Meat Missiles, Whuffos, Seekers and
Point Breakers
by
Gary Clites
A strong breeze wafts the smell of the forest into the deceptively calm morning air as the first parachutes of the day blossom into multi-colored rectangles over the field at the end of the landing strip. The tiny pilots swoop and roll, dive and stall under the billowy canopies as they plummet downward, seemingly ever faster toward the pastoral calm of rural St. Mary’s County, Maryland as a barking, yapping black dog races to greet them.
In the two story beige hanger which serves as home to the Skydiving Center of Greater Washington, D.C. , Leigh Livelsberger, 31, and Michelle Jayatilaka, 28, pay their bill and begin collecting the various forms they’ll need to fill out before entering the first jump class.
“I figure if they can do this five, six times a day, then we must be able to do this.” Michelle nods toward the licensed divers grinning in from the field. Small and dark, with a pretty round face, she sits with her paperwork on top of a faded picnic table and looks to her friend for support. “Actually, a friend of ours did this a few years ago. Then some other friends did it, but I chickened out. And they were all, like... how great it is. So then I had to do it. I asked around work, and Leigh was the only one who would go with me.”
Michelle lives in the District, Leigh in Gaithersburg. They work together at an environmental consulting firm in Rockville. Tall, and strong in blue jean shorts and a tank top, Leigh is very matter of fact about why she said yes. “Aw... it was something I always wanted to do, I guess. I never would have initiated it. But, the time was right. Money was there. So why not.”
As the picnic tables separating the open front of the hanger from the airport’s tarmac slowly fill up with first timers, returning students, and instructors, Leigh falls to filling out the first in a series of liability forms. One passage says that she; “recognizes that skydiving activities involve intrinsic dangers and that bodily injury which may include broken bones, internal injuries, dismemberment, temporary or permanent disability, and death could result from participation in said activities.” She shakes her head, spits out a small laugh, and places her initials on a little line next to the sentence before moving on to another terrifying paragraph.
Assembled in a small classroom decorated with framed photos of various aerial formations, the nine first - timers are exposed to still more scare tactics. This time it’s a lawyer on video. In suit and tie, he again warns us that the Skydiving Center has no insurance (there is no liability insurance available for the business of skydiving) and that we could break our legs, spend the rest of our lives in wheelchairs or, basically, end up as pudding in a cup if we choose to skydive. The continual litany of harm we can do ourselves elicits first giggles, then a crescendo of laughter as the on-screen lawyer, in suit and tie and carrying a briefcase, straps on his chute and dives headlong from a plane and into the slipstream.
“But believe it or not, we really do want you to skydive.” Thin, muscular, blond and grinning, the initial sight of our 22 year old surfer-boy instructor and
jumpmaster for the day at first makes some of the class (all of whom are considerably older) shuffle nervously in their folding chairs.
Joe Sienuta started skydiving just three years ago. “It was something I wanted to do my whole life,” he says. Then, he saw a bumper sticker for the center and called in a reservation for the next day. That Sunday he skydived, and immediately paid to jump again. “They trained me for my second lesson and I was up for my second jump in fifteen minutes.”
He owned his own tile company at the time, but gave all that up last spring to work full time at the center as their primary first - class instructor and jumpmaster. “I love my job,” he says, despite the cut in pay. “I get to meet new people every weekend. They’re all different ages and backgrounds. And, really, I’m their first contact with the sport. It’s a great feeling to go up with people in the class... land in the field with them. They’re happy and proud of what they’ve just accomplished. I know they’ll pretty much always remember me as the guy who took them up for their first jump.”
Joe lays out the plan for the day: Classroom instruction on skydiving combined with practice climbing out of the plane, controlling the parachute in harness, and landing. And, at the end of the day, we skydive: “When you get up in the airplane, we’re all getting out. We’re all skydiving. So when I say, ‘Are you ready to skydive?’, I want to hear a very enthusiastic ‘Yes!’”
The United States Parachute Association located in Alexandria, Virginia, licenses skydivers and regulates skydiving schools and clubs around the country. Students entering the sport choose from among three different first jump options. Accelerated Freefall (AFF) is the fastest way to progress through training. Along with a basic first jump class, the student works much of the day with a private instructor. Then, late in the day, two skydiving instructors literally hold onto you as you exit the plane at 13,500 feet (a little more than two miles above the ground) and freefall to around 5,000 feet. If you don’t open your own chute by about 4,000 feet , they’ll do it for you.
