History of some "First Jumps"

[Guru312 0]

I'm writing an autobiography...of sorts...and I was wondering about some firsts that you olde farts will probably know about.

1. First time a blind person was taught to jump: Instructor, DZ, jumper, location, date?


2. First jump into a national sports stadium [Baseball, football...not a jump into your old high school stadium]: Jumpers, location, date?


3. First AFF course taught: DZ, Instructor, location, date?

3a. When did USPA first sanction AFF instruction?


4. First civilian static line jump for payment... as a business: DZ, instructor, location, date?


5. First non-military exit altitude above 18,000: DZ, jumper, date, altitude? [Meaning, oxygen required.]


6. Not a first question, but what's the best "History of Sport Parachuting" book and author---in your opinion?

Thanks...and keep pumping out those "Scary Stories" It's so much fun thinking about the early days.

Guru312

I am not DB Cooper

[howardwhite 5]

Quote

3a. When did USPA first sanction AFF instruction?

USPA Board meeting in Seattle, 1980. "Interesting" meeting. Exact date when I find it. I've got the whole proposal (I think) somewhere.

Quote

4. First civilian static line jump for payment... as a business: DZ, instructor, location, date?

Who knows? First customer of first commercial parachuting center (Orange): Donald Walker, May, 1959

HW

[skr 1]

> First time a blind person was taught to jump

Well, if I logged it I didn't see it in my logbooks
just now, but Sunny Yates went blind after he
had maybe 300? jumps.

Some time later he made a few more jumps.

The first was at Oceanside down by San Diego.

Ron Wright (D-312?) was his "jumpmaster".

Somebody else went up in the same plane
with them but I can't picture who it was.

I made a couple jumps with Sunny a little
later at Elsinore out of a Howard.

This was 1965-1966.

He used a Crossbow piggyback with a PC,
and he packed for himself.

He was light so it was hard for me to stay
up with him, and also since he couldn't see
he kind of drifted around in freefall.


Going blind took the spark out of him and
he gradually faded away, becoming almost
transparent, until one day I heard that he
had died.

It was hard ... we had shared some amazing
times and he had been right in the thick of
some pretty colorful jump stories.

Skr

[airtwardo 6]

" Leslie Irvin, made the first ever international free-fall parachute jump near Dayton, Ohio in 1919 using his own hand operated chute, a design which revolutionized parachuting and gave birth to a new sport. "

Which was a test jump to show the Army what and how...
It was made I believe into a horse race track that wan't being used that day, however the jump went so well he did it again for the spectators that following weekend....

(I think, I was reading Bud Sellicks book at PIA and the info was in there)
http://books.google.com/books?id=bgk4LFkgbHoC&dq=history+of+sport+parachuting&ots=4ob3yahs9f&sig=boxoWo37AnSzMpiQYsPQ0pevuoM&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26rls%3DGGLG,GGLG:2006-16,GGLG:en%26sa%3DX%26oi%3Dspell%26resnum%3D0%26ct%3Dresult%26cd%3D1%26q%3Dhistory%2Bof%2Bsport%2Bparachuting%26spell%3D1&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1&q=history%20of%20sport%20parachuting&pgis=1

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[airtwardo 6]

http://www.parafame.org/significantmomentsinparachuting.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Sky-People-History-Parachuting/dp/1853108693



http://www.hickoksports.com/history/sportparachuting.shtml

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[piper17 1]

Howard,

Can you explain a little more about what you mean by "sanction" AFF instruction. It may have been in early 1980 when a waiver was issued for Ken Coleman to develop/test AFF and report back to USPA but the program wasn't purchased from Ken's estate and integrated into USPA's instructional program until a year or two later. I was on the board and the Safety and Training Committe when that occurred. That was also an "interesting" process.

I remember attending a course conducted by Ken Coleman shortly before his death in the ballooning accident. It was held in Deland and some of the others attending as I recall (tough after all this time) were Al King, Mike Johnston, and Jerry Bird.
Linda Forney and a couple of others had a special AFF training course from Ken in Deland about the same time and were also "grandfathered" in when AFF Instructor ratings were issued.

