While the Air Cadets always make you wear a parachute to fly, they have so far never had anyone use one. Never one to resist a challenge, Cdt Harris decided to throw himself out of a perfectly functional aircraft. (Ed.)
The aim of the course was to give 60 cadets from around the country a sufficient amount of ground training (6 hours) to enable us to do one static line jump at around 3500 ft, this also qualified us to do a static line jump when ever we feel. This course was very weather dependant it relies on low winds and minimal or high cloud cover.
Day1
I arrived at St George’s barracks in Bicester at about 1700 when I arrived I dropped my bags off in my room and then went down to the mess hall for dinner after dinner we had a bit of spare time to unpack then we all settled down for a briefing about what will happen during the course.
Day 2
Today was an early start because we had to be at breakfast for 0700 and at RAF Weston on the green for 0800 to start our hard core 6 hour training day. The day was long and hard in the day we learnt how to exit the aircraft in a safe way, how the parachute and reserve shoot work and how to operate them, how to land and also every malfunction which could happen to your parachute and what the malfunction drill is to correct it. It was a very long and tiring day when we got back to the barracks we went straight to dinner because every one was starving because the lunches were rubbish!!! After dinner it was free time again so me and a couple of amazing awesome friends who I met on the course ventured in to the town of Bicester to look for a local shop unfortunately the moment we got there the shop owner locked the door = [ so we headed back to barracks to “chill out”.
Day 3
It was another early start because we had to be at RAF Weston on the green at 0800 for a recap of ground training before we took to the skies. I was in the first group going up in the plane and the 6th person to jump! There were 10 all together in the plane which made it very cramped. It was my turn to jump I was not very nervous because the adrenalin took over I was sat on the door going 80 mph looking at the ground beneath me waiting for work to push off. He said it so I pushed away from the door and hoped my canopy would open; which it did (Phew!). I glided towards the ground and set myself up to land. When I landed it was quite windy so I was fighting with my canopy to collapse when I did I walked across the air field and back in to the hanger to get my kit off and relax.
In my opinion it has been the best thing I have ever done whilst in Cadets and I will definitely be going back to RAF Weston-on-the-Green to do another jump in the near future.
Last Updated on Saturday, 05 December 2009 00:38