Most of this day’s first jump class has chosen the Static Line Course. After a day of instruction, static line students fly to 3,500 feet, climb out the door to hang in the wind from a strut, then let go. A nylon cord hooked to the airplane automatically pulls open their parachute, launching them for a six minute glide toward the ground.
Tandem jumping is a fairly new addition to the sport and is generally chosen by people who are a little afraid of starting out with their own jump. A tandem jumper is strapped into a harness with a professional jumper and the two leave the plane together at around 13,000 feet for a sixty second freefall and a six minute paraglide.
A first AFF course costs $290 at the center, static line $180, and tandem $195 (prices that are pretty standard in this area), though some discounts are available. Completing the AFF course (whether you start with AFF or static line) costs the average student about $1,200. A full parachute rig runs somewhere between three and five thousand dollars. Which may explain why, of the 900 or so students at the center who will make their first leap from a plane this year, only 20 or 30 will stay in the sport long enough to buy their own equipment. Nationally, the USPA counted 136,000 jumpers in 1992.
As the class moves out of the building and toward a practice yellow Cessna passenger compartment, Joe notes that we’re a pretty average first jump class. “There are usually more AFF students than static lines, but this is pretty normal. It usually runs about four - to - one men. But then some days it’ll be all men, some days mostly women. You get a wide range of people. I think as far as age, I’d have to say most are between 20 and 30. ‘Course last week, we had a man and his wife at least in their 60’s. We have a lot of older people jumping these days.”
George Adcock pulls himself uncertainly through the door and onto the foot long steel step of the truncated Cessna. “Just go on out to the end, then step off,” Joe grins, “then look in and I’ll give you the thumbs up.” Tall and muscular, with a bushy mustache over an engaging smile, at 41 George looks as though he’s ready to skydive.
“It’s called getting rid of five kids and trying something new,” he explains. Asked what his wife thinks about the whole thing, he grins again. “Well, seeing as I’m suppose to be going with her to Ocean City right now, I’m sure she’s got quite a few mixed feelings.” He’s not going to Ocean City. On abandoning his
wife and kids for the week, he says: “She’s on her way right now. I figure it’ll give her a week to cool off and maybe she’ll miss me by then.” On the ground beside him, Jim Thurmond, 34, laughs through a matching mustache. “That’s my son in law,” George explains. “His wife’s in the car too.”
As the class moves from the yellow Cessna and out to the center’s landing zone, Nate Smith, a fire inspector from Waldorf and Dave Case, a 31 year old electrician who works for George, laugh about getting roped into the dive. “See, the guy who started all this didn’t show up,” says Smith. Small and solid, he is the only African - American in this first jump class and looks much younger than his 39 years. “We all work together, and this guy Harris kept telling us: ‘Oh, yeah. You gotta go... It’ll be great!’”
“Well, we’re here, and I don’t see him,” Case grins.
“Yeah,” says Smith. “His name is Harris Lanier. Put it in print in large letters.”
The landing zone (LZ) is a large weedy clearing on one side of the end of the runway. At its center is a bright orange windsock about six feet long which jumpers use as their target during approach. As the class settles around it, the class makes jokes about students refusing to leave the airplane. George asks Joe whether many people miss the landing area.
“Nah, it almost never happens,” Joe answers. “A couple of people have landed in the trees. Three since I’ve been here. A couple of our experienced divers have landed in the ditch (a ten foot wide mucky stream running down the
edge of the LZ). Just ask Mitch, there.” Joe indicates a tall, dark haired instructor who has followed us out to watch the jump.
“But I did it very well,” Mitch laughs. “With style and flair!”
“I see one,” Michelle shouts, pointing toward the Twin Otter aircraft. White specks as small as the eye can possibly discern drop with dizzying speed away from the plane. “Oh, my God,” Michelle adds, as they travel down... down... down... and then explode into bright neon colors as all eight parachutes open one by one and begin floating almost imperceptibly toward the ground. Unlike the round paratrooper chutes of old, these rectangular wings turn the skydivers into pilots with the ability to steer their craft through the air.
