Give that man a hand

Ever since I was a kid I had a love of parachuting. Not sure why. It was so cool watching the small specks exit from the aircraft, slowly getting larger as they hurtled towards the earth. Then the emerging fluttering of cloth that turned into a perfectly round bloom of colour.

Or the army ones were even cooler. Watching military aircraft disgorging packages from the doors of planes that slowly opened into a show of round green canopies slowly stabilising in mid-air, it looked peaceful and serene.

Landing under the spherical canopies was a little less serene – my knees and butt will tell you that. The parachutist hits the ground at around 20 kilometres an hour and if you don’t do it right there’s broken ankles, legs and occasionally worse. Unlike landing with the rectangular sports ‘chutes you see today at air shows and the like, landing in those is like stepping off a chair.

Sport skydiving is a business of ‘hurry up and wait’ – you’re waiting for the wind to drop, the cloud to clear and so on. So, there’s lots of sitting around chatting and story-telling, usually from the boys and girls who had done well over a couple of hundred jumps.

Here’s a good one.

Picture the scene. It was a Agricultural Show Day in the 90’s in New Zealand. It was a big deal, a major community event and family day out. A skydiving display was eagerly awaited and a local skydiving club was to do the business. The club was well run and had saved enough funds to purchase their own Cessna aircraft. They had taken all the seats out and made modifications to best enable jumper deployment. The inside of the plane was effectively gutted. Amongst other things, they had modified the door opening to be wider – keep that in mind, its important.

Apart from the five skydivers involved, there is another key player – Hemi, the pilot. Pilots love doing flying with parachutists as it’s a great way to get their flying hours up for certification. So here they are, say 15,000 ft above the agricultural show, and Hemi yells out over the noise of the engine and wind from the open door, that we’re over the drop zone. They all clamour out, except the last guy out caught his finger on some sharp steel on that modified door frame – you know, they one to make the exiting more efficient. Finger gets sheared clean off.

Hemi hears the disappearing scream and looks behind, to his horror he sees the finger rolling about on the floor. Presence of mind, he retrieves it. 10/10 to that man!

Meanwhile the display has gone to hell and when finally back on terraferma the wounded jumper is taken off – with his finger, thanks Hemi, to hospital. Apologies all round to show organisers and agreement the jump would be redone, albeit one jumper short.

So here we are again at 15000 ft – but hey, how about some health and safety. This time we are wearing gloves – good move! The still somewhat shaken Hemi is flying the plane over the drop zone, and gives the all clear. Out the door they all go, except this time ….. the last jumpers’ glove gets caught in the same sharp bit of the door (why didn’t we flatten that out with a hammer?). The glove gets ripped off, flies about the interior and lands in Hemi’s lap!

“Jesus! A hand!”

P.D.Mc Shane Author