Sky-Diving on a Parachute Built for Two

A trio of spectators looked up from the alfalfa field that serves as a parachute drop zone at Lodi airport on a recent afternoon and saw a great striped canopy drifting down in silence. A drop zone is normally as hushed as a mountain meadow; falling parachutists have no one with whom to discuss the view.

But as this particular canopy came closer, the people on the ground heard a man speak above them. Then a woman said something, in a calm, alert voice.

“OK, pull back hard now,” came the man’s voice. The chute, which had been descending rapidly, slowed as the controls were adjusted. Although it had looked to the observers as if there was only one body suspended from the lines, two sets of feet hit the ground. The canopy collapsed in the grass, and tandem jump master Ray Ferrell congratulated his passenger, Elizabeth Moore of South Pasadena, on her first free fall.

No Longer Solo

Until recently, a first parachute jump was something a person had to do alone. As such, it only appealed to the confident few who trusted themselves to remain composed in a new and frightening situation where a mistake might prove fatal.

But when the Federal Aviation Administration approved the tandem parachute as an experimental device last June, the skies suddenly opened to people like Moore, a recent graduate of the USC School of Medicine. Before beginning her internship, Moore said she wanted to try something daring. She didn’t have the time to go through the extensive training required for a solo free fall. But for $125 and just 15 minutes of instruction, she was able to experience free fall strapped to tandem jump master Ferrell, a veteran of more than 2,000 solo jumps.

Bill Booth of DeLand, Fla., who designs and sells the specialized tandem harnesses, has predicted that in the next two years the number of people making their first jump in this country will double because of the device.

Ferrell, 32, has taken a 64-year-old man and his wife on tandem jumps; they then went on to complete an accelerated free-fall course. He has jumped tandem with a woman amputee who wanted to be sure her leg prosthesis could handle landings before embarking on a parachute course. And he is due to jump in tandem with a blind Stanford student.

In teaching sky-diving the conventional way, Ferrell has dumped hundreds of frightened people out of airplanes. He sees the stunned look on their faces; there’s a whoosh as the door opens, and they’re gone. Ferrell never knows until both plane and parachutist are on the ground again what the students felt while they were flying.

With the tandem system, Ferrell enjoys an “up close and personal reaction” to the first-time jump--almost always, he said, that reaction is one of joy.

Elizabeth Moore stood in the shade of a tree at the tiny Lodi airfield and recited the promises that she’d made to Ferrell on the phone when she made a reservation to jump: She’d assume the correct exit position, she’d smile back at the pilot as she left the plane, and she would not shut her eyes as she fell.

Students whose first jump is on a static line (a cord that automatically opens the main chute when the student leaves the plane) or by the accelerated free-fall method (students exit the plane with two instructors, then are on their own after they open the canopy) often find the experience so terrifying that they close their eyes, or just go blank and remember little about the adventure. An advantage of tandem jumping, Ferrell said, is that the fear level is greatly reduced because the passenger’s fate is in the hands of someone besides him or herself. First-time tandem jumpers are usually relaxed enough that they have total recall of their flight.

Ferrell finished rolling and packing the canopy on the grass. Moore, 32, slipped into a white jump suit and pulled a leather cap over her head--it would keep her hair from whipping Ferrell’s eyes when they jumped.

Joint Efforts

Over at a small plane waiting on the runway, Ferrell hooked the harness he was wearing to one worn by Moore so that her back was facing his chest, and they were secured at the hips and shoulders. In a move made somewhat clumsy by the shared harness, they tucked themselves into the side door of the plane and sat on the floor where the seat had been removed. With Moore on Ferrell’s lap, they then practiced an exit.

Moore leaned her head back to avoid hitting Ferrell in the face with the back of her head when they leaped into the wind. He swiveled so that both were facing out over the runway. “Ready, set . . . go ,” Ferrell said and pushed off with one hand. Moore shrieked as if they were really at 7,000 feet. The pair jumped a couple of feet and landed on the pavement.

In the accelerated free-fall program, a student must have at least six hours of ground school, and seven practice jumps before he or she is ready to free fall unassisted. A static line program requires 24 practice jumps. But with just a few words of instruction and a simple exit drill, Elizabeth Moore was ready to free fall.

Once the plane reaches 7,000 feet and Ferrell opens the door of the plane, fear invades most first-time jumpers, Ferrell said. A few are so frightened that their bodies become rigid, or they hyperventilate. In that case, Ferrell said he sits in the doorway of the plane for several seconds and reminds the student that they are there to have fun.

Remembered to Smile

Once out the door, the terror diminishes, Ferrell said. Most of the 175 tandem jumpers he has fallen with have remembered to smile back at the pilot, who snaps their picture with a wing-mounted Nikon. The point is not only to have a souvenir photo, but also to give the first-time jumper a point of reference so that they don’t “gray out” with the rush of new sensations.

For the 15 seconds that they’re in free fall, there’s not much talking, except that Ferrell said he often yells something like “yahoo” in the student’s ear, which acts like a gentle jolt to make sure the student is alert.