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition"...Rudyard Kipling

[stratostar 5]

Quote

Leslie Irvin, made the first ever international free-fall parachute jump near Dayton, Ohio in 1919 using his own hand operated chute, a design which revolutionized parachuting and gave birth to a new sport. "

Funny you bring this up, I just was giving a little back ground info to the pilot of the 1911 wright B Flyer this week in an email, when he ask about this. However it was not a horse track it was at McCook field. Yes Irvin get's credit, but I vote for Tiny.

Tiny Broadwick at age 15 made her first jump in 1908 from a balloon. On June 21 1913 at what is now a parking lot of the LA zoo she flew with Glenn Martin to be the fist woman to jump from a plane. In 1914 she gave the 1st demo to the GOV of parachuting, she did 5 jumps, 4 of them static line, on the 4th one the S/L tangled with the tail, so for the 5th she cut the S/L to a short length so she could pull it her self, so that made her the first woman if not the first person to do a premeditated freefall jump. She died in 1979 at 86, and is credited with many inventions for parachutes. Remember this was when there was no reserve chute. You should see the photos of the crazy crap they jumped with.

In 1918 the Gov. authorized a board of experts to develop the emergency parachute at McCook field. At this time everyone thought if you jumped it would "steal your breath" and you would lose consciousness. In the same year Leslie "sky-hi" Irvin showed up at McCook Field with a parachute of his own design. (later McCook becomes home to Irvins factory)

On April 28th 1919 the field was buzzing with gossip about a newly designed free fall parachute that was going to have it's first pratical test drop. Floyd Smith flew Irvin in a Dehavilland DH-9 biplane to 1,500 ft. then with a smile he stepped off and was in total control and fell for a few seconds and pulled the ripcord, everything work as Irvin said it would. (everyone thought he was going to die for sure) Other then breaking his ankle on landing. Irvin was officially given title as the first person to make a premeditated freefall parachute jump, with in days there was more freefall jumps being logged at McCook field and the age of freefall was truly born right here in Dayton and the rest is history.......

As a side note, the caterpillier club was also born right here in Dayton as well when Lt. Harold R. Harris was the first person to be saved in a real bail out Oct. 22 1922. The first 4 or 5 members of the club earned their "caterpillier pins" over the skies of Dayton Ohio.

This is all refrased from the book "parachuting folklore" The Evolution of freefall by Michael Horan, it has a lot of history in it about airplanes and the early pilots and those who dared to leap out of them "air-machines". If you would like to read it I would be happy to lone it to you. Ok there is your little known history lesson for the day.

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[NickDG 23]

From memory - in 1983-84 there was a completely blind man jumping at Lake Elsinore. I had just come up from San Diego and taken the job of Chief Instructor and he was already there making jumps. I'm pretty sure he initially trained and made his first jumps somewhere else, Cal City possibly. I wasn't involved with any of his jumps, but the DZO Deborah Blackmon was. I'd seen a couple of his landings (they had him on a radio) and they weren't pretty and it was real obvious, to me anyway, he was going to get hurt eventually.

I voiced my concerns, and questioned the motives for letting him jump but it fell on deaf ears, and he wasn't a student so there wasn't much I could do. I believe the jumper's name was "Danny" but that's all I recall. Danny was a gamer though. He'd get dinged up and bruised on every landing, but he kept coming back every couple of months. The last jump I saw him make he totally pancaked the landing after flaring too high and as far as I know he didn’t jump again, or at least not at Lake Elsinore.

What may be significant about Danny wasn't his being the first blind person to get through a solo student status (if indeed he was), but that he may have been the last. Tandem jumping was just starting then so everything changed after that.

Whenever I hear of someone who’s blind making a tandem jump today, and the big deal made of it, I always think of Danny . . .

NickD BASE 194

[Guru312 0]

I asked the question about first blind jumper because I taught a totally blind man in September, 1974. I have an article from the February 1975 "Parachutist", page 15, written by Don Wright who was the pilot for the jump.

