一
By RANDY LEFFINGWELL
Kansan Staff Writer
"Get up." he yells.
You rise slowly to a squatting position, turn and face the open door. You wait.
"Alright, Step out," he yells. You have second thoughts.
You swing around, inch your foot out onto the small platform and reach out to grab the wing strut.
"Go!" he yells, and slaps you on the leg.
You kick up your feet, push off with your arms and fall. Then everything goes gray.
You suddenly remember that you are supposed to be counting to make sure that everything is working.
"How far have I fallen? How long ago did I jump out?" You start to panic, wondering if your equipment is malfunctioning.
You are still falling on your back, but suddenly you are flipped over onto your front, then jerked upright.
are aright. The parachute opened. You are now a skydiver. The gray haze in your mind clears, and you realize where you are: about a half mile up in the air, hanging from a parachute, listening to the radio in your helmet. A man on the ground is giving you instructions to land.
You reach up for the steering toggle lines above your head. You pull one and swing around towards the target area, a big red and orange cross in the middle of a field down below.
"Turn your canopy towards the target and run with the wind," he says.
"You're right on course. Keep it there."
"That's good. Now bring it around and head it into the wind. Turn it away from the target and prepare to land."
"Ah well, back to work," you think. Reach up and grab the toggle line again, pull it down and swing around 180 degrees.
You bring your legs together, take a deep breath and glance down to see how fast the ground is coming up to hit you.
"Feet together—ready to land!" the radio barks in your ear. Your heart skips a beat on its way up your throat.
The ground reaches up, you hit,
fall and roll over.
"Are you alright?" Someone runs up to you.
You nod your head and swallow your heart again. Others run up and help you to your feet, gather your parachute together and try to get you to talk slower.
"It's like nothing I've ever done before!" you blurt out. "Just like you said. Jumping out of an airplane going 80 miles an hour, 3,000 feet in the air is like nothing you can imagine." But finding out what it is like—and learning how to do it—are what KU's Skydiving Club is all about.
The higher up the jumper leaves the plane, the longer his freefall before opening his parachute.
The flying, the freefall, is skydiving. The sport is the freefalling before the parachute is opened.
But for the beginner, the sport is much slower. After five hours of ground instruction at the KU Skydiving Club's drop-zone one mile north of Sunflower Village, the student can take his first parachute jump, from 3,000 feet. However, even at that, the parachute is automatically opened one second after he leaves the plane, by a static line from the plane connected to the ripcord of the parachute.
It is probably one of the fastest sports man participates in. In skydiving competition, acrobatics in the air usually take less than ten seconds. In ten seconds, jumpers fall 1,760 feet. That is one-third mile, at 180 miles per hour.
Instruction in "PLF," parachute landing falls, is followed by numerous lectures and discussions of parachute "flight" theory. Instructors Jim Garrison, Independence, Mo., and Matt Farmer, Topeka, each guides his students through all the procedures, including the proper procedures for leaving the aircraft in flight.
While one instructor rides up in the plane with the students who will jump, the other remains on the ground to "talk them down" through radios in the jumpers' helmets.
The students first five jumps are with static line, to teach him the correct parachute handling techniques before he makes his first freefall.
The club's instruction costs $25 for the first day's training and the first jump. The remaining four static jumps and the first freefall cost $5 each. All of these are closely supervised by the club's instructors. Beyond this, while the jumpers are watched, they are largely free to progress at their own rate.
Depending on the individual, it takes between 50 and 100 free-falls to gain enough confidence in freefall acrobatics to enter competition. Judging is based on the speed and the precision with which these acrobatics are performed. Consisting of three series of left turn, right turn, back loop, the best competitors complete these in less time than it takes to say them. In last year's National Collegiate Contest in Miami, Fla., the winner completed this triple series in 7.4 seconds.
The other important element of skydiving competition is judged on the jumpers' landings. The object is to land as close to the target as possible. Competition targets are six inch disks in the center of pea-gravel pits.
For a team to compete successfully, its three members should land right on target on each of their three individual jumps. In last year's contest, the team from West Point did just this, leaving the plane at 3,000 feet and flying the parachutes to perfect landings on each of the team's nine jumps.
This perfect on-target landing is quite an achievement, considering the competition parachutes (different in some aspects from those the students use), can travel along the ground at 15 to 18 miles per hour in no wind. Jumpers usually land with the wind in order to keep their eyes on the target and insure greater landing accuracy.
Competition is stiff. A number of schools sponsor teams. Kansas
State and Missouri have intercollegiate teams. Harry Brubaker, Casper, Wyo., senior and KU Skydiving Club president, said the KU club is hoping for University recognition in order to field a team to this year's national contest in Phoenix, Ariz. Nov. 27-30.
Another enjoyable aspect of skydiving is "relative work." This involves a team of two or more jumpers working in relation to each other, trying to come together to clasp hands while freefalling. But this, too, requires many individual freefalls to learn maneuverability in the air.
Because most skydiving goes on too high up to watch easily, it is mostly a participant's sport.
"Most people who continue on after the third or fourth jump usually buy their own equipment," Brubaker said. "Parachutes like those the club uses for its students cost between $90 and $130. But those like we use in competition cost more, about $500 to $600," he explained.
While there is a vast difference in price between the competition parachute canopies and those modified for training use, there are no differences in safety, and only little difference in performance.
"In the last year and a half," said Brubaker, "we've put more than 200 people through the course. At least half of them have been KU students or faculty. For a lot of them, it is just a one time thing, so they can say they've done it. But, there are some who come out and keep coming out after their first jump."
It's for those one time jumpers, as well as for the experienced jumpers, that KU's Skydiving Club continues to teach its students and members how to safely jump out of airplanes going 80 miles an hour, 12,000 feet in the air; to fall, fly, float—and enjoy it.
Photos on page 8