For parachutists, fun is forming patterns in the sky
A dozing World War II fighter training base at Zephyrhills, Fla., came alive last week with a roar of airplane engines and a rainbow of shimmering parachutes. Some 600 sky divers convened on the field for eight days of serious contests in the air and not-so-serious games on the ground. Among the jumpers was TIME Correspondent Don Sider, who sent this report:
We are in a sort of reverie as the ancient DC-3 climbs to 12,500 ft. Like all jump planes, it has no seats. We sit on the floor in three long rows, 35 of us, facing to the rear, our legs supporting the backs of the jumpers in front of us. There is an occasional attempt at conversation over the engines' throb, but mostly we sit, eyes closed or staring vacantly, catching someone's glance, exchanging a vague smile or nod. The adrenaline is just beginning to flow now, just beginning to lift us. We look at the altimeters on our wrists or chest bands the way commuters look at their watches while waiting for a bus. As the needle climbs, the adrenaline begins to flow faster. We fuss with our equipment, checking again the closures on jumpsuits, the buckles on parachute harnesses, the positions of rip cords on the pilot chutes that will deploy canopies and break our headlong fall to earth.
Then the call: "Jump run." We line up at the door. The first two members of our 16-man team are hanging out of the plane, grabbing the fuselage so we can go together. I stand, back to the open door, the balls of my feet balanced on the frame, feeling the surge of wind across my back. "Ready!" yells the team captain. "Ready!" we reply. "Go!"
We explode out the door into the clear, cool sky. Caught in the rushing wind, I do two lazy back loops before settling into a stable, face-to-ground position. My job is easy: merely to float while seven others "fly" to me, the first gripping my wrists, the next two docking between us, breaking our grip and seizing their own. The others come into the circle, one by one, until we are a round, eight-man "star," falling at 120 m.p.h. We hold this for 5 sec., then the eight others fly in, attempting to dock with their hands gripping our ankles, turning the star into a "snowflake." I look about and cannot help grinning at the wonder of it: all of us up here hurtling through the sky together. Jonathan Livingston Seagull in his wildest imaginings could not have conceived of it. At 4,000 ft. we break apart, "dump" our parachutes and float to the airport below.
The competition, known as the "turkey meet" because it used to occur around Thanksgiving, is perhaps the most popular of the 120 formal contests held every year in the U.S. The meet started in 1969 when parachuting was just beginning to take hold in this country, and it has managed to maintain a special appeal while jumping has become a highly organized international sport, one now dominated by Americans. Part of the lure of the meet is simply the Florida weather: only the hardest of the hard core like to jump in northern climes when winter is coming on and the temperature at 12,000 ft. may hover at 0°F. This year some 100 competitors from around the world joined more than 500 Americans to perform in the sunshine at Zephyrhills.