I have been an AFF-I for less than a year. To me, recurrency jumps present a fine line between teaching the student everything they need to know to pass the jump safely, and being careful not to insult their intelligence. I took care to walk Mitch through everything he might need to know: we went outside to the mock-up where we walked through his dive in its entirety a few times and told him what he needed to do to pass. I then put him in the harness, where I made him do several practice pulls on the pilot chute and physically practice his cutaway procedures multiple times. I grabbed a stack of photos with pictures of canopy malfunctions, found a quiet area for him and I to practice, and we spent about 15 minutes discussing malfunctions, controllability checks, and his decision altitude, making him simulate his cutaway procedures at least a dozen more times. (“Does it look like a sack of sh*t? Get rid of it!”) Mitch and I then found an aerial photo of our dropzone and discussed several potential obstacles/issues around Skydive Paraclete XP (trees, powerlines, off-DZ landings, etc.). At that point, I told Mitch to check out gear and get ready for the skydive.
Scary stuff!
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The ride to altitude went without incident; I did a gear check with Mitch and had him walk me through the dive in his own words. At 10,000 feet, I breathed a silent prayer that he’d be safe on his jump. At 13,500 feet, we spotted outside the aircraft and exited. The freefall portion was rather uneventful. (He passed with flying colors.) Under canopy, I set course back toward the DZ, then looked up and behind me to check on Mitch. You know what’s scary? Glancing up after opening and seeing your guy under a bright orange canopy… and then checking a moment later and seeing a cutaway canopy and D-bag… and no student.
What the… oh no… It’s funny how many thoughts can go through your head at one time: Where are you, Mitch? Oh my word, did he just go in? –would I even know?!! Where is my student?! And finally, Okay, two guys were behind us on this load… and I see three canopies. Suddenly I could breathe again. I can’t even explain how relieved I was to know that Mitch was okay. I don’t get flustered easily but I definitely ate it on that landing. Mitch came in nearby a few seconds after me and stood it up. I walked over to him, give him a fist bump, told him good job, and asked him what happened. (Tension knots led to the cutaway.) We went back to the DZ and debriefed. Mitch was thankful that his muscle memory kicked in during his cutaway, and told me on the ground that he trusted his gear.
The kid was cool as a cucumber the whole time – he even kept his handles! As a new AFF-I, I am so thankful that I took the time to walk through the emergency procedures with Mitch and talk to him about what to look for when reacting to malfunctions. It would have been so easy to just go through the motions and hand-wave the entire thing. (He did it before – he’s smart – he’s good!) Now I am so glad that we took the time to do it right. You know the best part? I got to conduct his A license ceremony – my first one! So I guess I owe beer too…
