FALLING THROUGH AIR

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 June 1927, Page 4

FALLING THROUGH AIR

PARACHUTIST’S EXPERIENCES. “I am not one of those people who profess to like leaping about the sky in parachutes,” said Flight-lieutenant F. O. Soden, R.A.F., who has carried out many parachute descents, in a. lecture before the Royal Society of Arts. “Nothing in the . world scares me more,” he added, “and in case there are any people here who have done one or perhaps two jumps and still think there is nothing in it, I would recommend them to try a few more. “If they still continue to revel in it, all I can say is that they must have a rather distorted outlook on life. The thought of stepping off an aeroplane with a parachute does more than scare me stiff —it, scares me absolutely limp.” The lecturer went, on to say that jumping from an aeroplane “in cold blood,” with no real incentive, was very different from suddenly and unexpectedly finding that one must jump. It had to be remembered that the “wretched pupil” had probably been thinking of his jump for days, and by the time he found himself hanging on to the side of a machine with a couple of thousand feet of nice, clear ah’ under him he was screwed up to $ pretty pitch of nervousness and he did not think one could altogether blame the pupil for wanting to be a bit quick on the “ring pulling” business.

In view of this an aeroplane was fitted with a ladder, so that by the time the pupil found himself standing on the bottom rung he was well below the tail, and it did not matter if he did pull the rip cord too soon. This, needless to say, was far more comforting to the pilot to know that he would have a tail left him to land with, “I was the pilot,” remarked the lecturer, parenthetically. Lieutenant Spden explained that the “pull off method had been introduced as‘a means of preventing cases of personal failure. In his opinion, if there were going to be any human failure while doing a live drop it was going to take place at the moment of letting go. When a parachutist was approaching the earth the speed of descent appeared to increase and some people were apt to lose their heads and stiffen up.

The pupil was instructed to relax his muscles slightly, and land in much the same way as after jumping off a wall. When dropping from a stationary or almost stationary object, such a balloon, the sensation of falling before the parachute opened was most unpleasant, but when jumping from an aeroplane doing at least 65 miles per hour there was little or no sensation of the sickening drop.