Jumping Out of a Plane

While I’m on the subject of past reportorial assignments, (see yesterday’s post) I should tell you about jumping out of an airplane.

I’d never done anything like that before and I didn’t have to do this story. It was an intriguing voluntary story and I decided to do it.

I cleared it with my news director and I did ask my wife if it was OK with her. We had three little kids at home and I wanted to make sure we were in agreement. There was some discussion about the proverbial “if,” but nothing serious. I don’t know what I would have done if she were adamant that I not do it. Fortunately I didn’t have to confront that issue.

This was back in the 1970’s and skydiving was gaining popularity. It seems like a good idea and good story and I was young and invincible.

I spent the morning learning all the basics of jumping and landing. I practiced jumping off a six foot platform and landing in a roll to take some of the force off my legs.

I had to learn what to do if my main parachute didn’t open and how to turn onto my back in mid-air and pull another ripcord so the chest chute would be pointed skyward. I thought I had all of this down.

A couple of hours after my ground training I climbed into a single engine Cessna with no door and with only one seat for the pilot.

My cameraman was an old Royal Air Force veteran, or so he said, and he was wearing a helmet camera to film my descent. He would jump right after me. I had another cameraman on the ground to film from that perspective. I wore a wireless microphone so I could describe the experience on the way down.

When we got to altitude, which wasn’t very high, about 32-hundred feet as I recall, I had to inch and crawl my way out onto the wheel and hold on to the diagonal wing strut and then fall backwards into the air.

It seems a heck of lot easier on the practice platform on the ground.

I hung on for a little while waiting for the pilot to give me the signal to fall backwards. It was a long enough wait for me to question my decision in even doing this. Since this was my first jump I did have a static line tether to the ripcord, but I was supposed to count anyway.

I got the signal, and arched my back and fell away from the plane. I remember looking at this surreal image of a plane going away and I was mesmerized by the incongruity of it and I forgot to count.

No matter, the tether worked and the chute opened and there I was dangling and floating toward a grass field where my ground cameraman was stationed. I looked around for my jumping cameraman and he was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t jump!

I was doing my best to describe what it was like and toggling my chute flaps to keep my descent toward the sound cameraman on the ground.

About eight hundred feet off the ground I noticed my cameraman was not behind the big sound camera. He was several feet away and using a silent hand-help camera.

I yelled, “get the landing on sound.” He yelled back. “I can’t the camera jammed, you’ll have to do it again.”

I landed not like John Wayne in all the World War Two movies I’d seen as a kid, but like a wet piece of spaghetti.

The story aired that night, but not like I wanted it. I never did jump again.