's going to be freakin' freezing when that big heat tab in the sky goes away! But my second thought was: How often will I get this chance? To answer that question, I checked with my packer buddy Bo. He confirmed that there hadn't been a single night jump during the last three seasons. This was a rare event. So, dreading the cold and a little afraid of the unknown, I signed up.

The total lack of organization didn't help. I was told by manifest I needed a strobe and some chem lights for the jump. But when I went to the Pro shop to buy them, they only had strobes in stock. No chem lights. Oh, and no D batteries for the strobe, either. I would have to try to find some at a local store … in a town that had just been through the aftermath of a hurricane.

I got lucky. I found D batteries at a nearby grocery store and bought an 8-pack just in case anyone else needed them. I had no chem lights, but rumor had it they weren't 100% necessary. So, half-cocked, I headed off to Cavu to meet up for a 4 o'clock briefing.

Long story short: The briefing was half-cocked as well. The good news was 2/3 of the people jumping were military cadets and their leader: a) knew all about night jumps, and b) had plenty of chem lights for everyone. My group (what Ranch owner Billy insisted on calling the "civilian group" until I informed him I was actually prior service) consisted of me, three Russians with OK English and one Portuguese guy with close to zero English. All of us were first-timers, and we were to be the first ones out of the plane. Oh, and the first jump was low altitude (5,000 feet). No worries!

To be an official night jump, you have to jump an hour after sunset. The nice thing about a freezing, late fall jump? Sunset is 4:30! We took the ride to altitude, and the door opened at just past 5:30 PM.

The emotions I experienced are hard to describe, but I'll give it a try. In the Army, I always loved the thrill of a night jump. It just seemed so secretive, so covert. Jumping into the darkness, landing silently on an unsuspecting target. How exciting! At the same time I was re-experiencing this thrill, I also had a lot of anxiety over the unknown. For one thing, my natural navigation skills aren't great -- and that's in the daylight! We were supposed to find a runway and a spotlight, which sounds easy until you see the ground from altitude. There are rows of streetlights, lit houses and businesses, ball fields -- lights everywhere. So that was one concern: Would I be able to find my target? If not, I was landing in the dark on unknown terrain. During our briefing, we had been informed that our "outs" (alternate places to land) were bad, terrible and worse. Lots of power lines, woods and other hazards.

Another concern was getting proper separation between jumpers. In the daylight, you can watch the guy ahead of you fall away from the plane and wait long enough so that there’s zero chance you will end up anywhere near him. In the night … you see a chem light fall away and rapidly disappear.

Next up: Malfunctions. In the daylight, you can look up, check your canopy and – if there’s an issue – see what needs to be done. You can tell if the malfunction is minor and easily correctable or if it's major and you need to cut away. At night? You see a shadow over your head and not much more. Ours was a clear night, but there was no moon. We’d have to rely on how the deployment felt to determine if everything was all right.

Finally, there was the matter of landing at night, which is to say without depth perception. If I landed where I was supposed to, I’d have the spotlight shining on the ground to show me when it was time to flare (aka slow down to touch down). But if my accuracy was off that night, I’d be landing in the dark with no way to tell how close I was to the ground. Flare early and the chute collapses, which means you fall straight down and smash into the ground. Flare late and, well, you’re in full flight as you smash into the ground. Neither feels particularly good. Thankfully, the military taught me how to smash into the ground without killing myself!

All of these things flashed through my mind in an instant as the door opened that night and the wind rushed in. But then I pushed them all out of mind just as quickly. As a skydiver, you must learn not to dwell on all of the possible negative outcomes. The whole thing is improbable. You have to trust God and your instincts. You have to just go for it. So I calmed my nerves, focused on the delicious thrill of the experience and went for it, activating my strobe and then plunging into the darkness.

Everything went great -- until about 1,500 feet. My exit was perfect. I pulled at the right altitude. And my chute came out without a problem. Suddenly, I was floating in the dark between a vast expense of stars and a landscape of lights. It took me a minute, but I also found the landing area without a problem. Best of all, I had plenty of altitude left to fly a nice pattern and land perfectly. But I forgot about the wind.

