First Jump.

Ankle moving, clear.
Shin check, clear.
Knee moving, clear.
Thigh check, clear.
Pelvis moving, clear.
Buttocks check, clear.
Elbows moving, clear.
Back check, clear.
Shoulders moving, clear.

JUMP SUCCESSFUL! That's the first thing I did when I landed. Oh man.. please remind me to keep my Feet Knee lock tight and push turn roll over!! I could have sworn I almost got injured during my first jump. I had quite an aching knee after it.. but it's all better now already.. I think its due to the hard impact. Luckily it was Cat1 before my sortie's(batch) turn to jump cause my knee might not survive another bad landing. Anyway.. this was how December 19th my first jump day was like.

2.15am reveilli, quite okay.. but I felt shag for the rest of the day cause I only had 4hours of sleep =/. Pre jump training revision was next.. its a must to go through it before we can start our jump. Half an hour later we proceeded to shift the parachutes, reserves and stuffs from the store to the tonners. After that we proceeded to have our breakfast and then move off to Sembawang camp. Fast forwarding.. I started to parafit and get ready to for my sortie's turn to jump. Almost waited for an hour cause of that royal brunei prince's son to jump. His whole family specially came over here just to watch him jump. As I saw the my comrades jump and landing.. I thought to myself.. "hey the landing isn't as hard as I thought! I'm really motivated and I want to jump ASAP!!" Then our Chinook came.. they had a change of pilots and needed to refuel and I had to wait even more.

After 10mins.. its Action time! All of us ran to the chinook screaming 'woohoo!!, Airborne!!, HO SEH BO!!, Lai liao lai liao'.. Haha.. we were soo excited, or trying to act confident. You know how we describe the feeling of boarding the Chinook? It's like pushing the coffin up into the funeral van. =Ss

The wind generated from the chinook's propellers was so strong that it was pushing us down when we were running towards it. When you're like 1metre from the chinook suddenly there this gust of warm air that makes you difficult to breathe, then when we were finally under it.. it was like in a mini vacuum.. no feeling of wind whatsoever.

Everyone's boarded and seat in their passes.
Somehow, everyone was dead silent in the chinook.
"Sortie fasten seatbelts!!" says the jumpmaster and the helicopter took off.
We couldn't really hear what the jumpmaster was saying due to the loud sounds generated from the propellers.

As we flew higher.. our anxiety grew higher too. We all realized, OMFG we are so high up in the air!! I could see some of my friends doing their short prayers, I did a quick one myself too.. we tell each other stuff like 'aizai, don't care just jump, have a safe jump.' That's how nervous we all were.

"Sortie prepare for action!"
All of us unfastens seatbelts and took out our static lines.

"1st Pass stand up!" The first batch of jumpers stands up in the middle of the chinook so as to keep the Chinook balanced.

"Hook up" We all hook up our static line.
If you were wonder what's a static line, its the yellow strap that links our parachute to a cable. So when we jump off, the cable will drag our static lines away thus deploying our parachutes.

"Test static line!" We make sure our static line is securely hooked up if not our parachute won't deploy. lol =/

"Equipment check!" We all sounded off in this order. "Helmet, capewell, lifejacket, chest strap, reserve snap, ripcord, leg strap, pack tie, static line clear and hook up!"

"Sound off equipment check!" We'll go '10 ok, 9 ok.. all the way to 1 ok stick ok!'

"Sortie move forward!" We had to take four steps to the ramp door.
Now the ramp door is being lowered..

"5 seconds standing to the door!" We all take another four steps and the 1st man have to get ready to jump off.

"GO!, 1 second later, GO!, and again GO! GO! GO! GO! That's how quick the intervals were between each of the jumpers. We couldn't wait too long if not the Chinook would already fly pass the drop zone.

I was in the 2nd pass and the second last man, although it may not be as scary as the first jumper cause you get to see the whole scenery and stuff. All the time I was damn scared in the Chinook.. but I contanstly try to brush it away. When you stand in the Chinook on flight its quite shaky and it undermines your courage. Looking down the dropzone, your mind just tells you not to do it. When it was like 2 seconds before my jump.. my heart never beat so fast before. I just plunged myself out as far as I could and adopted a good exit position. I kept my eyes all the whole to make sure I don't miss a thing.

I counted to myself, 'one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, check!!' After 5 seconds that's when the canopy fully deploys. The feeling of free falling was like.. pure silence and like you're just floating but actually you're descending quite fast. You don't get the roller coaster feeling like everyone expected.. instead it feels like your soul left your body.. my mind was in a daze and when I got pulled back from the deployment.. thats when I got revived again. Dangerous I know lol.

I proceeded to do my all round checks for any hazards then I steered to face the wind. It is essential to face the wind cause it will slow down your descent. Hey it really feels like you're going down slowly and I thought it'll be quite a soft landing. Suddenly the wind changed directions and I was falling faster.. I did some minor adjustments and before I knew it I was getting ready to land. Shucks I landed feet apart. I immediately did a self body check to make sure I didn't break anything lol. Then I proceeded to pack my parachute and gathered with my friends at the yellow flag to cross the run way. Everyone was beaming with joy. Even I felt a great sense of achievement that I managed to land safely. It was like a mega test of courage and I managed to overcome it. It takes alot of faith though and trust that the canopy deploys. This is probably the bravest thing I've done in my life so far.

I have three jumps the day after Christmas.. one with combat equipments.
Will I still be scared? Of course I will be.. very. But I know I can do it =).



















This is the exact same parachute I used =).


Then I felt sick in the evening.. lack of sleep? =( Overworked maybe..
Omg 38.6 degrees fever.. I really need my rest now. Til then!