I felt sad hearing about the skydiver who died after a midair collision at Jumptown Skydiving in Orange recently and thought about how this could give more people the impression that sport parachuting is a crazy thing to do, which it never has been for me. When I began attending UMass Amherst in 1977, one of the first things I did was to join the Sport Parachuting Club, after seeing demonstration jumpers land in the middle of campus. Back then the club jumped at the Turners Falls airport, employing several highly trained, and certified instructors to teach the students. And since this was years before first-timers made tandem jumps, with the student and instructor jumping together in a double-harness, we were trained to jump on our own with reliable, but big and bulky army surplus equipment. It might not have been the most comfortable, but it all worked well.

Our training started with learning how to put on and properly wear the equipment, with the main parachute on the back, and reserve chute in front. We learned how to move around in the plane, always covering the reserve chute handle for maximum safety. We learned how to climb out on to the step over the landing wheel, hold onto the strut from under the wing to the body of the plane, and when the instructor said so, to step off and immediately put ourselves into an arch position. The static line connected inside the plane to our main chute would become taut and pull the chute out of its bag, and fully inflate within 3-4 seconds, all at about 2,500 feet above the ground.

We learned to grab on to the two directional toggles that hung from the left and right above, and look down below to the ground crew that turned a directional arrow to how we should be facing to land on target in the sand. Pulling down a toggle turned the parachute above to face the correct direction, all the while enjoying the view as we gently descended. And we learned how to roll on our side when we touched down onto the ground, having just completed the First Jump experience!

Not often needed, but still essential, we were also taught what to do if our main chute didn’t open properly, and how to deploy our reserve chute and land under that. Yes, accidents could and occasionally did happen, so knowing what to do was all part of the good training.

I loved everything about my first jump, even wearing all of that ugly equipment, and knew right away that I’d be back to do it again. Subsequent training progressed from a few more static line jumps while pulling a “dummy” ripcord, to learn how to pull a real ripcord while falling in a stable arch position, to eventually doing it myself. Then a few jumps from higher and higher altitudes, giving me more and more “freefall” time, learning to do turns and other maneuvers while falling, and under the instructor’s observation from the plane. Skydivers don’t jump out of “perfectly good” airplanes to risk life and limb or to defy death, but to use the airspace in freefall to “fly” their bodies, and what a wonderful thing it was to learn how to do just that!

After getting signed off to jump without an instructor watching, I learned how to pack my own main chute, and to jump with other skydivers, learning how to meet together in midair, make different formations, and safely separate before opening our chutes and coming back down. And another important thing, after we step out of the plane and fall for about 12 seconds we reach “terminal velocity,” meaning that we don’t fall any faster in the arch position, so freefall doesn’t feel like falling, but that we’re flying. Yes, we are always falling, but the bodily sensation is of flying, and who hasn’t dreamed of doing exactly that?!

I’ve gone on since then to do other sports and haven’t jumped for several years, but I’ve still watched skydiving develop better training, with the equipment getting safer and easier to use. Experienced jumpers wear their mains and reserves on their backs, and build bigger formations in midair, and even “under canopy.” And while accidents do still sometimes happen, most people never hear about the millions of sport jumps that go just fine.

Something to keep in mind also — the odds of getting hurt or killed are much greater just driving to the airport. And that’s the fact, Jack!

Russell Pirkot lives in Greenfield.