“The growth in the industry is really a result of the equipment becoming more manageable and the instruction becoming more refined to go along with it,” says Kevin Gibson, co - owner (with his wife Cindy) of the Skydiving Center. “With the old round canopies it was basically jump till you bump. They were known for some hard landings. Most people quit sometime in their mid - 30’s. The new rectangular chutes really opened up the sport.”
At 40, with a shock of gray hair wrapping his temples, Kevin seems pleased this is no longer the case. He made his first skydive 18 years ago and quickly worked to make skydiving his profession. Working as an instructor and then managing a school, he eventually rose through the profession to edit three major skydiving publications, Skydiving, Southwestern Skies and, most recently, Parachutist (The USPA’s official magazine). He was working on that magazine four years ago when Cindy came up with the idea of starting the center. Tall and tan with light brown hair, Cindy Gibson worked for a lobbyist for much of the eighties, giving it up eventually to work full time as an instructor.
“We did something really stupid,” says Kevin. “We bought a house, started a business and got married all in one year. But so far it’s worked out pretty well.” Cindy ran the center the first three years while Kevin stayed on at the magazine. “I only got out of publishing and into the alternate lifestyle a year ago,” he explains. “I was planning to continue my career, but the business got too big for one person.” The Gibsons chose the St. Mary’s County location for its wide open spaces and proximity to the D.C. area. “I knew people would drive a few hours to make a skydive. And then they’ll do it again and again.” Fortunately for them, the sport has seen steady growth in Maryland in recent years.
In the air, the skydivers seem to be having problems. They steer in toward the landing zone, only to suddenly pick up speed as they approach, hitting the ground harder than they expect. Down the hill, a diver touches down and is drug forward onto the ground. At the top, another falls hard backward onto her bottom. One by one they crash down. No one is injured and each jumps up happily from their landing, but the first timers begin to go white.
Finally, a diver under a blue canopy comes zooming in toward the LZ, and instead of slowing in his descent he picks up speed barreling ever faster toward the ground. The first timers gasp as he slams downward at beltway speed. Then, zooming over the ground at a height of about five feet and a speed which makes his audience jerk their necks hard to follow him, he crashes to the ground.
“That’s it for me,” Jim Thurmond says, staring amazed at the heap of nylon up the hill.
“Nah,” Joe responds. “He meant to do that. That’s just Jimmy. He does that five or six times a day. It’s sort of his thing.”
Back in the classroom, Joe is trying to be serious. “I can honestly say those are some of the worst landings I’ve seen around here. The winds are really squirrely and turbulent out there right now. We won’t let you go up if it’s like this. Usually, everybody has real soft landings. It’s just like stepping out of a car or off a front porch.”
In his folding chair, George squirms and says, “I was wondering how he was going to explain this one away.” Big laughs follow, then more ribbing for the jumpmaster.
But they do trust him now. The class has had a good time, joking and laughing throughout the day. But by two - thirty, and after several more class sessions, some of that nervousness starts to reappear as the jump nears. The first - timers have learned by now how (theoretically) to exit the plane, fly the parachute, and land on field. The last classroom session is about what to do if any of those things go wrong.
Over the next hour, the class discusses what to do if you fall out of the plane (relax, you were going to jump anyway), can’t make it back to the field (land anywhere else you can get to), or if your parachute doesn’t open (pull your reserve chute). Sitting in the back, Brian Tippett, a 24 year old graduate student in engineering at Maryland, asks what to do if the reserve chute doesn’t open. “Well,” Joe says thoughtfully. “There’ll be a really bright light. Go directly toward it”
Throughout my time at the center various people quoted statistics about just how dangerous skydiving is. Kevin explained, “If you always do what you should do it’s extremely unlikely you’ll have any serious problems. If I were a weekend rugby or softball player, I’d expect more injuries.” Still, no one plays softball while falling more than two miles through the air. Almost everyone I talked to in skydiving told me I was more likely to get killed driving to the drop zone (DZ) than jumping out of an airplane.
41 people died skydiving in the U.S. in 1993. The USPA sent me a dim photocopy of an article entitled, Worst in a Decade. As the name implies, that year was not a good one for the sport. The article goes through that unsettling statistic case by case, detailing exactly how and why each person died. One woman pulled her leg strap rather than her ripcord. Another jumper died when he opened both chutes and they wrapped around each other as he plummeted to the ground. Another died when he exited the plane incorrectly and smashed into the tail.
