But then have a good look. A seriously good look. Is it really you? Yes to a degree, but how much do you genuinely know? Is your knowledge actually that detailed or are you sat right on the tip of the iceberg? When you think you know it all, or even just think you have the skill to achieve something, take a step back and really think. For most of us it's not until afterwards, when an incident has happened, that we realise we weren't quite up to it. Hindsight is fantastic.

The following four things happened to me...
 

• 120 jumps - made a late turn, not having a full grasp of altitude. Very lucky with only a limp for a month.

• 1,800 jumps, AFF instructor - freefall collision whilst not being 100% aware of what was going on around me. I was shaken though uninjured but the other person wasn't so lucky.

• 2,900 jumps - cutaway at 4,000 feet following a CF wrap, turned a half series and then smoked it on down. Pulled my reserve sub 1,000 feet (no Cypres). It seemed cool, with the adrenaline pumping, until the reserve pilot chute started bouncing off my right arm before deploying. Landed without further incident.

• 3,400 jumps - slightly in the corner, despite 600 jumps in the previous year on that type of canopy with 300 of them using rear risers. Still in sink and didn't quite have the lift on the rears that toggles can give. Luckily I had the knowledge and skill to recover and only scraped my bum on the concrete at the front of the DZ, with no further injury - but obviously hadn't had the skill to avoid being in that situation in the first place!

Can you associate yourself with any of these incidents? If not, I'm sure you can come up with your own. Each one of the above I thought would never happen to me. Which one left me looking cool? How many of us have had a bad landing and hoped no-one has seen it? A little knowledge can be dangerous.

So why do we put ourselves in these situations? For most (particularly males) it is our ego. We want to go fast and progress as quickly as we can. We cut corners and take shortcuts, jumping smaller, faster canopies, before we can totally handle our present one. We want to get on the bigger, better jumps and forget the basics. We want to look cool.

Having knowledge in this sport, which can be unforgiving, is knowing how much you don't know and therefore how much more there is to learn.

So why not slow down? Keep jumping that canopy until you've really put it through its paces over hundreds and hundreds of jumps. Keep doing the basics - you can never do enough skills jumps.
Stay aware.

So who's the coolest jumper on the drop zone? Perhaps it's the quieter one that has been around for a while, doesn't have the desire to show off or try to look cool, sticks to the simpler jumps, flies a larger (by 'cool' standards) canopy that will give lots of lift and doesn't land it in an extreme way. Perhaps, just perhaps, this is the coolest person on your drop zone, without even trying. And perhaps they are the ones that, overall, have the most fun and reap the maximum amount of satisfaction out of our sport.

Article by Al Macartney
alastair@macartney.co.uk

Back to August 03 Contents

Related websites
www.normankent.com
www.performancedesigns.com