#6536 #6537 #6538
#13 - JRL 6537
From: "Peter Calder" <petercalder1944@hotmail.com>
Subject: up in the air
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 1
Up in the Air
By Peter Calder
Resident Freelance
Moscow
petercalder1944@hotmail.com
Have you ever had one of those life or death moments, mostly death moments, when you are faced with the stark reality of having made a bad judgment and it’s too late to change anything to save yourself? At such times, have you ever been tempted to consider the value of prayer and a belated approach to the God that you have not spoken with for the past 40 years?
Today I had such a moment. I vaguely wondered to myself if a Russian Orthodox God would be more readily and conveniently accessible than the Catholic God with whom I cancelled my subscription all those years ago. In the end I decided that neither variety of god would be kindly disposed towards lapsed practitioners wishing to become instant supplicants in a moment of dire need; after all, even gods are probably not totally impervious to insult.
Today at about 900 metres above Russia these were the sorts of thoughts that were going through my mind.
It’s strange how pertinent, accumulated facts, previously lying dormant in the back rooms of your mind, can inexplicably resurface at a time of crisis. Facts that should have been recalled for mature consideration earlier in the train of events, suddenly, are before you in every precise and objective detail. The sloppiness regarding the issue of safety within some sections of the impoverished Russian aeronautical industries, the incredible improvisations made in the absence of strict codes of enforcement, and above all, that very Russian thing called the 'avos'. That inexplicable Slavic thing that can convince an otherwise normal, sober and rational man, that IT will not happen to him and that the God is all caring and will look out for, and after, any person who is so bloody stupid as to deliberately ignore his own state of preservation and personal, temporal welfare.
The interior of that Mi – 8 class military helicopter, was almost combustible. I had the certain feeling that if someone had struck a match the whole thing would have exploded. It was stiflingly hot and the atmosphere was permeated with the vapour of aviation fuel. There were 27 people crowded on board including the 2 pilots, and even when the person apparently in charge of such things, slid open the entrance door for extra ventilation, thus adding another dangerous dimension to the adventure, nothing changed. I don’t know what our safe carrying capacity was but we were so closely packed, I suspect that it was a gross overload. Indeed, on take off, we rumbled along the uneven strip for ages, more like a conventional aircraft than a helicopter, before finally ascending. I wondered also about this particular brand and model of helicopter. Where ever its last major stop off had been, it certainly was not the Number 1 Helicopter Refurbishment Plant of Moscow or Anywhere Else. It appeared to me that this machine could easily have been to Afghanistan and back and that would make it a real veteran of the skies. It still displayed a faded red star on its fuselage, the old Soviet emblem from the 80’s.
The pilots certainly did not look like conventional aircrew as they could easily have been mistaken for truck drivers. One was clad in camouflage trousers with an army type, blue striped singlet and the other was bare chested and wearing football trousers. These observations gave me cause to think about the drinking habits of Russian truck drivers, but of course by then it was far too late.
My fellow passengers were a diverse bunch. On one side of the interior there was a bench type seat running the full length of the cabin. The people seated there were a desperate looking bunch. All wore assorted bits of military uniforms and GP boots, most sported very unmilitary headwear that gave them the appearance of being either bandits or kamikaze warriors, or maybe even both. They all seemed otherwise preoccupied, they did not talk to each other, nor did they invite conversation, they just sat there, seemingly totally absorbed in their own thoughts, with no apparent interest in what was going on around them. On my side of the interior, there was a large make shift looking auxiliary fuel tank that may well have been leaking, but which left me and my 3 nervous companions, uneasily squeezed between it and a small bench seat right next to the open door. Through a cabin window I could see Moscow getting smaller and smaller as we circled for height and my apprehensions multiplied many fold. Below in this region, it seemed that the landscape was mostly water. There was the Moskva River winding its serpentine way between the numerous reservoirs and lakes that abound on peripheral Moscow. Away in the corner of the window there were the tiers and banks of high-rise apartment buildings of the Strogino region. I glimpsed our departure airfield way below us and wondered if we would ever return there again as the same team that had only so recently left it.