Through 41 cases, the article details the death and mutilation. And in the end, leads to a clear understanding that, in most of the cases, the accident was caused by something the skydiver did wrong. What if someone wrote an article detailing each of the more than 43,000 automobile deaths that happen every year?
The previous year, 1992, was more representative of skydiving’s record recently. That year, 27 people died skydiving out of 2,600,000 jumps. That works out to roughly one death per 100,000 jumps. Better, indeed, than the U.S. auto record of 16 deaths per 100,000 drivers that year.
Thankfully, no one has been killed in four years of jumps at the St. Mary’s County center. The worst injuries reported so far have been “a couple of cracked vertebra,” according to Kevin.
28 year old navy submarine officer Bill Brougham echoes many others in the class when he notes; “All my friends keep asking why I want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.”
“We call those ‘whuffos’,” says a regular at the center, helpfully. “As in, “Whuffo you jump out of them airplanes?’ You know that sign out by the runway that says, ‘Warning, stay clear of propellers’? That’s the ‘Whuffo Line’. Once you cross that, you ain’t no whuffo no more.”
That line gets closer as, at 4 p.m., the class sits down to a thirty - one item quiz as their last step before skydiving. Joe sits in a lawn chair with his feet up on a picnic table physically blocking the whuffo line as he analyzes each paper critically. He noticeably winces while grading one paper, clarifying questions and forcing his students to get each item exactly right before moving on.
The windsock is still whipping violently as Joe tells the class that they’re putting the first jumpers off till later in the evening when weather reports say winds are supposed to drop to around five miles an hour.
Dave Case shakes his head. “I just hope it’s not like some Road Runner cartoon where you hit the ground and then your chute pops open.”
By 6 p.m., Kevin and Cindy are standing by the edge of the runway, gauging the wind. Kevin looks from the flags flapping in the breeze and in toward the first timers assembled around the tables, “These days you get a variety of people jumping. From your young 22 year old meat missiles, to your 30 year old ‘never had the money, but now I can afford it’ point breakers, to your 40 to 50 year old seekers.”
“When you ask the first jumpers why they do it,” Cindy remarks, “you find two main categories. For one group it’s a mid-life thing. They’ve just ended a relationship, or they’re getting married, or turning 30 or 40, and something inside says: I have to do something now. The other group just says, I’ve always wanted to jump -- to fly -- to do something.”
She thinks through her two categories, and adds, “An amazing number say they have a fear of flying and they want to defeat it. Then you get a lot of people who come with a group and basically get drug into it.”
As we cross the tarmac toward the tables, Kevin shrugs his shoulders. “Besides, what in the Hell else is there to do? Drugs are out. Alcohol is doubtful. Sex is dangerous. What else are you going to do? We get a fair number of people who work on Capital Hill stuck at their desks all day shuffling papers. I have a friend in Texas who describes skydiving as a two week vacation in an hour. I think that about says it.”
Kevin moves up by Joe’s lawn chair. “Thirty minutes,” he says. “Get your first group suited up and you’ll go at 6:30.”
The little blue and white Cessna holds three jumpers, the pilot, plus the jumpmaster. George Adcock, Dave Case and Eric Yeater, a promo producer at PBS, begin picking out goggles and helmets as Joe picks out their parachutes. “You’re with the last group,” Joe tells me, slapping my back. “Looks like you’ll get a sunset jump. Let me tell you, that’s beautiful.”
Static line students basically drop from the plane and a nylon cord extending about fifteen feet below the plane yanks out their parachute so that within about three seconds they are under canopy. After checking that the parachute is there - square - and steerable, they fly off for a six minute glide to earth. Beginning students are guided in their flight by radio from the ground. Ten feet from the ground they must “flair," pulling the control toggles fully down and, basically, braking to a stop just before touchdown.
The sun is intense in the West as the Cessna slows its engine to near silence and the first tiny spot can be seen climbing out the door. He hangs, drops, and a few seconds later the multi-colored chute billows forth above him. George’s flight is slow, graceful and lovely as he experiments with the wing above him, swooping and turning pirouettes in the sky.
