Thursday, February 09, 2006
Redneck Parasail
The last training event in API is parachute training, better known as the redneck parasail. Appropriately enough, we pack everybody up and drive about half an hour into
Why is it called redneck parasail, you ask? Well instead of doing parasail as most know it: attached to a speedboat over water, we do it attached to a Ford F-150. Yeehaw!
But before we could get to the fun on Wednesday, we had to practice falling down. It sounds silly, but when you are under canopy falling at up to 28 feet per second, you want to know how to re-join mother earth with the least amount of damage possible.
The way we do this is with the PLF (Parachute Landing Fall). Airborne soldiers know this one well. The idea is to distribute the impact of your fall over the most points on your body. You land with your toes pointed towards the ground and hip pointed in the direction of your drift. So if you are drifting to the right, your toes are pointed left so that your right hip is pointed towards your direction of fall. As you near the ground, you stare at the horizon; drunk drivers always fare better in accidents because they are relaxed, same concept here.
When your toes hit, you throw your knees in the direction of drift, twist your shoulders in the opposite direction, and curl your body away from the drift. If everything goes right, you will impact on the balls of your feet, roll to the sides of your knees, then your hip/ass, and back. If you do it properly it looks like you crumpled like you were knocked unconscious. Hopefully you were not. Your feet should also fly up into the air and come crashing back down after your back is on the ground, further absorbing the impact. I wish I had video of it, it's much easier to understand if you ca see it.
So to practice this skill, we went to a practice area filled with pea gravel. The instructors said it is so that they can see the impression your body makes in the gravel to better critique your form. I think they just enjoy seeing us throw ourselves on rocks all day. You practice your PLFs from ground level with a simulated forward left drift, then forward right, then rear left, then rear right. You simulate this by jumping in that direction. Once you get this you go to the four foot platform, then to the eight. There's something just not natural about throwing yourself backwards off of an eight foot platform.
After you get the platform jumps in you grab onto a zip line which suspends you a few feet above the gravel. An instructor drags you along and on his command you release and do a proper PLF. This was no big deal going forward, but doing it backwards wasn't that easy. I did an ugly backwards PLF, landing on my back and head, and had to do it twice. I wasn't the only one though; lots of guys had to do the maneuver many times over.
After the fun of PLF practice, we got to do the overland parachute drag. This simulates you landing and a gust of wind dragging you across the ground. You start facedown, strapped into the parachute harness and three or four of your buddies grab the risers that are attached to the harness. On command they take off running, dragging you bumping along the ground. First you must flip over, so you pull on one riser and push on the other. Then you spread your legs and dig your heels in to slow the drag. My buddies said later that when I flipped and dug my heels in, they had a really hard time pulling me. Damn right, I'm not going without a fight!
Now release your chest strap and clear it. Then you release your two leg straps and clear those. After you are sure those are clear (wouldn't want those hooks grabbing something they are not intended to!) you pull one arm out of the shoulder harness and roll towards the arm that is still in the harness. Voila! Just like that you are out. It was actually kinda fun. I wanted to do it again, but it was time to break for lunch. The silly thing is that I will only use this technique if I parachute from the T-34. If I eject from any Marine Corps aircraft, the harness is different. To escape that harness you just have to pull down on two tabs and you are free. No releasing, clearing, tucking, and rolling. Much easier but maybe not as much fun.
So on to the morning of redneck parasail. We had a final safety brief and saw some videos about the training before getting into our cars and heading out to the airfield. It was another beautiful
When we got to the airfield we got a demonstration by the instructors. I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing when I saw the first guy go. You get really high and you come down pretty fast. Navy parachutes aren't very big so they don't gently bring you down like a sport parachute. It seems silly, but you don't want to be hanging out in the air, drifting and hanging in the sky forever waiting for the enemy to congregate at your landing spot. After the first group of students came back I felt better about it though, they said it was a lot of fun.
Just to make sure that we were warmed up and hadn't forgotten our instruction from the day before, we did a few more practice PLFs. In groups of four we practiced before heading out to the launch spot across the field. My group included Fong, Carmean, and a Navy ensign, Nuse. Everybody did fine except for Nuse. He just couldn't master the PLF and he was landing hard. Oh well, he'd get it once he was under canopy, right?
Once in the launching area, we strapped on parachutes and donned hockey helmets with a radio speaker taped into the ear cup on one side. The radio was for the instructor in charge to relay instructions to us, but we would not be able to talk to him. Probably best, I don't think I would have said anything intelligent or cool.
When your turn comes up you are hooked to the truck with two hooks at the end of a 300' long rope. The command comes over the radio for the truck to ease out and you start walking with the rope. Two instructors have their hands on your chute so it will inflate quickly and once the head instructor sees you have a good chute he gives the command "hit it, hit it, hit it." The driver of the truck gives the truck the boot and very quickly you are yanked into the air. The ride up is a lot of fun. I wish there was more time to look around and enjoy the ride, but jus as soon as you hit the apex of your trip you need to start thinking about how you are going to land.
My first landing went well, I don't really remember much, but I rejoined the ground with no damage whatsoever, so I think that qualifies as a good landing. It all happens so quickly you don't really remember it. I remember staring at the horizon, feeling my feet impact, and then being on my back with my chute collapsing over me. The instructor in the landing area asked me how it felt and I told him I thought had screwed up the landing because I hit on the front of my knees. "Are you ok?" he asked. When I said yes, he said "well that was a good landing."
The second one was even more fun. On the first tow, once you hit the top of your ride the truck slows down and tows along until you hit the ground. This ensures you have a drift and slows your descent. The second ride is a release, meaning that once you hit the peak, the truck crew hits the quick releases on their end and you are free to fall. You come down faster and sometimes straight down. I did, I came straight in like a lawn dart. Still a good ride and I had fun with it.
Remember Nuse? Well as I was unstrapping from my parachute, he took off on his release ride. I watched him come down and everything looked good until he hit. It was a textbook wrong PLF: feet, knees, face. He his hard on his feet, fell to his knees, and then bounced off the ground before faceplanting. I knew it was a bad hit, I just didn't know how bad of a hit. When he didn't get up, I thought maybe it was a broken nose or he was unconscious.
Now if this had been an accident in public around civilians, everyone would have gone running to his aid even though 90% of them could not help. I was pleased to see that everyone stayed in place; only the instructors and medical staff ran out to help him.
He did eventually get up and they placed him in one of the trucks to be taken back to medical at NAS. It turns out he broke his left fibula. He'll continue flying; he just has to hang out in
The one funny thing to come out of this was when it became apparent that someone would have to drive his car back to NAS. They asked who had already parasailed and didn't have their car there. A big Air Force student pilot walked over and volunteered, but asked "I'll drive. Oh wait, is it a stick?" "Oh, well this won't be pretty." What kind of guy can't drive a stick? Especially a military guy! He got a good deal of shit for that one.
