Skydiving

I got into skydiving back in the early 60s after returning home from the military. Some of us would get together and modify an old Cessna an literally use duct tape to hold some things together. We used modified military chutes with a double L modification to give us some control over steering. In turn for doing some of the flying, I got free use of the equipment. This was taken at a jump center in the Houston area while I was working on some advance freefall techniques.

This was taken in the late 60s. I'm showing a friend how we exit because he was interested in taking up the sport. I think the more he  saw how rag tag our operation was the less he wanted to get into it.  It was all pretty basic stuff with little instruction so we just climbed out and pushed off. Our first few jumps were static line and then we did a few hop and pop to practice getting a stable position and then we went for longer falls.  

You can see all of the duct tape we used to patch things up since we had a pretty tight fit and by the time we got up to altitude, we were all ready to get out.

You can see more duct tape around the door and around my seat.

This was the last day of my retirement party in Houston. I had been jumping from the early 60s to the late 90s when I retired. My objective was never to be a professional class skydiver like the others guys in these photos but rather just have fun and have another set of skills available in the event a particular situation developed that required this type of activity, I would already be ahead of the learning curve.  

This is a jump with some of the other guys I used to jump with.They have thousands of hours and fly like angels whereas I fly like a brick. In any event, they take good care of me and make sure I don't get any blood on their gear.

We jumped all day and even had a beautiful jump as the sun was setting. They used to make fun of my form because I had some old injuries that prevented me from getting full extension of my arms so I developed my own style. As you can tell from this shot, it isn't pretty but it gets the job done.

This was the final jump of the day and it was beautiful!









I thought I would include a video clip of my first Advanced Freefall lesson. The gear and training has come a long way since I started in the 60s. This is where you get to jump with instructors who have thousands of hours and they can quickly get you squared away so you don't have to waste a lot of time and money getting to the good stuff. I was always out of town or out of the country and just couldn't stay current so this was a great way for me to cut to the chase and enjoy the sport before I retired.

Skydiving

My first USPA Membership













More photos being edited and in process of posting!