One time Ferrell said he had a tandem student pass out, and not recover until after they were on the ground. Several passengers have become queasy from the rocking motion under the canopy. (For those inclined to motion sickness, he recommends a substantial breakfast and a dose of Dramamine on jump morning.)

Eight-Minute Instruction

Many students are so enthralled by the feeling of free fall--it’s like floating on a cushion of air, Moore said--that they tell Ferrell they’re disappointed when the canopy opens. For the next eight minutes, while the pair makes a swaying 5,000-foot descent, Ferrell teaches sky diving.

“Some instructors treat this (a tandem jump) basically as a circus ride,” he said. “But when people tandem jump with me, I want them to feel they’ve learned something.”

Ferrell slips the student’s hands into a dual set of control toggles. The rider gets a feel for controlling the direction of flight, and learns what a properly inflated canopy should look like from below. That eight minutes of training is invaluable should the student elect to go on and take a accelerated free-fall course. People who have made a tandem jump tend to learn faster because they know what sky diving feels like, Ferrell said.

Upon landing, a good number go from being whuffos (the sky divers’ term for the earthbound, it comes from: “Whuffo you wanna jump outa a plane?”) to enthusiasts who can’t wait to sign up for a second tandem jump or even a free-fall course. Moore, for instance, said that the first time she has a break in her internship, she might drive north to take another jump.

A Useful Lure

This is Ray Ferrell’s goal: to use tandem jumping to attract new people to the sport (he firmly believes sky-diving is a sport, and not a pastime or daredevil antic). “The sport of sky-diving is still pretty obscure in the public mind,” he said. “People think of us as special forces-type guys with death wishes. But sky-divers have a life wish--they want to get all of it they can.”

Ferrell said there are hundreds of small-time jump zones around the country barely surviving, which now might be able to flourish with the business that could be brought in by tandem jumping.

Steve Westbrook, a 24-year-old medical student from Los Angeles, is typical of the new sort of client tandem jumping attracts. He has long dreamed of trying free fall, he said, believing it would be one of life’s great experiences. But he doesn’t think he’d ever have been motivated to attempt it without the tandem option.

Following his first tandem jump at Lodi, Westbrook commented of the fall: “That’d be a real sobering experience if you had to do it by yourself.”

Some old-timers in the sport believe that tandem jumping eventually will become the standard method of learning to sky dive. “That’s always been the problem with learning to jump--there’s no bunny slope,” said Ben (Skratch) Daniels, a 23-year veteran of the sport. “This (tandem jumping) is a doorway that a lot more people can go through.”

The reason that tandem jumping has been so long in coming is that until recently it was not possible to create a canopy large enough to carry two people, and strong enough to endure the added impact when the chute opens (normal terminal velocity in free fall is 100-120 m.p.h.; tandem jumpers reach speeds of 180 m.p.h.), and yet compact enough to be packed on one back.

In the early ‘70s, a DeLand, Fla., parachute manufacturer, Bill Booth, experimented with tandem jumping suspended from a 44-foot cargo chute. That set-up proved too bulky and too difficult to control.

The current revolution in jumping came only with innovations in materials and design that made it possible to create a canopy that can carry 400 pounds, and weighs only 37 pounds. Ferrell’s canopies come from Pioneer, the same company that makes parachutes for the space shuttle. He purchases his tandem harnesses from Bill Booth’s Relative Workshop in DeLand. A complete tandem rig, which includes harness, container, and main and backup chutes, costs $4,500, Ferrell said.

Ferrell was certified as a tandem instructor last year at the National Parachute Championships in Muskogee, Okla. He was the first in California and one of the first six people in the country to operate a commercial tandem jump. (There is now at least one other tandem operation in the state, the California City Paracenter, north of Mojave.)

A Safe Undertaking

Ferrell believes the tandem rig makes learning to sky-dive a safer undertaking, since during the crucial early jumps, a student has an expert along to take control if something goes wrong. The two companies currently making tandem equipment, Relative Workshop and Strong Enterprises, both in Florida, recently submitted statistics to the FAA. Out of a total 2,463 jumps logged on the equipment manufactured by both companies, Relative Workshop reported no injuries, and Strong Enterprises reported seven injuries. Bill Morrissey, director of the tandem training program for Strong Enterprises in Orlando, said that five of those injuries were minor; two were broken bones suffered by test jumpers. No passengers have been injured while tandem jumping, he said.

On the basis of the statistics, the FAA extended the tandem parachute experimental waiver for another year on June 11. (A waiver is necessary because FAA regulations ordinarily require each jumper to wear both a reserve and backup chute.) Tandem jumpers must be over 18 and must sign a release saying they understand the device is still being tested. Elizabeth Moore commented that the release form was more fear-inspiring than the actual jump.

Moore and the five other men and women who jumped on a recent hot afternoon in Lodi landed exhilarated and confident. Even the woman who had to lay down in the grass for a moment to recover from motion sickness enjoyed the ride.

No one seemed to feel that falling through the sky suspended from another person like a baby kangaroo in a pouch in any way detracted from the glory of that first sky dive. Tandem jumping may eliminate some of the fear and uncertainty of the fall, Ferrell said, “but it still takes a lot of confidence to jump out of an airplane, no matter who you’re strapped to.”