SCS292

I wasn’t aware of any kind of student status or USPA rules for clearance to jump in 1971. In fact I never joined the USPA. A friend trained me and he penciled a couple of jumps into a logbook and off we went into the wild blue yonder. I did 3 regular SL and 2 SL with DRP. Then a 5 second, a 10 second and a 20 second freefall. On my 9th jump I was doing RW and except for one hop & pop on a free ride with a student I never did anything else. I was trained that RW was the only thing there was. On my 15th jump I closed on the base for the first time. On my 43rd jump I was 6th in on a 6 man star and a week later on my 44th jump I got my SCR & SCS. In Dickinson, Angleton and Waco(V-Mills), TX - RW was king.

Very nicely done. It brought back some great memories of my jumping experiences in the early 70's. I would also like to see some video of early RW in place of the accuracy footage in your next video. Congratulations!

I was fooling around on Google Earth and found the old drop zone Doc operated and where I jumped in 1972. If you go to the intersection of FM 517 and Hwy 45 and then west a bit just past Dickinson Seafood Company (great place to eat too) you can click on the Imagery Date in the lower left hand corner of the satellite image and it will give you a slider in the top left of the image. Take it all the way back to 1969 and you can see the DZ with the pea gravel target to the west of the runway and the dirt parking area to the east. If you jump to the 1987 photo, the runway is gone but you can still see the pea gravel target. Go to todays view and most of it is covered up by development.

wlsc said : If white folks were stopped and searched at a similar rate (and they are just as criminal as anyone else) they would be up in arms. Or rioting. __________________________________________________ Wasn't the last time white folks rioted on December 16, 1773? I think they did get up in arms shortly after that and it was all about British oppression then too!

John, I remember an emergengy jump from Mike Mullens' twin beech at V-Mills. He had the fuel selector on a tank that ran dry and he dead sticked it back to the airport. He came in hot and ground looped at the south end of the runway and put a 2" scratch on one rudder where it knicked the barbed wire fence. He switched to the full tank, cranked it back up and taxied back to the trailer. I had just read a statistic that said most skydiving fatalities were from plane crashes and on the second sputter I headed for the door.

That sounds right. I believe he was flying the 180 when I got my 8-man. I wish now I had gotten the 2 pilots to sign my log book when I had the other 7 guys sign. They had a big part in it too.

Was it Carl who would stand on the edge of pea gravel in Angleton with a white flag to show a student which way they should have their canopy pointed? Radio contact was way out of the question back then. Reading about these new fangled square things they jump now and all the problems with flying patterns (or not flying patterns) reminds me that we all pointed at the peas and if anybody got there it was a miracle. If we all had gotten there at the same time I guess we might have bumped into someone on our PLF. That 2 mph forward speed on the 28' 7TU made for lots of heel, ass and head landings in the coastal Texas breeze.

Didn't we have a pilot in '71 or '72 that just had one eye? He lost the other eye in Viet Nam when the canpoy of his jet was shot out and a piece of it went into his eye. He still managed to land the jet without the eye or a canopy. He was supposed to be the only commercial pilot with just one eye. I was only 21 at the time and kind of gullable but I always thought it was a real story.

Reading about Jess Hall's machine gun reminded me about some of the other guns he had. Do you remember when he would shoot off that little cannon? Did you ever get to squeeze off a round from his nickel plated 1911? I blew a beer can clear out of the future V-Mills swimming pool with it. Did you ever come into a star and grab onto the .25 auto he had in his jumpsuit sleeve pocket just in case he landed in another farmer's field who wanted to hold him for ransom? Nice times sitting in the Airstream relaxing with some herbal therapy and a bottle of Lancer's too.

The key word is "Illegal". If we had a Justice Department, Congress, Executive Branch (and not just the current one) that was more interested in the law and less interested in votes I don't think there would be a problem. Both of my grandfathers immigrated to this country but they came "legally".

