First Jump

 

By Bill Wilkinson

 

In December 1958 I had graduated from the Otago Dental School and returned to Hamilton. I also had my Air Force wings in my luggage together with my Commercial Pilots Licence. A job in the family practice waited for me and I spent the weekends at the Aero Club .This was an opportunity to keep up my flying hours without spending a fortune. I was soon asked if I would fly the parachutists on their jumps, which I agreed to do.

 

It is a basic human instinct to stop yourself from falling. This instinct is imbued within me stronger than in most people I have met. I am a true acrophobic.

 

There were two occasions in the Air Force when I had a sick aeroplane on my hands and I had the choice of baling out or trying to bring the plane safely down, with a strong possibility of being unsuccessful both times. I decided that the prudent thing to do was to stay with the plane, mostly because of my fear of falling. The prospect of taking people up in an aircraft and for them to throw themselves out, gave me a very queasy feeling. Nevertheless I had agreed to do it.

 

The first parachutist in my plane was Tony Taylor and that was in a Tiger Moth. At two thousand feet I throttled back, Tony got out of the cockpit, stood on the wing still talking calmly to me and then launched himself into space. I watched nervously as the canopy streamed out of his backpack, fill with air and float him safely to the ground.

In quick succession I took all of the members of the parachute club up for a jump. Initially, I imagined them all to be wild, impulsive, irrational people and I could not have been more wrong. Everyone was friendly and sociable. They were also glad to have their transport on the cheap. The members included nurses from the Waikato Hospital. All very responsible and calm, cool citizens.

 

My curiosity was aroused and I looked very carefully at the parachute training programme set up by Denny Main, the instructor. The first thing that the students learned was how to pack a parachute. The way they were packed convinced me that they just could not fail. Landing rolls were then taught. A flying fox was set up so that the candidates experienced forward motion simulating the real jump. They all practiced until every move was perfect. Denny was studying his pupils, constantly looking at their psychological profiles.

 

I then reluctantly decided to join the course. After fulfilling all of the requirements, the big day arrived for my first jump. It was now my turn to sit on the floor of Roy Draffin's Cessna. Denny was in the back giving instructions to Roy to get a good alignment for the exit. Then he shouted "Go!" and gave me a two footed shove from behind. This came as a total surprise to me. The first time jumpers were always "helped " by Denny after one of his students froze in the doorway half in and half out. Denny, who was not wearing a parachute at the time, had to lean out and to prise fingers of his frightened trainee from around the strut.

 

The result of Denny's "assistance" left me tumbling violently in the air. Initially, the sudden silence was surprisingly pleasant and I thought I had better check if everything worked. I looked down at my left shoulder, located the ripcord and pulled. Gyrating wildly and feeling disorientated, I heard the snap as the elasticated flaps on the back pack opening. There was a rustling noise as the canopy started to deploy and I tumbled straight into it. I was suddenly aware that the drogue line attaching the spring loaded drogue parachute to the canopy had become firmly wrapped around my ankles. With my stomach in knots I scrambled my feet and reached down when suddenly the drogue chute detached itself from me. The canopy streamed behind me, then filled with air. There was a sudden jerk and I was floating peacefully in the sky. I looked up at the twenty-eight foot canopy examining it carefully. There were no tears and everything fortunately looked as it should.

 

I floated gently down without the slightest feeling of descending until the last two hundred feet. The ground then rushed up to meet me. I did a clumsy forward roll as I landed, but stood up feeling very pleased with myself. My adrenaline high lasted the rest of the week. It was a tremendous feeling of achievement.

 

After my first effort as a parachutist, I was determined to make stable, clean exits and went on to get my Parachute Sport Licence and a further twenty jumps. Most of them were without incident, apart from a couple of occasions when I misjudged the weather. On the first it was partly cloudy with a moderate wind blowing. The wind strength was 12 knots, the upper limit for parachuting. The exit and descent were normal until the last two hundred feet, when I was hit by a sudden squall of wind. This caused me to swing violently and I lost all control of the parachute. I hit the ground at the top of the swing and landed flat on my back. I was knocked unconscious and came to as Denny was uncoupling the harness.

 

The pain in my chest and loss of mobility of my left arm made me suspect that I had fractured my left clavicle. This was confirmed by an x-ray at the hospital. I spent the next two weeks walking around like Napoleon with my left arm in the flap of my jacket. It did not deter me, though.

 

On the next occasion some of the club members and I were jumping at Tauranga Airfield on a brilliant, sunny day. We were trying to do precision landings on a spot marked on the field. In order to assess conditions, we flew over the field and dropped multicoloured streamers. After we had dropped two of them we felt that we had worked out exactly where we should exit. We did a further circuit and lined the aircraft approach on the streamers lying on the ground. Supremely confident that we were going to land exactly on the mark we then jumped. Everything appeared normal during the descent when I suddenly realised that the wind was taking me away from the field and that I was heading straight for high-voltage power lines. This was totally in the opposite direction as indicated by the streamers. I had visions of dangling from the lines while short circuiting the power to the Bay of Plenty. Not wanting to fry, I climbed up the rigging lines to spill the air out of the canopy and to propel the parachute in the opposite direction. This worked but increased my rate of descent. I landed heavily on the bank of a stream a hundred yards short of the power lines, winded but very relieved. During the final circuit of the aircraft a sea breeze had sprung up, completely changing the direction. of the prevailing wind.

 

This was to be my last jump. Three weeks later I left for the U.K and somehow, never got the opportunity to develop my jumping skills further.