[Techno music playing] [gun firing] This is the Army Today. It takes hundreds of jumps and hours of training for The Golden Knights to perfect their performances. I'm Jini Ryan. We do 8-man formation free fall and we exit the aircraft at 13,500 feet.
Basically, as soon as we come out the door, the time starts and we have 50 seconds to perform as many different geometric formations as possible. Each one has its own set purpose in the skydive and basically they're all to kind of jam you up and it's all basically about engineering and working through a problem together. I know when the guys are given the count, and as they leave, I kind of leave a split second right behind them. My job is pretty much just to sit up above the formation and just to capture all the formations that they do.
[Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle" playing] There are a possibility of, I think, 2 million different combinations of all the formations that we do. And so we can make thousands of jumps and still not see each of the combinations every time. The teams do at least 10 jumps a day, perfecting their maneuvers and making sure they have pinpoint precision every time they jump out of that perfectly good airplane. [] The formations move and you can kind of feel the variable from their wind and whatever way they're moving.
So it's almost like when you used to play hot potato with your brothers or sisters and it's like something's kind of jumpy. I'm doing a lot of like, "It's a hot potato, hot potato." But it's very awesome. [] I started skydiving well before I came to the team and this is the premiere parachute team in the world, not only for competitions but demonstrations as well. And I will say it's a very humbling and honorable experience to be here.
[Techno music playing] That's the Army Today from Washington. I'm Jini Ryan..
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