Well, if it ended that way I didn't hear it in the V-Mills days. I don't remember eating being much of a priority. Unless it was like the bumper sticker that I saw once that read "Eat your Honey, 1,000,000 bears can't be wrong"

At V-Mills in '71 & '72 we used to sing the hymn "Shall We Gather at the River" when the twin Beech or DC-3 got to 10,000 ft. By the time we got to 10,500 we were done and ready to get out. It was a little disconcerting for me the first time I heard it sung by all on board. I have no idea who started that one but I never heard it anywhere else.

Was Angleton also called Rice U DZ? If so, I made my first jump there on 9-26-71 and my second and third at Angleton on 10-3-71. I feel sure I made my first jump there and Steve Hazen put me out on all 5 of my static line jumps. The last two SL w/ DRP were in V-Mills from the twin Beech as was my first free fall. A little different than climbing out on the step with the strut to hang on to.

Boatman was flying from Doc's that day. (edit - I do remember leaving from Spaceland and jumping into Dickinson one time when it was too muddy to leave from Doc's. Was it this jump? Not sure) I made 15 jumps in Angleton, including my first on 10/3/71. We may have known each other. I was a student of Steve's. p.s. - check a post on the V-Mills thread about Pete

I'm not sure how round it was but we were all wrist to wrist, the only way an 8-man was done at the time. I guess we did hear of the odd snowflake but I never saw one made or even attempted. Looking through my logbook I see that Pete Bandy did come back and jump some after his broken leg because I have some notes and a sign-off from some jumps with him at Doc's. One that came back to me as I was reading it was a C-180 load with Dave Boatman flying. The clouds really closed in below us and we spotted an intersection on I-45 or was it just US 75 back then. Dave said he was going back home and what did we want to do? We got out but the clouds were too thick to get any RW done so we just fell till we cleared the clouds and pulled. That is when I found out that rain drops really are pointed on top, ouch. Turns out the Hwy intersection was at Texas City but Steve Hazen's wife, Barbie was really good at finding jumpers off the reservation and by the time we got our chutes wound up she was there with my VW bus. My logbook says "Distance to target - 8 miles" I guess Boatman didn't have a sectional on board and couldn't get a VOR fix. In fact, the 180 may not have been equipped with any nav gear at all.

I got my SCR 1339 and SCS 292 at Doc's on 4-22-72. It was my 43rd jump. Spiderman got his SCR 1338 on the same jump so we had quite a party afterwards. The jumpers in order of entry were Tom Sanders, Sean Ferguson, Dave Boatman, David Bottrell, Robert Bottrell, Spiderman, John Mincher and me. We jumped from a C-182 and a C-180 flying in formation and jumped from 10,500. I was seventh out but John beat me in so I lucked out on the SCS. Rick Johnson

The first time I met Pete Bandy he was still in a cast and Steve Hazen was trying to get me into skydiving. I'm not sure introducing you to someone with a broken leg is good salesmanship but I bought Pete's rig anyway. A note in my logbook says I paid $75. I got a 28' 7TU a 24' "hipo" reserve and an Army harness and containers. I also got his red and black jumpsuit with a hole in one leg. I patched it with a piece of white terry cloth and wore it till I quit jumping. I never had the money for one of those fancy bell bottom jobs Phil Mayfield sold (or as my logbook says "dleifyaM lihP" except all the letters are perfectly backwards - license # too). I was too skinny for bell bottoms anyway, I never would have quit floating. Looking as ragtag as I did I guess I understand why I always had to go last on big loads. Odd coincidence, when I upgraded to a PC I bought the PC and a 26' lopo reserve from Chuck Storer who had broken his leg a year or so earlier on a downwind landing. He quit jumping but he still liked to party. I met him in V-Mills and we have been good friends ever since.

Howdy Steve, how are things? That was me trying to sleep on the pea gravel when you guys decided to enlarge the pool. And it was 1972 when we spent May, June and July in V-Mills. We left in August for three months in Europe. I wish life could be that easy again. Rick Johnson