(no subject)
So, generally when you hear the terms 'high speed' and 'aerial spin' put in the same sentence as 'uncontrolled', you can reasonably assume that the situation is going downhill in a hurry. That's what I always assumed anyway. It seems like such a safe bet. I figured that being out of control high in the sky while careening towards the ground would be the sort of terrifying event that would leave a man forever changed, now having looking his mortality in the face and acknowledged the superiority of natural forces and the relative insignificance of all his efforts before their awesome power...
But in reality it wasn't that bad. The exit was awesome; I was there hanging off the wing and humming 'The Final Countdown' like normal, spread my arms and flew down into a nice stable arch. It wasn't until after I'd checked the altimeter at 5000' feet and rechecked my heading that I realized that the mountains I'd been facing had been a dark blur on the blue and white horizon for quite some time. I was actually spinning for a second or two before it hit me that I should be panicking. Even then it didn't seem to bad. The first thing I did was check the altimeter again, because as long as you've got altitude you've got some time before you have to worry. As soon as I focused on the Alti that was spinning along with me, everything else just seemed like it was on the outside. Like there was a glass sphere separating me from all the harsh winds and blurred out horizon. The whole thing was pretty calm and surreal.
Even when I'd definitively realized that I should be freaking out and panicking, the terror just wasn't there. My arch is naturally pretty stable because of all the backbends that come from years of Capoeira, so I was really only spinning on one axis and was otherwise pretty solid. It was more a moment of "Oh... I'm spinning, I know three ways of correcting this, although I've never actually tried any of them." than anything else. For now I can't really comment on the other two, but hand steering feels more like swimming than I was expecting. Seriously, you grab big handfulls of -nothing- and push off with tangible results.
So the spin worked itself out pretty nicely over the next thousand feet and I pulled stable just below 4000. By the time I'd unstowed the brakes and realized that the instructor's spotting job was terribly off, I was too busy air guitaring the Final Countdown solo and laughing to really care. Turns out the weather had changed while we were climbing to altitude and we'd left the aircraft way downwind of the landing zone. So in my softest landing of my skydiving career to date, I touched down in some farmer's freshly plowed field, grabbed my canopy, and ran like hell before his dog realized that I was there.
But in reality it wasn't that bad. The exit was awesome; I was there hanging off the wing and humming 'The Final Countdown' like normal, spread my arms and flew down into a nice stable arch. It wasn't until after I'd checked the altimeter at 5000' feet and rechecked my heading that I realized that the mountains I'd been facing had been a dark blur on the blue and white horizon for quite some time. I was actually spinning for a second or two before it hit me that I should be panicking. Even then it didn't seem to bad. The first thing I did was check the altimeter again, because as long as you've got altitude you've got some time before you have to worry. As soon as I focused on the Alti that was spinning along with me, everything else just seemed like it was on the outside. Like there was a glass sphere separating me from all the harsh winds and blurred out horizon. The whole thing was pretty calm and surreal.
Even when I'd definitively realized that I should be freaking out and panicking, the terror just wasn't there. My arch is naturally pretty stable because of all the backbends that come from years of Capoeira, so I was really only spinning on one axis and was otherwise pretty solid. It was more a moment of "Oh... I'm spinning, I know three ways of correcting this, although I've never actually tried any of them." than anything else. For now I can't really comment on the other two, but hand steering feels more like swimming than I was expecting. Seriously, you grab big handfulls of -nothing- and push off with tangible results.
So the spin worked itself out pretty nicely over the next thousand feet and I pulled stable just below 4000. By the time I'd unstowed the brakes and realized that the instructor's spotting job was terribly off, I was too busy air guitaring the Final Countdown solo and laughing to really care. Turns out the weather had changed while we were climbing to altitude and we'd left the aircraft way downwind of the landing zone. So in my softest landing of my skydiving career to date, I touched down in some farmer's freshly plowed field, grabbed my canopy, and ran like hell before his dog realized that I was there.