*COPY* of MC's LOST Geocache America! Geocoin

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Back again for more skydiving! Today was a full, fun day in the sky at the Gold Coast Skydivers drop zone in which the travel bugs and geocoins made SEVEN more skydives with me!

We started off with a solo skydive, exiting the plane last after all the other jumpers and tandem students had exited. I did some flips, spins, barrel rolls, etc. in freefall before opening the chute higher than normal to have enough time under canopy to film all the TBs and GCs that were jumping with me. After that, I dove the canopy toward the ground and spun it hard and fast for another thrill.
Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccQXnFftpPk

Other skydives we made today:
- A couple of very fun, very successful three-way jumps. The first one was called a "Do-Si-Do" or "Fly-Around" dive. Three jumpers exit the plane and form a side-by-side chain in the sky. Then each jumper takes his turn dropping off of the end of the chain and flying around the other jumpers to take up a new grip at the other end of the chain. It's lots of fun and great practice at flying and docking smoothly. The other three-way was a drill dive. We launched a three-way round formation, then transitioned to an "open accordian", a "compressed accordian", a "murphy", and back to a round. We repeated that several times, changing which person faces outward on the murphy each time.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-yQhr00hp0

• I shot video for a three-way hybrid skydive with a freeflyer chasing them. A hybrid dive is a mixture of traditional belly-to-earth skydiving and freeflying, where the skydiver flies in a vertical position. In this dive, the three jumpers exited on their bellies in a three-way round. Once stable, one of the jumpers went into a stand position beneath the other two, hanging from their chest straps and dragging them down faster. The freeflying jumper flew around them in a head-down position.
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exksZMuzjV8

• A six-way formation skydive and a four-way formation jump. On the six-way, an unstable three-way exit caused one jumper to fall out of the formation. She never made it back in, but the rest of us completed two formations as a five-way. The four-way went about the same. Brian and I were late on the four-way exit from the plane so we got stripped off of the other two jumpers. We flew it back together though and completed a 4-way round, to a snowflake formation, and back to a round. Fall rate differences prevented us from doing more.
  6-Way Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFGBSHrmEac
  4-Way Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNjuVCI3XA

• A "rodeo" skydive with Kelly "FireFox 2". A "rodeo" skydive is a jump where one skydiver rides on the back of another in freefall. For this jump I flipped my GoPro video camera around backwards on my helmet to film Kelly riding on my back during the dive. Jay and Joe dove out with us too to chase us. Kelly and I got into a spin that we couldn't stop. It got faster and faster until we called it quits. Kelly later compared it to an actual rodeo; trying to stay on a bucking bronco for eight seconds. Then I briefly got on Kelly's back and rodeoed her.
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnbFEa4-Mw

All in all, the replacement geocoin made a total of nine skydives with me. That's almost 50 miles of vertical travel. Can't log that on geocaching.com! The geocoin will be placed into another cache soon so it can continue the travels of the original geocoin.

Blue skies!
Model Citizen - Zero Discipline

This entry was edited by ModelCitizen on Tuesday, 13 September 2011 at 03:39:31 UTC.

Today the replacement geocoin and I made the drive down to the Gold Coast Skydivers drop zone in Lumberton, Mississippi to make some jumps out of a perfectly good airplane. I only managed to make two jumps today. This geocoin, some other geocoins, and a couple of travel bugs jumped with me, kept safe (sort-of) in my pocket during the jumps. We jumped from the drop zone's Twin Otter jump plane from an altitude of 14,500 feet AGL and enjoyed over a minute of freefall on both jumps before having to deploy the parachute and fly back to a soft landing at the drop zone. Then repacked the chute and did it again.

Both jumps today were high-speed sit-flying jumps, where we fly/fall in a sitting position. It's very hard to do well, and since you're presenting less surface area to the wind than when falling belly-to-earth, the fall rate is much faster. Speeds can reach 180 mph or more and it gets hard to stay stable, in control, and in position with other jumpers in the air.

On jump number one I was sit-flying with Asia and Doug. We tumbled a little bit on exit and I ended up above Asia and Doug and spent most of the dive trying to get down to them. Overall the dive worked out pretty well and was a whole lot of fun. Jump number two was another sit-fly jump, but this time it was just me and Doug. We flew really close together -- close enough to touch a couple of times during the dive.

As usual, I had my helmet-mounted GoPro camera running during the dives and have posted the video on YouTube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2TguL23NXc

Now the replacement geocoin has tasted the beauty and thrill of flight and knows why the birds sing. We'll be back for more skydiving tomorrow.

Blue skies!
Model Citizen - Zero Discipline

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