The sky - smaller than you think

The jump that kicked this off - #27 10-09-11 (Part 1)

Usually my second jump of the day is less nervous than the first. The nerves are never too bad anyway, it's amazing how quickly you get used to such an extreme event. However, this time I had a different, smaller parachute on my back. I wasn't sure how it would fly, but I knew it would be quicker, more aggressive. I had between the time it opened and the time I reached the ground to work it out or my landing would be rough and probably painful. But I was ready, I had a lot of jumps on the larger canopy and my understanding of how parachutes work was increasing with each of them.

We had a full load, 14 of us squeezed into the back of the jump plane. Across from me was a tandem. I like tandems. They're the dropzone's cash cow, and keep lift tickets for us fun jumpers close to affordable. They're also almost always first time jumpers, and the emotions they go through are great, both because they remind me of my first jump and because they're absolutely hilarious. This one was particularly good. She started panicking as the plane left the ground, and announced how we were so high every 30 seconds or so, looking out of the windows wide-eyed, swearing at her friends who were jumping with her.

As we reached altitude I started my usual routine, checking my rig, giving 'cool' skydiver handshakes to the jumpers around me, but I also leant over to the tandem instructor she was strapped to, patted him on the shoulder and said "Good luck Pete." Then the door opened and the swearing increased in volume, coarseness and frequency. 20 seconds later my turn came up. I got in the door, tried to focus on my exit and went. It sucked.

Freefall was amazing. It always is. But with a new canopy I wanted more time with it open, so I pulled at 6000' instead of 4. I watched it unfurl above me, thought how small it looked, then cleared my airspace and checked I had full control of it. The plan from here was to do some turns and stalls to see how the new parachute handled. However, I paused for a second as something caught my eye. A couple of hundred metres away from me was another falling object. As it started to expand I realised it was another parachute. Beneath it was a shape that must have been two people, a tandem. The whole assembly decelerated as the canopy opened, but something kept falling away from them. This was a videot, another skydiver paid to film the tandem's jump. He would open much lower, so he was on the ground ready to film the tandems landing.

I'm not sure I can convey how amazing all this was to see. Most of my jumps have been solo, and out there a mile from the ground you can feel pretty isolated. To see other people sharing my experience so close was fantastic. I let myself enjoy the moment for a second, then turned towards the landing area. I had work to do. Unfortunately at this point things got interesting...