David Grey MBE
David's page
Fundraising for Help for Heroes
Story
So following the debacle of last week, when we hung around for 10 hours only to be told that we couldn’t jump due to adverse weather, we rescheduled for Wednesday this week. This time, mainly because the Red Devils felt sorry for us, we were invited down to their base at Netheravon, near Salisbury. The day was all blue skies and light winds so we decided to fly down in my Saratoga aircraft. 50 minutes later we were taxying in, parking next to a couple of big turbo props that we would be jumping out of soon.
I was remarkably calm, even whilst they squeezed us into the jump suits and pulled on the silly leather helmets. We then clambered onto the aircraft and tied ourselves onto the instructor. Since he had the parachute on his back, we were all reasonably keen to make sure those fastenings were more than Velcro and elastic bands.
We climbed to 12,500 feet and I have to tell you that if it looked high whilst I was in the aircraft, that was nothing to when I was sat dangling my legs from the edge of the doorway. 1-2-3. and we were gone. Forget all this nonsense about floating. Nothing is stronger than gravity and we accelerated to 152 mph. Believe me – all that sphincter muscle exercises were well worth it.
Previously, in a moment of bravado, I had said to my instructor “let’s have some fun on the way down” so he obliged by spinning us around until the earth was just a kaleidoscope. Within 45 seconds we had fallen 7,500 feet so he popped the chute and the world took on a more serene state. We had a bit of a snag as the parachute cables were tangled but we jumped and jerked around until lo and behold everything was as it should be.
Now the fun began as the instructor handed over the controls to me and I found that if I pulled hard on each of the control wires the parachute would spin us around a tight circle first one way then another. Great fun as the harder I pulled - the tighter the turn.
All too soon, we were 200 feet above the ground and he took control for the landing. We came squirreling in to land with us both doing a sliding tackle landing to end up in a heap cracked up with laughter.
I’ve had some fun in my time but this was extraordinary. The rush was incredible. I’ve now decided that I’m going to get my skydiving licence and jump out on my own. It’s a strange thing that I started off raising some money doing something that terrified me and I had such a blast doing it that I may have found this year’s hobby
So thank you for those of you have sponsored me. It’s not too late to throw a couple of quid onto the site.
Have a look at the pictures including the ones in the silly hat. Should give you a laugh
David