I knew that this was all a bad dream and sooner or later I would wake up, in either a cold or hot sweat, but at least be able to immediately go back to sleep again in peace. It didn’t happen.
At certain critical times in life, things sometimes tend to happen with such speed that afterwards it is often difficult to accurately reconstruct the exact sequence of events. The person who appeared to be in charge of cabin events, shouted something through the open cockpit door to the pilots, there was a change to the pitch and drone of the blades and the machine appeared to bank slightly to port. The man who had been sitting next to the door suddenly disappeared and then someone was urgently hauling inside what appeared to be the remnants of a parachute, but without anyone attached to it. What had happened for Christ’s sake? What had gone wrong? Why were they so unconcerned about this accident? Someone had immediately peered out the door looking for him but that was it. There was a sudden sense of urgency and in the blur of following events I found myself standing at the threshold looking down on distant Moscow. There was a heavy hand on my shoulder, an unintelligible shouted command in my ear, I closed my eyes, and either jumped, or was pushed, into space. I cannot remember what that famous Indian word is that the American Airborne Heroes shout when they jump into combat, but I yelled a long drawn-out, ‘Shiiiiiiiit!’
Last Saturday afternoon whilst trying to write letters, the drone of a heavy-duty helicopter was continually interrupting my concentration. It was obviously coming and going from a small military type airfield not far from where I presently reside. Having been unable to get a logical explanation for its activities, I decided to investigate. Upon arrival at the airfield it was apparent that the comings and goings of the machine were associated with a parachuting club’s activities. On the spur of the moment I decided to seek admission to this place and make further enquires, as I had been wanting to make a parachute jump for many years past. For many Russian reasons my every attempt at achieving this goal here had always been frustrated. The last person who had guaranteed me a parachuting adventure, was a helicopter pilot that I met in a local bar, but soon after this he fractured his femur when he had a drunken fall from a second floor balcony… presumably his parachute had not opened.
On duty at the gate were some uniformed security people who firmly denied me entrance. They informed me that if I came back on Monday afternoon, then it would be possible to make a jump but that on Saturdays it was only for the professionals. So it was that I revisited this place today. As I was surrendering my passport details at the gate and was trying to get further information on the procedures that applied, a young bloke of about 30 arrived upon the scene. He spoke a little English, so was able to ease my passage through the usual web of 'admission difficulties' that I always seem to encounter, encumbered as I am, by my persistently poor command of the Slavic language. A more engaging and helpful bloke I have yet to strike. His name was Ayahaz, a Muslim native of Ufa, an ancient center that sits on the very border between Asia and Europe. In appearance he may have well just stepped from the Russian pages of history. His features were those of a descendant of Genghis Kahn. The high, finely molded, cheek bones and the partially slanted eyes of a Mongol, all offset by a proudly hooked nose that had sustained an earlier and poorly repaired fracture. He was also an international sportsman in the field of whatever it’s called, where the participants parachute into the snow clad, winter peaks of mountains and then ski home to some distant finishing line. Additionally it seemed, he was a veteran of 650 jumps made across Russia and Europe.
Ayahaz conducted me to the centre of events and with his help, I learnt that there was no problem with attempting to parachute earthwards. All that I had to do was to sign a document [in indecipherable Russian] that evidently absolved the proprietors of legal responsibility for any misadventures that might follow the said signing, completely ignoring of course, that I would only have understood about 1/5th of the instructions dispensed. Additionally, I was required to take a medical examination. This consisted of an urbane man, who could have been either a doctor or a ladies hairdresser, taking my blood pressure. Presumably he found some satisfactory evidence of positive pressure because he then signed a document to attest to the fact that I was a fit and proper candidate to pay the parachuting enterprise, the pre-agreed sum of 450 Russian roubles or $30 Australian. Here a small digression is needed.
