DAY 1: TEAM USA – A NEW COUNTRY, DROP ZONE & AIRCRAFT

“DOBRAH OTRA!” Good Morning!*

Today started with the Russian breakfast of Champions – Beef Stroganoff with dates, potatoes and gravy, warm summer sausage, bread and butter with cheese and a cup of coffee topped off with fresh oranges.

GK8’s first official training day in Menzelinsk began with a late start to give the competitors a chance to overcome jetlag and to return their intensity levels to 100%. A logistical challenge delayed our departure from the hotel to the Drop Zone by almost an hour.  Too many people and too few seats for all of us plus our gear!  Organizers arranged for a second bus and we headed out. After a 50 minute bus ride through winding country roads to the drop zone, we were ready to jump.

But not before going though the necessary administrative business and paperwork including personal info sheets about each jumper and his equipment, rig inspections, a quick medical check up of our blood pressure and pulse, a drop zone safety briefing and aircraft familiarization.  By the time we completed everything, we loaded for our first training jump of the day around 1600 hours.

Once the administrative affairs were through GK8 immediately got to work with a ‘creeping’ or engineering session where the competitors lay down on devices similar to a skateboard to rehearse their first jump. This gives the jumpers a truer aspect of how the formations will look and simulates the jump’s progression in the air.

Up next was a trip out to the mock up – a three dimensional representation of the aircraft door. The main aircraft for the WPC (World Parachuting Championships) is the Turbolet-410, a jump platform the Golden Knights haven’t used before. Extra time was taken to make sure the jumpers were comfortable in their new exit attitudes to maximize this training time before the start of competition.

With ground preparation complete GK8 felt confident heading to the aircraft to make jump one of WPC-2010. As the aircraft was boarded each team made a full practice ‘climb out’ – the exact sequence in which the jumpers will transition from the aircraft seats, to their individual position on the outside of the door – as one last effort to get a feel for the airplane.

The L410 Russian Aircraft

At 4,000 meters above ground level SSG Justin Blewitt opened the aircraft door and checked the jump lights. The climb out was performed exactly as rehearsed and Team USA was off to the races. Over the next four days the Golden Knight 8-way team will continue making practice jumps in preparation for the meet start on August 1st.

A good first jump off a new platform, we dropped our rigs at the pack shed and debriefed followed by a late lunch.  As we prepped for our second jump of the day, manifest announced “The Hotel bus will depart at 1800.”  Being already 1730 (5:30pm) and the next bus not departing until 2000 (8pm), SFC Krause – BK – made the call that we’d call it a day and get after it early tomorrow.

Great to add another new country to many of our jump logs, it was good to get the first jump jitters out.

* Russian for “Good Morning.” Spelling is phonetic, author not responsible for grammatical correctness.  Speh-SEE-bah [Russian for “Thank you”]  ;)

Story by @GKJoe and Drew Starr