Today we tried another 222-way for the first load of the day. Worked pretty well; a few people were out, and the dive built to something like 177.

The next jump was another 222-way. After several shoulder injuries, BJ was now recommending exits in a mantis-type position. Your shoulders are stronger in this position, and more able to take hits on exit. It worked well. That position is a faster-fallrate position.

The building formation flew fine for about 30 seconds, then the tension started. It grew and grew no matter what we tried to do to stop it. But then the pressure eased off. We built to around 200, and there were no problems with breakoff. Sector 11 was completed for about 25 seconds, and sector 2 was complete for around 15. We could finally go to the full 372 way.

It's getting really stinking hot. 98F today, and it had to be at least 80% humidity. The planes have this massive air conditioning system. It's so humid that the aircraft A/C sends out thick streamers of fog into the cabin, while barely keeping it at 90 degrees on the ground. (It gets the humidity out of the air, though, and that helps a lot.) I don't think we could have done this without the A/C. At the end of the day we went back to the planes to get our oxygen hoses set up and it was 120F in the plane even with the doors open.

We did a dirt dive, got dressed, and started walking to the planes. We hadn't gotten more than about 50 yards when people started yelling "come back!" The weather had started to deteriorate (thunderstorms in the distance) and so we waited a while to see if it would clear. It didn't, so we called it a day, which turned out to be a very wise decision as it started pouring not so much later!

We did get another jump in before that tho, this one out of the G-222. Three tandems, the passengers being the Wing 1 Commander and his two sons, and some fun jumpers made the last jump of the day.

Weather looks good for tomorrow, although Monday and Tuesday look iffy. We're starting earlier (7am) to try to avoid some of the heat and bad weather. We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow should be the full 372 way for the first time.

The weather (presumably) caused some power problems, so the showing of all the end-of-the-day videos at the hotel during dinner got cut short a little. But the videos were very much appreciated, as most people had not seen them yet.

End-of-the-day video (2.1 Mb)

Tandem video (4.3 Mb)