Upon arrival at the parachuting HQ, and with Ayahaz’s help, I found that I had several options all of which appeared to be directly related to altitude. I could pay 3000 roubles or $200 Aus., and jump in the safety of a tandem embrace. For an extra 100 roubles I could have my personal terror recorded on video. The next option included a free fall for the first 1000 metres, or for all I understood, the complete descent to mortality. Another variant involved the use of the performance type parachutes that the stunt people use. Lastly, there was the cheapest, and the really tamest choice, of being first and lowest out the door, with a boring old conventional ‘chute and almost everything being done for you in a fully supervised way. Everything that is, except the landing, the descent and a comprehensive set of instructions in English.
I opted for saving my money for my retirement and took the cheapest ticket.
I reasoned it out thus. Come the instant when you were standing there in the open jump place with your arms braced against the door frame, it would not matter a bugger what instructions you had been given, nor in what foreign language, as you would forget everything, so the system had to be really fool proof, even by Russian standards. I further decided, that if they had been having excessive rates of first time failures, deaths I mean, then surely somebody from the surrounding suburbs would have noticed the bodies lying about and perhaps contacted the authorities, or the newspapers, or the television or even just their aunts.
So I found myself in the instruction tent. The man in charge was the sort of humourless individual that you sometimes encounter first thing after a large lunch at some of those expensive investment seminars in the west. He droned on and on about how to cope with the usual range of parachuting mishaps and misadventures. It seemed to me that the simplest peril that could befall you was occasioned when your parachute failed to open. From there he went on to explain what you did when you landed on the roof of a 17-story apartment building. There were 2 choices depending on which slope of the roof that you alighted upon. If you hit the upward slope you simply stayed there until he came and found you sometime in the next week. If you hit the downward slope, then because you were traveling at speed, you would continue down the slope and over the edge, so the message was to run like all hell and jump off the roof before your parachute collapsed and uselessly plummeted after you. This bit of the instructions left me in some doubts about his veracity. I would have liked to have asked him how many times he had actually performed this maneuver himself. I would have liked to have inquired if he had in fact ever jumped before at all. Next he dealt with landing in the middle of a large body of water, like for example the Baltic Sea, some 800 klms to our west. In such situations, others had evidently found that all of that webbing and strapping is not conducive to buoyancy. The idea was to shed the whole lot, but briskly. Presumably because of the various clips and straps and the complexity of same, you did this whilst standing on the sea floor and holding your breath for 20 minutes. Other things were touched upon, but only briefly. Things like landing in the middle of the 8 lane main highway to Riga that formed one boundary of the drop zone. Electric power lines and mid air collisions were mentioned also, but he had concluded his dissertation with the solemn promise that 'all would be well'. But by this time I was already in a state of distraction. Should I just go home and forget the whole thing, or should I take my chances and possibly become a survivor against all of the odds?
So I jumped. I now know a new definition for insecurity. It’s standing, braced in the open doorway of a smelly, shuddering ex-Soviet helicopter, looking down on far removed Moscow, waiting for the imperative tap on the shoulder.
The vital instructions were; jump, count to 3 in Russian hundreds, look upwards to ensure that your parachute was [a] open and [b] fully open in the approved way. I forgot to do all of these things, as suddenly there was a wrench from above and I was floating downwards in a world of almost total silence. Somewhere from way above there was the distant drone of my helicopter but all around there was an eerie silence. The earth, way below me seemed to be full of water. I could see a giant barge steaming across an immense reservoir immediately below. I mentally calculated my chances of putting down alongside of it. Then as I drifted, there was the Muskva River, excessively wide from my vantage point. In alarm I realized that I was going backwards and the ground was becoming closer. The river was no longer a risk but what about the highway somewhere behind me? What was it that he had said about pulling on the cords to control direction? I pulled downwards and ever so slowly the thing began to rotate. I pulled harder and it rotated too far, now I was traveling sideways and the ground was already starting to rush upwards at me. I pulled again and it lazily went about and I made a perfect landing except that I was more than half a mile away from the target spot.
Suddenly there was a Russian voice shouting to me, it was Ayahaz. He was 20 yards off and had run all the way across the airfield with my camera in hand to record my re-entry. His Mongol features were spit by a huge grin and then he was pumping my hand in congratulatory style. We had suddenly become fellow travelers and mates. I had survived, God had been neither needed nor insulted, and the Russians had kept their promise.
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