Triple H Skydiving Club - Locust Grove, Georgia

Triple H Skydiving Club

Locust Grove, Georgia

Also Greene County Skydiving Club

McDonough, Georgia – I-75

After my discharge from the U.S. Army I returned home and Johnny and I resumed our adventures.  While I was in the service Johnny had married my first cousin Debbie after she graduated school and moved to Atlanta to work for GMAC.  They reconnected and as they say the “rest of the story” is their history together.

Johnny was skydiving with Triple H skydiving club in Locust Grove, Georgia and invited me to go along.  I went through the ground school training that morning and made my first static line jump.  After all the static line jumps (5) were made Johnny, Debbie and I spent almost every weekend the weather was good at the drop zone.

There was another drop zone close by just off Interstate 75 in McDonough called Greene County but that drop zone was within the Terminal Control Area (TCA) of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport so many of the jumps there were limited to lower altitudes so not to violate the TCA airspace limits.  I think the maximum jump was from 7,500 feet above the ground.

Triple H was just one exit farther down I-75 so that is where we did most of our jumps as it was outside the Atlanta TCA and jumps were up to 12,500 feet.  For months we spent many weekends arriving on Friday afternoon getting one or two jumps in and camping the two nights.  Saturday was spent all day jumping from different altitudes depending on the loads and people there.  Debbie would grill hot dogs or hamburgers and we would hang out with the other jumpers.  On Sunday, we would get one or two jumps in before heading back to the north side of Atlanta where we lived.

One jump I remember most was my last static line jump.  It was from an altitude of 3,500 feet.  The reason I have such a good recollection after all these years is I had taken my brother Ron with me that weekend to hang out and see me jump.  I had arranged for his first airplane ride so he climbed aboard with the rest of the jumpers and watched as each person on the static line got into the doorway, got their last instructions from the jumpmaster and with a tap on the shoulder stepped into the nothingness of falling.

I remember being the third one to jump and jokingly made my way closer to the door as each person before me left the aircraft.  I told Ron to enjoy the ride and I would see him on the ground in a few minutes.  The rush of air (wind) in your face as you stood at the door and the look down seeing the ground so far away was the first thing I noticed.  It was not a natural feeling at this point but there were no second thoughts of not jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.  I got into the doorway, signaled I was ready, was told the ground wind conditions by my jumpmaster and with a tap on my shoulder I leapt out of the plane. 

I arched my back (as instructed) and looked up at the airplane slowly banking left away from me going for another pass for the next jumper.  I could feel the free falling for several seconds till the static line started the tug on my parachute pulling it out of the pack on my back.  This all happened in the first five seconds from exiting the plane and I do what I’m supposed to do next and look up to inspect a good open canopy (parachute).  What I see is not a round colorful parachute above my head but a semicircle mess of tangled lines, some tight while others were limp and blowing in the wind.  The chute was curved and bent like a half folded cigarette spinning with me turning quickly with it.  I dropped pretty fast and quickly tried to clear the fouled chute. 

I had what was called a spinning Mae West (the parachute looked like a huge half bra cup hence the term Mae West) malfunction (now called a line-over).  So I cut away that garbage free falling for a few seconds pulling my reserve parachute.  It opened correctly and was then hanging under my un-steerable 24-foot rip-stop reserve chute at about 1,800 feet above the ground.

The weather was hot and humid, it had to be in the mid-90s, without a cloud in the sky, thermals galore were popping off the open fields around the drop zone and there was a 10-mph wind.  I was hanging under my reserve chute when now what, really?  It began to oscillate, 20 to 25 degrees to each side; swinging back and forth which was not good.  I pulled down my right-side risers in an attempt to stop the oscillations and rotation.  No change.  I then pulled the front risers to no avail as the swing side to side reached about 50 degrees each side from vertical.

Back in those days, we were very good at judging where we were going to land, because we jumped reserve parachutes that had a forward speed of just a few, if any, miles per hour.  Well, I knew exactly where I was going to land on the edge of a pasture just off the dirt runway!  With my reserve oscillating, the wind, my high descent rate and landing on the dirt or a barb wire fence I was heading for, I was experiencing the perfect storm of skydiving.  Now my thoughts were of my brother above in the plane looking down at my malfunctioned chute spinning wildly and then having to tell my mama I had been hurt or killed skydiving.

No time to think those thoughts now as I was preparing myself for an extremely hard landing and was telling myself this was going to hurt bad . . . real bad.  I saw people running toward where I was going to land.  It was going to be very, very ugly.  Then, six inches above that Black Death; that pain, the end of my skydiving life . . . my canopy stopped!  It stopped!  Stopped oscillating, stopped its descent rate; it just stopped moving.  I reached for the ground with my left foot before the canopy changed its mind and slammed me into that unforgiving ground.

Well my foot found the ground, the canopy collapsed; the wind picked up and threw me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me.  I lay there for about thirty seconds maybe a minute before trying to stand up!  The canopy was covering the barbed wire fence; I stood up shaken, looking around for the plane carrying my brother which was just landing.  The field I was landing in had a large thermal of hot air starting to rise from the ground as I was about to land and the upward air movement stopped my rapid decent making for safe landing.

I heard noise, so I looked around and those jumpers who had been watching the drama unfold were standing up or running toward me and they were applauding.  All those skydivers and girlfriends had been holding their collective breath, understood my circumstances and knew how dire my situation was.  When I landed safely, they were as elated and thankful as I was.

I gathered my gear, climbed over the barb wire fence and made my way across the field to the drop zone and the gathering of people where my brother Ron was waiting, also shaken, but glad to see me safe.  It was another day of adventure for Johnny and I along life’s winding road.

I continued to jump for a while then turned my attention to getting my pilot licenses and became a commercial corporate pilot flying rather than jumping from perfectly good airplanes.

Ice