Someone from USPA called me--they were still in California then, if my old memory serves me correctly--and said a very persistent blind guy kept calling about finding someone to teach him. PI at Lakewood and Steve Snyder at Ripcord said "no way".

I finally talked to the man and decided to meet him and discuss the many training and very many safety issues. He had memories of 'watching' Ripcord on TV and always wanted to do it. He most definitely had his act together so I decided to do it.

He lost his eyesight because of something called retrolentilfibroplasia [sp?] which was a condition related to his premature birth and too much oxygen as an infant.

Teaching Harry Charlesworth, who was 24 at the time and totally blind, was one of the most emotionally draining experiences of my life. A few weeks ago, I got in touch with him and the woman who jumped with him. I'm tracking down the guy who talked him down via the radio. An amazing experience for everyone involved.

I can't imagine that I was the first to teach a blind person...but maybe.

Guru312

I am not DB Cooper

[skypuppy 1]

Actually, Sky-high Irvin did not design the chute he made the first freefall on.

The unit at McCook Field made many test drops of at least 17 different designs of chutes over about a year -- including England's Guardian Angel and the German Heinecke, as well as chutes from Broadwick, Glenn Martin and Leo Stevens. Many failed at various times, the reason Irvin's design ultimately proved the best of the static-line rigs was because he would return to Buffalo after testing and modify and resew new features, while the other designs were essentially finished.

However it became clear to most, as it was to Floyd Smith, who ran the test program, that the static-lined emergency chute could catch on an out-of-control airplane as it was spinning, and cause a malfunction of the canopy. So Smith came up with a design, which eventually Irvin was the test jumper of, since he had more jumps than Smith, who was essentially a pilot.

Following the jump, on which he broke an ankle, Irvin raced home and made up a proposal to manufacture large quantities for the government, and with the backing he'd already lined up, he was awarded the contract over Floyd Smith, the original designer.

Others later claimed that they did perform freefall jumps before Irvin's, but Tiny Broadwick's testimony during patent litigation was so confused her evidence was discounted as 'uncorroborated and conflicting' (examination of the Broadwick pack showed it would have been a difficult operation indeed).

Leo Stevens had designed a rig with a ripcord 10 years earlier, but it seemed to have been used with a static-line attached to the ripcord. Indeed, one of Steven's test jumpers, Rod Law (famous for jumping off the Statue of Liberty in 1912, and the Bankers Trust Building, as well as the Williamsburg Bridge) was adamant that a man could NOT freefall and open a parachute manually.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[skypuppy 1]

3. First AFF course taught: DZ, Instructor, location, date?

Not Aff, persay, but Jim Hall and Dave Burt of Para-Ventures designed a 12-hour training program to teach pilots in the US air force. The program involved the single instructor buddy-system as demonstrated by Johnny Carson's parachute jump with Bob Sinclair, as shown on the Tonight Show in the 60's. The program involved a buddy jump from 8 grand, followed by another from 12,000, after which the student would sometimes make a third solo jump during which an instructor would fly beside, but not in contact. Students wore aads.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[airtwardo 6]

Funny you bring this up...

Quote

The 'actual' history goes something like~



There was this brilliant flash and tremendous BANG.


Then then fish grew feet...



Leonardo drew up both a square parachute and a helicopter to jump from, then the lawyers got involved....

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

• Quote

[skypuppy 1]

. First time a blind person was taught to jump: Instructor, DZ, jumper, location, date?

My buddy Frog did the jumps for the movie 'If you could see what I hear', based on Tom Sullivan's Adventures in Darkness. The book is copyrighted in 1976. His jumps (Sullivan's) were in Springfield Mass.

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[skypuppy 1]

Not a first question, but what's the best "History of Sport Parachuting" book and author---in your opinion?

Just a few.

