By John Peery
Correspondent

When the UCF Knights football team takes the field Thursday, October 13, for a home game against the Temple Owls, the Golden Knights Army parachute team will deliver the ceremonial game ball to FBC Mortgage Stadium in a special pregame jump.

Piloting the airplane to make sure the parachutists are able to deliver the game ball safely and on time will be Chief Warrant Officer 2 James Martin, a 2008 graduate of Apopka High School.

Martin, the son of Jim Martin of Apopka, began piloting the Golden Knights jump team in July after being accepted into the program in November 2021.

“For me, it’s been a bit of a Cinderella story,” the younger Martin said.

He joined the U.S. Army in October 2008, just a few months after graduating from Apopka High. He began driving trucks for cargo and other Army supplies, including a stint of more than 12 months in Afghanistan.

Martin, 32, has been based out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Stewart, Georgia. He also spent three years in Hawaii.

“I made it all the way to staff sergeant – E6 – before I decided to put in for my warrant officer packet,” Martin said. “I was accepted, went through flight school, and was No. 3 in my class, and I did fixed wing, so my first fixed-wing assignment was out at Fort Bliss (Texas) flying intelligence aircraft.

“I flew the Dash 7 and the Dash 8 (airplanes) out at Fort Bliss and I was up for a move. I saw there was an opportunity to join the Golden Knights, so I applied and I was selected back in November (2021) and finally made the move in July to the Golden Knights.”

The job takes Martin across the country as last week, the team performed at the Pacific Air Show in Huntingdon Beach, California.

“They do some pretty amazing things with parachutes. They do different formations where they’re linked together. It’s really neat,” Martin said.

Based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Golden Knights will fly down to Orlando early on game day and will base themselves out of Orlando Executive Airport.

As expected, the jump into UCF’s stadium must be property timed to keep the jumpers safe.

“We’ll depart from the Orlando Executive Airport to a point that the jumpers have given us. They’ll give me a GPS coordinate. The first thing we do is fly over the point and the team leader in the back ­– the jump master – will let me know when he deploys a wind-drift indicator, which is, essentially, giant rolls of tissue paper. Those are 30 to 40 feet long,” Martin said.

“Once he gives me the signal that he’s dropped these wind-drift indicators, I will then circle them so he can watch how they’re falling so they know how to lead in and come into the stadium. From there, we climb up to the final jump altitude and we have a standard of time-on-target plus or minus 15 seconds.

“We have timing charts so the person so the person in the left seat of the airplane is flying and the person in the right seat is doing all the math to give the run to give how far we need to go out before coming back in to get them time on-target plus or minus 15 seconds. It’s a pretty busy cockpit during that jump.

“There will be a spotter with his head out the jump door watching for that precise point to tell us to go around and do another loop. It’s all very precise.”

Martin said the altitude he flies the plane has to do with the wind and the event.

“The altitude depends on how windy it is. The minimum altitude is 2,000 feet for stadiums. Typically, they like to jump around 5,000 feet just because it’s such a tight area they’re trying to hone in on. When we were doing the Huntingdon Beach show, we were all the way at 10,000 feet. The ceiling for them is 13,500 feet and that’s the highest they’ll jump,” Martin said.

Those in attendance at the UCF football game will be able to see the parachutists via smoke canisters. “They’ve got smoke canisters essentially attached to their feet so you can see them coming all the way down. It’s really quite a sight.”

The Golden Knights teams were born out of a group of parachutists formed by the Army in 1959 and has since become a well-known demonstration team.

According to the Army’s website, the Golden Knights have conducted more than 16,000 shows in 50 states and 48 countries, reaching an average of 60,000 people per show. The team has earned the U.S. Army 2,148 gold, 1,117 silver, and 693 bronze medals in national and international competition. Team members have also broken 348 world records.

The Golden Knights are one of three Department of Defense-sanctioned aerial demonstration teams, along with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. The team is composed of approximately 95 men and women, which includes four parachute units, an aviation unit and a headquarters. The demonstration teams, which use five dedicated aircraft, perform at more than 100 events per year. The tandem section is known for taking Soldiers, celebrities and heads of state on jumps, and the competition section focuses on winning national and international skydiving events.

For Chief Warrant Officer 2 James Martin, piloting the Golden Knights plane is something that he enjoys and will continue to do for as long as possible.

“It’s a unique opportunity that I would have never thought in a million years that would come my way,” he said.