Breaking news: Chicken Wings artist fell out of airplane!

Before take off, snuggled up comfortably in the belly of the beast. I'm the guy with the thumbs up.

So I went skydiving last Saturday!

Charlie, a reader, fellow forum member and avid skydiver set me up for a tandem jump at his club in Wr. Neustadt (www.paraclub.at), which is only 20 minutes from where I live. What can I say? It was awesome!!

It certainly was a unique experience for me! I was nervous and excited, but didn’t feel scared at any point, because Joe, my tandem master, had a very calm and experienced aura about him. The Do 28 D2 Skyservant, supposedly Europe’s fastest climbing skydiving plane, took us up to 4000m in no time, where we exited in a double forward somersault.

Here we go!

The act of jumping out of the plane was actually the highlight! Another great fact was that Charlie went on the same plane and took pictures of my adventure with his helmet mounted camera.

On the way down the three of us met and Charlie was fliming everything with his hemlet camera. I was so busy screaming and smiling at the camera (smiling at this speed really freezes your teeth!) that the 50 seconds of freefall felt more like ten seconds.

Hello! Nice to meet you! In the bottom left corner you can see the airfield.

It all was over quickly! I thought I would be able to see the plane pass overhead while we were somersaulting or to make a couple of turns, but I think my brain was so overwhelmed that it was impossible to take in all the stimuli rushing in on it. Joe then opened the chute and we were gliding down for about 5 minutes, enjoying the great view on this sunny day.

At this point, the fact that I didn’t eat lunch seemed to catch up with me, because I started feeling sick. But fortunately Joe didn’t make any hasty maneuvers or steep turns, so we managed to touch down before it got really bad. Note to self: Apparently not eating will not prevent me from motion sickness.

Charlie and me in the dropzone.

To sum it all up: I can only recommend this to all you boys and girls out there! And I would like to thank Charlie and Joe and everybody at the club for this amazing experience!! I hope I’ll be able to repeat this some day…

6 comments on “Breaking news: Chicken Wings artist fell out of airplane!
  1. warbirdali says:

    congratulations, looks like a perfect day too. Nice of you not to hurl in Joe’s face too, I am sure he is grateful for that. I like the paintjob on their plane!

  2. GuyD says:

    Isn’t the Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter faster?

  3. mike says:

    Charlie has a lot more color in his face than you! LOL
    😉

  4. Jide says:

    You should try AFF now 😉

    @GuyD: The Pilatus PC6 is fast, but can take only 8 (B2H2) to 10 (B2H4) people up to FL140. From ground to FL140, the PC6 B2H4 with a A34 and 10 skydivers usually takes as few as 17min 🙂

  5. Jackfloyd says:

    Never fly with an empty stomach… You’ll most probably get airsick! Of course, if you stuff yourself with food you’re in for a hell of a ride also…

  6. stef says:

    @Jackfloyd: Yes, my mistake. The scheduled time was right after my usual lunch time, so I thought I’d just postpone it… I guess I’d have to try a few more times to find my optimum! 🙂

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