The good thing about my canopy is it's big and docile, which means it is safer than smaller, faster canopies with regard to how it lands. The bad thing? It's big and docile, so it gets very little penetration into higher winds. The lit landing area was on the southern end of the airfield. I had a lot of altitude to burn off, so I planned to fly a traditional right-hand pattern but go long. That is, fly downwind to the northern trip of the airfield, turn cross-wind and then fly to the southern end (where the spotlight was) for a proper into-the-wind landing. The first part of that plan went well, and the cross-wind part was fine. But at 1,500 feet, as I turned into the wind, I stopped moving ... and then started creeping backward. At this point, I was at the far end of the airfield -- the end of the runway and the end of the marker lights -- and flying backward into darkness.

In these situations, I know a few techniques to aid in wind penetration. I made myself small by raising my knees and pulled on my back risers. No dice. I was losing altitude rapidly but not gaining any forward movement. As a last ditch, I used a "surge" technique, which entails braking hard (a mid-air flare, really) and then releasing the brakes again quickly. This causes you to surge forward in a dive, losing altitude by hopefully gaining forward momentum. It worked -- sort of. My trajectory told me I was going to make it onto the runway (phew!) but not by much. I was going to have to land in the dark. Unsure of what was to the side of the runway (flat grass? a steep ravine?), I chose to land between the runway markers and on the tarmac. The ground would be less forgiving, but I knew it would be safely flat.

All things considered, my landing went pretty well. I flared a bit late, came in fast, stumbled and tripped over the only runway marker on the entire airfield that wasn't lit. Damn that Murphy! But I didn't 'smash,' and I didn't hurt myself. A car even rushed over to pick me up, so I didn't have to walk back. In other words, the only thing that was bruised was my pride. Going too far downwind is a stupid, rookie mistake!

After that close call, what else to do but ... do it again! I was determined to redeem myself. This time, the jump was to be from full altitude: 12,500 feet. More time to find the landing area, but the landing area would also be much smaller and further away, so harder to find. There was also the matter of the exit. As I mentioned earlier, some of the people on the jump were doing it for their D license certification. The rules said in order for the requirements to be met, the jumper had to exit with someone and linked (holding onto them). This re-raised the separation concern I had on the first jump. If two jumpers exiting together got separated and lost track of each other in the dark, they could easily fly into each other at a high rate of speed -- not good. We were told to avoid this by only turning right, but that made sense only if both jumpers were stable and able to tell up from down.

In this situation, a smart fun jumper (one not needing a certification) would jump solo and for fun. Instead, I volunteered to do a two-way with the only guy in my group getting certified. OK, fine. In that situation, a smart skydiver would pick a nice stable exit position like belly-to-earth. Or even sit-fly, which I have a lot of experience doing. Instead, my partner suggested we go head down -- something I had only done a handful of times -- and I, of course, immediately said yes.

Talk about exhilarating! Imagine grabbing a guy, stepping into the void and rushing wind, and then gradually turning into a head-to-ground position where the two of you end up screaming toward the ground at about 150 miles per hour. That's a head-down exit, and it's even more awesome when "up" is distant street lights and "down" is the stars at your feet.

Rewind. The first guy out of the plane was the Portuguese jumper who do not speak English. As we were boarding the plane, I had noticed a woman was with him. I assumed this was his wife. (The detail will become important later.) Next out was the other two Russians in a two-way belly, and then me and my new upside-down friend. We were the first pass, first group once again.

The jump went great. My head-down position wasn't perfect, but my more-experienced jump buddy corrected and we had a nice ride for the first few thousand feet. Then we broke off and spun into a sit position facing each other (I could barely make him and his chem light out) for the rest of the ride. We tried to dock (grab onto each other), but I got a little nervous and unstable as he approached and we missed the dock. No problem. At least we didn't crash into each other! At about six grand, I flipped onto my belly and, seeing exactly where he was, flew away. At about 4,500 feet, I pulled and had another perfect deployment. This time, I stayed upwind, flew a nice pattern and landed just steps away from the center of the bull's eye (which had been marked with chem lights). I didn't 'stand it up,' but I was otherwise redeemed! A beautiful jump all around!

