Jump 52, Ste Mere Eglise DZ, A/NT

Drop altitude 1250 feet AGL, time of drop approximately 1030.
WX at 1100, 75/24, DP 60/16, winds NE 12, clear. RH about 70%.

Today was supposed to be a jump from a Black Hawk helicopter, but it was being repaired. Thus, it turned into the usual Casa 212 kind of jump. No problem.

Harbinger O' Bad Juju: Two days prior to the jump, I had a dream of watching two jumpers come out of an airplane and have cigarette rolls. For the uninitiated, a cigarette roll occurs when the canopy fails to open combined with a spin, causing the parachute to not inflate and instead, rotate along itself, making it look like a giant joint. Couple that with the usual result of the parachute actually catching on fire (from wind-induced friction on nylon) and you have a very short margin of error to deploy your reserve before you "streamer into the ground," as the expression goes. It's not quite "burning in," which is to impact at terminal velocity because you have nothing but your fat ass to retard your downward flight, but it might as well be.

In Reality: Today was a goddamn windy jump! I stutter-stepped on the ramp going out because I didn't want to catch the preceding jumper's static line, but in doing so, I bumped off the side of the tailgate and spun out the plane, causing me to have twists in my suspension lines. It took me a little longer to get canopy control than some of the others, though.
I knew something was going to be up when I saw guys noticeably drifting in the air at altitude. This is a baaaaaaaaaaad sign, although the true determinant is winds at surface level. Initially, there were almost none, but that was not to be for my particular chalk.

As I descended towards the ground, at a very noticeably faster speed than last time, same drop zone, same type parachute, I passed over the flight landing strip (FLS). This was probably a good thing. If there's something I didn't want to land on, it was hard-packed dirt capable of taking the stresses of a plane. The upshot is that if I was going to drift to my rear in spite of the forward penetration of 9 knots by a MC1-1 series parachute, there was still enough wind to send me backwards at about 2-3 knots). The last thing that came to mind as I was about to hit was "damn, the ground is coming up fast."

I knew it was going to be bad when I had to activate my canopy release assembly to recover from the drag. I landed hard and started getting dragged along the pack tray by my reinflating parachute. I wouldn't have guessed 12 knots from the NE. I'm wondering if there was a gust right before we hit. Either way, one thing is certain - properly executed, parachute landing falls work. Correct execution of one saved my ass at Charleston AFB on jump 32, some four years ago, when I landed on asphalt rigged with a rifle and assault pack. I was trying to get away from the runway and landed on the white stripe. Literally.

The one good thing about today is that I landed in open ground and took very little time getting my parachute stuffed in its aviator's kit bag. I then ran across the FLS as fast as I could get with 68 pounds of parachute over my back, which leads me into the next point:

Dufus Patrol: Apparently some dudes thought it might be easier to get back to the assembly point by walking on the FLS. That's fine, but when an airplane with its two turboprop-driven spinning food processors is attempting to land, the first thing that came to mind was "move your ass, you stupid motherfucker." The airplane did three very visible climbs on final approach to avoid Cuisinarting guys who had just landed and were rolling the dice (by walking on the live FLS) with any potential contributions to the gene pool.