And yeah, there is something ineffable about hanging onto the outside of a plane at 15,000
ft. Also free fall is the closest you can come to flying outside of wing suits.
I fucked up the landing in two ways that combined to hurt me. You flare right before landing and that converts your downward momentum into forward momentum. I flared a couple feet too low. I also was trying to counter a slight crosswind with harness input, which put my body sort of into a 45 degree angle from the direction of travel with my feet first. Because I planed out about 2 ft off the ground, I didn’t have time to straighten out (and I should have been straight before I even flared, but I was new to harness input and trying to not use toggle input to correct for the crosswind). As a result, I was going 29 mph forward and wasn’t going down really at all.(I have a fly sight which is basically a 3d tracker, hence how I know) when the inside of my right foot, pointed closer to perpendicular to my direction of travel hit the ground.
I remember feeling my foot first glide a bit through the grass tops just after flaring and having time to think “shit” before I hit.
If I flared higher I would have been fine. If it been using toggle inputs rather than harness input, I could have still slid it in on my padded butt. Both together? Ouch.
Thanks for your kind words.
And yeah, there is something ineffable about hanging onto the outside of a plane at 15,000 ft. Also free fall is the closest you can come to flying outside of wing suits.
I fucked up the landing in two ways that combined to hurt me. You flare right before landing and that converts your downward momentum into forward momentum. I flared a couple feet too low. I also was trying to counter a slight crosswind with harness input, which put my body sort of into a 45 degree angle from the direction of travel with my feet first. Because I planed out about 2 ft off the ground, I didn’t have time to straighten out (and I should have been straight before I even flared, but I was new to harness input and trying to not use toggle input to correct for the crosswind). As a result, I was going 29 mph forward and wasn’t going down really at all.(I have a fly sight which is basically a 3d tracker, hence how I know) when the inside of my right foot, pointed closer to perpendicular to my direction of travel hit the ground.
I remember feeling my foot first glide a bit through the grass tops just after flaring and having time to think “shit” before I hit.
If I flared higher I would have been fine. If it been using toggle inputs rather than harness input, I could have still slid it in on my padded butt. Both together? Ouch.
Ouch that sounds unbearable. I’m proud of you for fighting for today and tomorrow considering everything you went through