Just as George aims in toward the LZ, the second jumper drops. Kevin’s big shaggy black dog, Pepper, works out the trajectory for where George will land and begins racing for it. Just as George comes down in a soft roll, Kevin yanks back the lead and yells, “No, Pepper.” George jumps from the ground grinning as Kevin turns to me, “We’re trying to teach her not to bite the skydivers.” To Pepper, we’re all just sticks thrown from a plane.
Eric Yeater flares at just the right height, but hits the ground a little too hard as the wind kicks up under his chute. A few minutes later, Dave topples onto his bottom a little up the hill. Immediately behind him comes Joe, who jumps with every group, swooping in fast under a sky blue high performance canopy. He lands, cheers, and begins pulling his chute together to go up with the next group.
“The scariest part was taking off and getting out on the wing,” Dave says, sweating and grinning his way back toward the hanger. “The initial rush is when they open that door. Air rushes in. You drop. There was no counting. I looked, and that chute was up there... I would definitely do it again. No problem.”
As I suit up in helmet and goggles, Leigh pulls off a perfect landing at the LZ. But Michelle is all over the sky. Instead of flying a logical pattern toward the field, she starts circling it in wide loops, slowly honing in on us. Bill Brougham drops after her, and heads illogically across the field and over a wooded industrial area on the other side.
We learn later that Michelle’s radio malfunctioned and she was flying on her own. “My altimeter was hanging loose,” she explained, “and I couldn’t hear the radio.” For his part, Bill jumped just as Kevin was excitedly shouting landing instructions to Michelle. Thinking they were meant for him, he followed them right off and into the wrong direction. “I kept hearing ‘hard left - left - left.’ I wondered where in the heck was I going. But he’s the expert, so I figured.... Turned out he’d lost me. I was way over there. Still, I had fun playing with the turns, and I landed pretty soft.”
* * * *
And then it was my turn. The previous jumpers had told me the ride up was the time for nerves. But staring down through the open door of a Cessna from 3,500 feet is enough to get anyone’s attention. Then, the engines cut, and Joe was grinning big six inches away from my face. “Are you ready to skydive?” he shouted.
“Hell, yes,” I responded in a tone which I hoped sounded convincing.
“Then climb out onto the strut,” he shouted. Yeah... right.... But almost involuntarily, I was there, pulling myself out of the plane, reaching down the strut, and stepping off. No conscious thought. Only movements I’d memorized. I looked down into a deep forest of pine moving slowly beneath me, then in at Joe grinning in the doorway. Only he wasn’t grinning. I’d forgotten to arch my body which can cause you to twist in the air as your chute opens.
I arched at least a little as Joe gave me the thumbs up -- and I dropped. Straight... and impossibly fast toward the forest. I tried to count. Felt a flutter above me. Looked. And suddenly I was hanging in a harness like a baby in a swing. The chute was there and square, and when I yanked down the toggles I found it was steerable. Kevin’s friendly voice crackled at me through the radio, and I was flying straight into a bright orange sun settling down over the Potomac. I swooped and turned to look to the Chesapeake Bay glimmering in the East. I glided over farms and swamps and miles of St. Mary’s County pine. It was all more beautiful than I could possibly describe.
And I wondered why I wasn’t scared. It seemed as though I should be scared. The harness could break. I could crash headlong into the swamp. But from someplace deep down inside, I was filling up... with joy, excitement, and more adrenaline than I’d felt in my entire life. This was the feeling of flying, alone and unassisted over miles of drifting landscape. There was no room left for fear. I felt myself grinning the same grin I’d noticed all day on the faces of the instructors. Shouting at the top of my lungs, I pulled down one toggle and dived left toward the forest to play for a few minutes in full flight.
At 1,500 feet I turned toward the field and began moving with the wind at about 40 miles per hour toward the LZ. As I came toward the clearing, I began to make out the windsock, then Kevin, then Pepper laying in wait. I turned into the wind at 500 feet and listened as Kevin shouted, “...beautiful... beautiful,” through the radio. Closer and closer, the ground picked up speed as it moved toward me. I had seen quite a few hard landings that day, so I held my flair till the last possible moment. I zoomed past Kevin and the windsock and waited till I could make out the blooms on the Black- Eyed Susans before I yanked down the toggles. And it was just like stepping off a front porch. I landed standing on my own two feet as the canopy fluttered to the ground behind me.
