Khal's Golden Knight Photo Page

My job is such a cool job and I have so many cool pictures now...so here they are.

This was during our winter training, Yuma '08.  We did it towards the end of February.  I am the one on the bottom - yes, the one flying the parachute UPSIDE DOWN.  What does it feel like to look down and see your parachute below you?  Crazy.  Cool.  Awesome.

I really like this picture of me.  Sure, I have the wind-blown floppy cheeks going on and everything, but it just seems to capture how I feel in the sky....

This was one of the coolest jumps so far, because of the view.  You can see the U of A stadium, track fields, and "mall" - the thin strip of grass between thei main campus building.  If you look reeeeeaaaaalllly hard between those buildings you can spot our target.  It was one of our most difficult landings yet, and I got the best accuracy score of the whole team on this jump making me "The Man" (haha) until our next jump.  That doesn't happen often so I have to savor it.

I'm not actually in this picture; I am behind the camera guy.  But it is a cool picture, nonetheless.  Yes, we all managed to land inside the stadium....

Canopy Relative Work (CReW or CRW) is where two or more jumpers fly their parachutes right up to the other and grab each other. This particular formation is called the biplane. I fly my parachute into my partner's back. He reaches behind him and grabs the material, then wraps his feet around my lines and shimmies down until his feet hook on the material right above my head. We actually take this formation to about 10 feet off the ground, when he kicks his legs out from my lines and we both land within a few feet of each other.

On this jump I was the first person to land.  They generally have one person jump out of the plane alone, land, and then pick up a microphone and start talking about the team, describing what is going on in the air as the rest of the team gets out.  The new guys tend to narrate a lot.  I never considered myself a public speaker but believe it or not I actually enjoy narrating.  I guess I have a little of my dad's Toastmaster's in me after all. 

This is me "stinging" a tandem in Yuma. That just means I flew up next to her and took hand grips. I am on the left (top), the tandem instructor is SFC Mike Elliott, the passenger is Kara Swenson, and the other stinger is 1SG Galen Barker.

Our night shows are pretty cool.  We wear pyrotechnics much like fireworks on brackets attached to our ankles so we look like meteors streaking through the sky.  We  usually have four sticks of pyro so we use two  in freefall and then two under canopy.  No, it does not catch the parachute on fire!!

This is what we look like from below.  I am top left.

That's me.  The flag I have is the Army flag.  I am the lightest person so I always float to the top of the stack of parachutes and am almost always the last to land.  Which is kind of cool.  I am like the finale or something.

Once you have a biplane you can transition to the downplane, which is really exciting. The top jumper shimmies down the lines a bit more until the bottom jumper can reach up and grab his leg straps. Then the bottom jumper kicks his legs up and the top jumper catches them. The bottom jumper lets go of the leg straps and pulls down on either her left or right steering line. This separates the parachutes and causes them both to face downward - straight at the ground. We hold this, plummeting earthward at up to 60 mph until about 300 feet before breaking apart and landing separately. I love this move. It is awesome.

The 82d Airborne Division Freefall Team comes to train with us for a few weeks every winter in Yuma, AZ.  They are smaller and fo fewer shows, and have both part time and full time jumpers, but they do travel and perform at various shows.  They represent their division, while the Golden Knights represent the entire Army.  Many Golden Knights came from division teams; the current team leader of the Gold Team was the team leader of the 82d team before he came to the Golden Knights.  Most of the Army parachute clubs have shut down.  In fact, I think there are only four Army demo teams left: the 82d team (Ft. Bragg, NC), the 101st team (Ft. Campbell, KY), US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC, out of Ft. Bragg, NC, also called the Black Daggars), and of course, the Golden Knights.  The three Ft. Bragg teams have a lot of intermixing and many members have been on more than one team at various times.

In this picture I am in black top right (you can't see my face!).  The other three in black are the three current permanent members of the 82d team.

Gold Demonstration Team, Houston Astros trip, 2007

From left to right:

Karen, Bam, Tom, Major DeGann (pilot, not always with Gold Team), Hector, Charles, Former President of the United States George Herbert Walker Bush, Derrick, Jared, Steve, Taylor (crew chief, most often with Gold Team; he has been adopted by us), CW$ Clay, and me.

In front are JD and Harold, the Assistant Team Leader and Team Leader.