Hey folks.

I thought I'd drop a note to tell everyone about the latest
innovation in my skydiving toolbox.  I have now successfully used
a Seeing Eye Crew Dog.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the moment I set foot on the
Kapowsin dz I was set upon by a howling pack of crew hounds.  Once
they had heard that I'd done a couple of crew jumps they were
literally slavering.  I told them I would eventually do some crew
with them but I desperately needed to blow off some rust and dust
first.

Well, I've been getting out to Kapowsin farely regularly for the
last couple of weeks so when I showed up on Sunday I asked a friend
if I could borrow one of his crew rigs to test jump.  He tossed me
a Lightning 176.  I thought that this would be okay, although it
did make my intestines squirm around a bit.  I normally jump a
Raven IV loaded at about 0.6.  Now I was about to jump this
Lightning thing loaded at just about 1.0.

I went up to 7.5K and jumped and dumped.  A Lightning loaded at 1.0
may not be the fastest thing in the air, but YIKES! it sure felt
pretty snappy.  I did lots of spirals, sashays, front and back
riser turns, and so on.  I was particularly interested in finding
the stall point.  I wanted to make sure I didn't stall the thing on
landing.  Well, I've got these gorilla arms and I was stalling this
thing with at least six inches of travel left in my arms.  And this
baby doesn't stall like my Raven.  On my Raven I can wrap the
toggles four times and the thing still just slows down, rocks a
bit, and then folds up.  On the Lightning, I inched the toggles
down and it would just snap! from flying forward to flying
backward.  Although, it did handle pretty nice in reverse.  A lot
smoother than my Raven.

Anyway, after landing we decided it was time to grab some canopy. 
I went up with Chas and Jack.  The idea being that Chas would top
dock me and if all went well Jack would dock below me.  Well, I was
loading the Lightning a fare bit lighter than the other guys so
ended up a bit high on Chas after opening.  Here's where Jack, my
faithful Seeing Eye Crew Dog, came into play.  He "barked"
directions to me from his canopy.  He had me do a few sashays, a
spiral, and a few small corrections.  The final result being that
I pretty much ended up docking on Chas while he flew straight and
level.  Everything felt good so I signaled Jack to come in.  We had
the three-stack together by about four grand.  We flew it down to
2.5K and broke it down.

That jump had gone reasonably well so we decided to one up it and
go for the four-stack.  We added Roger to the group and headed for
the sky.  I apparently didn't blow enough of the rust off because
I bungled the exit.  I did manage to get my head back up hill
before dumping though.  I had barely touched my toggles when Chas
top docked me.  Seconds later, Jack was calling "in coming", with
Roger hot on his tail.  We had exited from 7.5K and were docked and
locked by 6 grand.  We hadn't expected it to go quite that fast so
we all got kind of bored just flying around.  We hadn't planned any
rotations so we just flew the four-stack down to 2.5K and broke it
down.

All the landings went reasonably well, thanks to Jessy on radios. 
I never attempted to stand it up, I just went straight to my knees
and skidded for five or six yards.  My personal goal being just to
stay upright and not skid on my face.  I threw my wallet to my
friend Ev before I even stretched out the canopy.  The beer was in
the fridge before the last lift got off the ground.  My paperwork
for my four-stack award was filled out before the night was
through.  We figured that I couldn't submit it as a night-stack
because it wasn't night for everyone on the jump, but we did toss
the idea around at first.

It was all pretty awesome.  Thanks to all the guys at Kapowsin that
made this possible.  I hope to make several more crew jumps with
them before I move again.