Above, Jim was dropping through the sky under Kevin’s instruction and Nate was just stepping out of the Cessna. I was still grinning as Jim landed a little hard on his bottom up the hill. Nate’s approach was scary. The wind was changing directions, and he turned a little late to head for the clearing. He came in fast with the wind behind him and was dragged onto the ground by his chute. Still, he lay on the ground nursing a leg pull and grinning ear to ear.
* * * *
The sun sets as we drag our gear in toward the hanger. On the picnic tables between the light of the center and the dark of the airport, Joe fills out a log book, an official record of dives, and a first jump certificate for each of us. Inside, the teenage packers roll up chutes and lines that will be scattered into the early morning breeze on Sunday. Kevin adds up receipts as Cindy nurses a sprained ankle earned climbing the steps after a jump. Pepper sleeps placidly atop a picnic table beside us, no doubt dreaming of spectacular attacks on plummeting skydivers.
Everyone wants to talk about jumping out of airplanes, shouting “Yes! Yes!” when someone mentions something that had happened to them. No one wants to go home. Everyone promises to come back.
In the half light at the edge of the runway in a warm Summer breeze smelling distantly of the Chesapeake, each in turn takes Joe’s hand and thanks him for the day. They’ll always remember him as the man who took them up for their first skydive.
Sidebar: Area Parachute Centers
Ready to make your first jump? There are numerous USPA licensed skydiving centers in the area. All will be happy to send you information on rates and classes:
Maryland
AquaFoil, Inc.
P.O. Box 3312, Crofton, MD 21114
(301) 261 - 0188
The Skydiving Center at Ocean City
Ocean City Airport, Ocean City, MD 21811
(410) 213 - 1319
The Skydiving Center of Greater Washington, DC
315 Airport Drive, Suite 600, California, MD 20619
(301) 870 - 3686, or (301) 373 - 2669
Pennsylvania
Skydive Chambersburg
Chambersburg Municipal Airport, 3506 Airport Road, Chambersburg, PA 17201
(800) 526 - 3497
Endless Mountain Skydiving Club
Spring Hill Airport, Sterling, PA
(717) 488 - 5229
Erie Skydivers
4070 West 30th, Erie, PA 16506
(814) 833 - 0895
Maytown SPC
Donegal Springs Airport, 188 Airport Road, Marietta, PA 17547
(717) 653 - 0422
Mon-Yough Skydivers, Inc.
J.T. Willie Airport, Box 300-D Airport Road, Worthington, PA 16262
(412) 297 - 3690
Morgantown Parachute Center
P.O. Box 253, Morgantown Airport, Route 23 East, Morgantown, PA 19543
(215) 286 - 6601
Northeast Pennsylvania Ripcords, Inc.
Cold Springs Farm, Sugarloaf, PA 18249
(717) 788 - 2476, or (717) 455 - 7641
The Freefall Farm
Grimes Airport, 371 Airport Road, Bethel, PA 19507
(717) 933 - 9241
United Parachute Club, Inc.
New Hanover Airport, Route 663, Gilbertsville, PA 19525
(215) 323 - 8565, or (215) 323 - 9667
Virginia
Air-Works Skydiving Center
Warren County Airport, RR 4, Front Royal, VA 22630
(301) 834 - 9268
Hartwood ParaCenter, Inc.
194 Cropp Road, Hartwood, VA 22406
(800) ICARUS-0
Peninsula Skydivers
West Point Airport, P.O. Box 904, West Point, VA 23181
(804) 785 - 4007
Skydive Orange, Inc.
Orange County Airport, Route 20, Orange, VA 22960
(703) 672 - 5054
Skydive Suffolk, Inc.
902 Hare Road, Suffolk, VA 23434
(804) 539 - 3531
West Virginia
Sky High Adventures, Inc.
Summersville Airport, Summersville, WV
(304) 872 - 0161, or (304) 872 - 6529
West Virginia Skydivers
Jackson County Airport, I - 18, Millwood, WV
(304) 273 - 8114, or (304) 273 - 2582
(Source: Parachutist Magazine, official publication of the United States Parachute Association)
© Gary Clites, 1995