GeminiRacer

I can’t give you any expert advice, and can just tell you what my instutors have told me and its real fresh in my mind i never understood how the heck to land in the landing area on my tandem jumps... and my first jump I couldn't remember anything... so i just landed against the wind in a bean field [we have pretty small landing area] I felt so dumb... but my instructor told its all good the most important thing is to land against the wind with a proper flare... What helped is in the next jump was asking my instructor what I should be over [example: a dirt patch] when i make each turn in the approach [the radio should be used as an aide not a crutch] and of corse know which way the wind is going. [or better yet, you pick out the points, then let the instructor check them, it will make sure you have an understanding of it] Um as for pulling I did and still do like fifty practice pulls on the ground, all AFF 1 is all about the almighty arch...checkin the alt... and pulling. As for if anybody else has had to have anybody pull for them, who cares they’re not up there, its you

Well here is what happened, I was doing my level six AFF [I’ve had 6 solo jumps, and three jumps i shared with a big burly man.], and everything went great... the back-loops were a blast and recovering from them was almost effortless... everything was cool, until it came time to pull, I was coming out of tracking when I flipped on my back . As my instructor had told me, I was only there for a few seconds seconds, but it felt like an eternity. He was coming up fast to get me, but I recovered. I was just in such shock when I was on my back, I had never been there before, and having it happen to me right at pull time was the one of scariest moments of my life. I was trying to remember how to “rollout of bed” but I was just to disorientated to do that, so I just arched harder than I have ever arched before in my whole life, and bam, I was on my belly and I had no idea what my alt. was, I just went straight for my pilot chute. It wasn’t a hard opening at all, after looking at my canopy and my surroundings, I looked at my alt and I was just above 3000'. I headed on home and had a stand-up landing. But here’s what’s up: I just can’t shake it, my instructor had told me that its not a big deal and the important thing is that I knew what to do and I did it. I was planing on making another jump that day... but I couldn’t... My AFF jumps up to that point had gone through without incident, well aside from my very first solo, when I had some nasty line twists...but I kicked them out i would have done anyother one if i had more than 6 bucks on me. Most days when I go home, I just wish I had more money to spend jumping, but that day I left with enough to my some bills [which I guess it good in its own right