January jump report 1998

Gracias El nino! When the clouds of December cleared , January temperatures soared into the the 50's and the 4 DZ's close to my house sprung back to life. I have made 10 jumps since my birthday Jan. 19. I received some wonderful gifts but the notice of publication from Paramag blew me away.

I combined skills in freefly RW and videography with freestyle and CRW on this months skydives. The DZ at GKC in Independence has a dozen vertical flyers in all skill ranges. I had all kinds of fun chasing everyone around. I got into several nice face offs with some of intermediate flyers. I did one totally freestyle dive and it felt good to go back to the basics of vertical. I always think of freestyle as doing points with myself and on this one I completed 11 from 10 agl all nice and slow and clean. I started this dive with a head-down running-in-place out the door and followed it with lots of loops and cartwheels from the straddle stand-up or daffies. The only thing I blew was the upright spinning tee at the bottom. I had 2 memoriable sunset loads this month. The clean winter sky and and dull pinks and violets of the sun setting over a twinkling downtown KC with the river glinting like a snake made for some awesome visuals.

I had to go to a fellow K-Stater's memorial towards the end of January. Scott Goding, former president of the club died of cancer at age 56. He had recently stared at the Homegrown reunion in December. At that party, we all knew at the time it wasn't good for him, but it hurts now that he's really gone. Plus, it's scarry when people your age start going in from parts failure.

The road trip for the memorial gave me an opportunity to travel to Manhattean KS again and I stopped at the KSU Parachute Club DZ. The KSU club has ruled the Kansas skys for over 34 years continuously. Members of the Club have gold from the collegiates and 8 members have jumped with the Golden Knights and one KSU member made the Misty Blues. I showed up during packing class and voluntered my rig for practice. I hope it works. While getting a free pack job, I talked with the club officers who mentioned they needed a videographer which may tranlate into me scheduling more trips soon. Hopefully, freeflying will soon be in the collegiates.

Blue sky JHS

PS: This is my third year of monthly jump reports, if you want off the list let me know. thanks....