The adventure doesn't end there. After everyone else had come down and the military guys were all present or accounted for, I realized two things in sequence. First, since no one was in charge of our group, no one was responsible for making sure we had all made it back. So I took on that responsibility. Second, we were missing someone, the Portuguese guy that had jumped first.

For the first half hour I looked for him, I was convinced he was at the bar drinking already and everyone was messing with me. The Russians said they hadn't seem him. The military guys were equally clueless, although one thought he may have landed at the end of the runway, near where I had landed the jump before, and that a car was picking him up. Meanwhile, one of the senior organizers reported that someone may have landed beyond the woods on the west side of the airfield. Strangely, no one seemed concerned in the slightest.

I found the woman the guy had been talking to and discovered she was more confused than me. Apparently, she was still expecting him to drop out of the sky even though he was first out and everyone else was down, including the pilot and his plane. It became clear this poor woman, who it turned out was just a friend picking him up, didn't know the first thing about skydiving -- and that no one has any intention of helping her. I decided that common human decency compelled me to step in. So I went and found Billy, the owner of the drop zone, at the bar.

Billy's first response? "Well, he signed a waiver." I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. "Seriously," I said, "what's the procedure here?" It turned out there was no procedure. Billy wanted to know what I proposed. Call the police? What could they do? The place we thought he had landed was all woods and open fields. Form a search party? This idea made him chuckle. And with that, he went back to drinking.

Still in disbelief, I started wandering around asking anyone I knew what to do. One guy suggested the only thing we could do was drive the roads around the area with our windows down, listening into the woods. While this sounded unlikely to produce results, I liked that it involved doing something. I went back to Billy to ask if someone who knew the area (maybe him?) could join us. Instead, he gave me hasty directions, and I went out to grab the lady friend and do my best.

As it turned out, the area beyond the airfield was only woods for a few acres. Beyond that were roads and homes and places to land. We drove around for about a half hour until we encountered a police car driving the other way on a quiet residential street. I stopped and told the officer we were looking for a missing jumper. He had a few questions about what that meant, but was otherwise remarkably calm. I soon learned why. "Is your friend tall, middle Eastern and wearing leather pants?" Not exactly. "Well, he's Portuguese and it's doubtful he's wearing leather pants. Why?" It turned out someone matching that description had knocked on a neighborhood door, but his English was so bad and the people in the house so frightened they told him to go away and called the cops. The officer was out looking for this apparent terrorist. So much for the reliability of eyewitness testimony!

For us, this was really good news. Our Portuguese friend, who I now knew was named Joaquim, was alive and well and able to walk around looking for help. All we had to do was find him. I gave the cop my cell number so he could call me if Joaquim was picked up, and we agreed to call the station if we found him first. I had also asked one of the Russians to text me if he showed up at the airport.

A half hour later, I got a text: Joaquim was back. His friend was relieved and super-appreciative. Back at Cavu, I heard the tale through the friend, who wasn't Portuguese but spoke enough to translate. Long story short, Joaquim had opened too low and too far away to get back, so he had picked an open area and barely made it onto a gravel road, narrowly avoiding power lines and trees. Unhurt, he realized he had a few other problems: No cell phone, no English and no clue where he was.

His next move was to walk the road looking for a house with lights on inside. But when he had finally found one and banged on the door, he learned that not everyone is friendly to a brown guy with a thick accent who shows up in the middle of the night wearing a strange-looking outfit (a jumpsuit, by the way, not leather pants). He's lucky he didn't get shot -- this is farm country, after all. Four doors later, he had found one lady nice enough to let him write (or draw) out his message and then take him in her car to wherever he directed. After getting a little lost, they had found Cavu. Whew!

So that's the story of how I did my first night jumps and survived -- not only to tell the tale but to help make sure a fellow jumper did as well.