Several books by Peter Hearn, many with military connotations; Skyhigh Irvin, Parachutist and the Yorkshire Birdman, to name 3 (also Sky People)

Birdman by Leo Valentin

Silken Canopy by John Lucas

'The Barnstormers' and 'Bailout' by Dwiggins

Barnstorming by Martin Caidin

Baling Wire, Chewing Gum and Guts by Rhodes

Endless Fall by Mike Swain

and of course

United We Fall, Pat Works

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[stratostar 5]

Yep, But I didn't really want to write the whole chapter in an email to the person who asked me the question, just cover the fact that the first offical FF was done a McCook. But your right, I bet Floyd was pissed just having to fly the plane on the jump, let alone Irvin getting credit for the design.
I still vote for Tiny as the first permeditiated FF, I doubt G. Martin would have gone along with a big lie. I had been doing some work for the 1911 Wright "B" Flyer museum, the pilot of it is a former usaf test pilot and history buff and was not aware of the parachute history of Dayton to any detail, so I think I covered the facts to the point I was trying to make with him.(note my post was a pasted copy of an email) www.wright-b-flyer.org

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[stratostar 5]

God*** #*&^(* #$^^&* Lawyers! Always mess'n up good fun I tell ya. Well not Russel Webb though he's one of the good guys, depending on who you ask.....

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[howardwhite 5]

I would place Howard Gregory's "Parachuting's Unforgettable Jumps" at or near the top of any list.

HW

[Faicon9493 114]

Quote

I'm writing an autobiography...of sorts...and I was wondering about some firsts that you olde farts will probably know about.

1. First time a blind person was taught to jump: Instructor, DZ, jumper, location, date?


2. First jump into a national sports stadium [Baseball, football...not a jump into your old high school stadium]: Jumpers, location, date?


3. First AFF course taught: DZ, Instructor, location, date?

3a. When did USPA first sanction AFF instruction?


4. First civilian static line jump for payment... as a business: DZ, instructor, location, date?


5. First non-military exit altitude above 18,000: DZ, jumper, date, altitude? [Meaning, oxygen required.]


6. Not a first question, but what's the best "History of Sport Parachuting" book and author---in your opinion?

Thanks...and keep pumping out those "Scary Stories" It's so much fun thinking about the early days.

My skyding started at the Sky Knights in East Troy, WI. in 1980 and I remember two blind jumpers coming there at different times. They were a married couple named Chuck and Mickie. Some years later, after I got a tandem rating, we had a group of blind people come out to do tandems one day. I took a blind young lady on a tandem who turned out to be the daughter of Chuck & Mickie. Who's that for irony!

[wartload 0]

I never met him in person, and I don't know when and where he jumped, but in the early days of the Internet (maybe on USENET, before the Internet) I used to exchange messages with (Dan?) Rossi, a blind skydiver whose signature line was, "Flare when you hear the crickets!"

[howardwhite 5]

Here, just for the record, is an account of a later blind jumper.

HW

[Guru312 0]

Quote

My buddy Frog did the jumps for the movie 'If you could see what I hear', based on Tom Sullivan's Adventures in Darkness. The book is copyrighted in 1976. His jumps (Sullivan's) were in Springfield Mass.

Hmmm. I just Googled for the title and author receiving this hit:
http://www.marconews.com/news/2007/jan/11/shelf_blind_boy_sees_world_his_11th_summer/

The link indicates the book is from Nelson in 2007. My assumption is that the book you reference is from an earlier printing. It seems like Sullivan's jumps may have pre-dated my student Harry Charlesworth's.

Sadly, both Sullivan and Charlesworth were premature babies who lost their eyesight because of too much oxygen.

Thanks for this reference; I'm going to see if I can get the original book or the reprint and determine his jump date.

Guru312

I am not DB Cooper

[Zing 2]

I had the opportunity to meet Sullivan at a college speaker's gig where he talked about his various blind adventures in a seeing world. I don't remeber the exact date, but Sullivan talked about wanting to try to fly an aircraft, which he eventually did a few years later.
Unfortunately, his flights demonstrated that pilots cannot trust the seat of their pants when there are no visible references. I think AOPA magazine had the article about Sullivan's flying attempts. If I recall, he was unable to maintain straight and level flight and ended up in the dreaded death spiral several times before the safety pilot recovered the aircraft.
Kudos to Sullivan and all the others with disabilities that push the limits imposed by life.

Zing Lurks