This photo was taken by a friend of mine, Pat Fogarty, the day I graduated from Airborne school. Above you can see jumpers exiting the air craft and the different stages of parachute deployment. (Click on this image for a larger picture) If you look very closely you can see a jumper just coming out of the door on the left side of the craft. He is located inside the up-side-down V formed by the tail of the aircraft. Just behind him is a jumper who has exited slightly before him. His parachute is in the process of being extracted from the deployment bag (D-bag) and he is still attached to the plane at this point. Like I said before, this is a violent experience. The plane pulling your static line from your pack tray jerks your body in the direction in which the plane is travelling. Four seconds after you exit the aircraft the parachute inflates and you are jerked in the opposite direction (illustrated by the jumper in the center of this photo). Basically you are slowing from 180-200 mph forward motion to almost 0 forward motion in 4 seconds.

There is probably more time spent on preparing for each jump than there is actually doing the jump. First the jumpers gather for roll call and are assigned a stick number, which determines where they are located in the aircraft and at what point they exit. They are also inspected to make sure that they have their identification and dog tags. You can use your imagination and figure out why they do that. Then jumpers gather and perform pre-jump training before every jump. This consists of practicing landings as well as practicing in-flight procedures and aircraft exit using a full-size mock-up of an aircraft.

After the pre-jump, jumpers are issued their parachutes and under-go jump master pre-inspection of them and their equipment. The "Riggers" (personnel that pack/maintain/repair the parachutes) often add some of their morbid humor during issue by telling you "if this one doesn't work, bring it back and we'll give you another one."

This is yours truly trotting off of Fryar Drop Zone on graduation day (April 1990). I'll still remember my roster number, #244 (posted on my helmet). All of the old timers I know say that you never forget that one. My main canopy is inside the aviator kit bag on my back and my reserve is hooked to the handles and thrown over my shoulder (standard way of carrying your chute off of the field). Anyway, I look at this picture and can't believe I was ever this young. I also have to wonder how I managed to live this long.

This is my late grandfather, Nelson VanHook. He was pinning my wings on at jump school at our graduation ceremony. My other late grandfather, Robert Robinson, attended my graduation from Advanced Individual Training (AIT) a couple of months before and had pinned my new rank on when I was promoted at that ceremony.