Skydiving

[Regime]

Making this a thread for people who have jumped or interest in doing so.


Tommorrow at 1pm is my first jump and I am very pumped.


Share your stories (Where you jumped, the feeling etc) I already signed up for the school and my next jump is in the afternoon.



I will get the headcam video posted up too.

[McCheese]

Never done this myself, but my friend has done it several times. She says it's one of the greatest things she's done, and keeps trying to get me to join her.

Personally I think you're all fucking insane!

Good luck with the jump.

[theawddone]

I did it on mother's day last year with my new gf (at the time and she's still with me now! great bonding experience imo) and a few friends from college. It was a blast, one of my friends went again over summer, too. Just wish it weren't so damn expensive...

[Dinthug]

how much does it cost? I was just talking to a few friends about this the other day. How many jumps do you need to make before you can go by yourself?

[Cuppycake]

I did a tandem skydiving jump several years ago. It was the scariest experience of my life, but I'm terrified of heights. Jumping out of the plane was the hardest thing I've ever had to make myself do.

Everyone else I was with had an amazing time though.

[Eomer]

I've been meaning to do this for years. Tried to in NZ, but the weather didn't cooperate. Perhaps I'll finally get around to it this summer.

One "sport" that's absolutely ridiculous is where these guys jump out of a heli with a kite suit on, and then fly down cliffs etc with their finger tips damn near scraping the walls as they fly by at 150mph. I can't remember offhand what it was called and am having a hard time finding videos, soul flying or spirit flying or something. Naturally Red Bull sponsors it. There's one specific shot that is mind blowing where he flies over a highway on the side of a mountain, and clear it by maybe 10-20 feet vertically. It's unreal.

[Regime]

No video (fuckin $100 for a 2 min video no thanks) but had the greatest time of life. Freefell for 40 secs.

Not much to say but going next Saturday for their class to achieve an license.

[theawddone]

What elevation did you go ??

[Regime]

Originally Posted by theawddone

What elevation did you go ??

Sorry it was more like 35 seconds, 10k feet think they deployed at 4700 feet.

[Sulrn]

Originally Posted by Dinthug

how much does it cost? I was just talking to a few friends about this the other day. How many jumps do you need to make before you can go by yourself?

I'm sure cost varies by state/field, but here it costs around $145 per tandem jump. 3 tandems and you can solo which is slightly cheaper I think. I'm not sure if it's national now or not, but there used to be the ability to go to school before you ever jump and never have to tandem. Sadly that doesn't exist here anymore.

For anyone who does the military/ROTC thing, they'll earn you your license free of charge. I mean you only have to serve afterwards.

[Goltana_R-Zek]

Me and a friend jumped last summer, was a blast, plan on trying again this summer over in NY where we went before. Hopefully will convince some more of my friends to go, a lot of them think its pretty crazy/insane and won't even consider it though! I gotta admit, it can sound pretty intimidating, but it was a great amount of fun, really glad I tried it out.

[Korbal]

I went skydiving a while ago and it definitely was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to go from 13,500 feet and had a full minute free fall I believe, which was awesome. I'd love to be able to go by myself and not tandem sometime.

[Fris_Leafshadow]

i've done 12 jumps and it's to the point now i need to start looking at buying my equipement which is way expansive.

i did 2 tandoms, but you don't have to at all fields. my first 4 or 5 solo's were about 150, and 2 guys jumped with me. after that it was 130 and only 1 person jumped with me. now it's only 60 but i have to rent equipment i think, i haven't done it in almost 2 years. amazing fun and really makes you rethink the other stresses in your life.

[Salshun]

I would do it in a second, but would never bungee jump. Skydiving instructors are just that, but a kid making $8/hour to tie a cord around my ankle? Fuck that.

Had a buddy sky dive and being broke, I couldn't go with. Waited on the ground and when he got up to me he was almost in tears, said it was the most bad ass experience of his life. If I got really into it, don't think I could ever pack my own shoot.

[aychamo_aycono]

Wow, this is a thread I love I've been certified since 1999. I love this sport. I have hundreds and hundreds of jumps now. It is a truly fun and fascinating sport. There's no way to describe the freedom of hurling your body out of a plane, flying around, then landing softly under your canopy.

I learned via the static line method, which took 15 jumps to get off of student status. My dropzone didn't offer the AFF (accelerated free fall) method because at the time we only had a small Cessna 182 aircraft. We were the definition of redneck skydiving. Down south we would never wear helmets, no one had a Cypres (it's an AAD - automatic activation device, opens your reserve canopy if you don't open at a certain altitude), and we were nuts. It was an eye opener when I started jumping up here in New York to see how different people were up here. They thought I was insane for not wearing a helmet -- I thought the same for them wearing one!

Down south we'd always do the fun things -- climbing out on the wing of the Cessna and hanging by our feet, jumping when there's only the tiniest hole of clouds over the airport, parties all night in the dropzone, etc. Let me tell you, there is little on earth that compares to skydiving through a cloud at over 120-130mph. Or deploying your parachute in a cloud and spiraling down as fast as you can. It's an insane feeling and experience!

We used to do a lot of fun things. Like on Halloween we'd jump with a pumpkin and see who could keep up with it in freefall -- I couldn't, it fell wayy to fast! That pumpkin shattered all over some field somewhere in Texas! Rarely, when we had two planes, we'd fly them side-by-side and launch two different groups at a time and meet up in the air. It was really amazing. I have that on video somewhere.

And the people you meet are amazing. Totally different crowds. You'll meet old people, gay people weird people, rich people, poor people, whatever. All they care about is that you're a skydiving. When I was 18 my best skydiving friend was a 48 y/o gay man. It didn't matter. And skydivers can party. One night we were completely trashed at the dropzone and were trying to make a climbing harness out of old airplane seatbelts, then we tried to disable the landing lights at the airport (yes, a really bad idea.)

I was never exceptional in freefall, but I was an expert canopy pilot. My dropzone had a huge field, but a tiny landing area right in front of the hanger that was only for the very experienced skydivers. They didn't want you to even try to land there unless you had well over 200 jumps. I was landing there every time after about 20 jumps. After 20 jumps I could put my canopy down within 10-15 feet of my target every time. I was so good at it that at 50 jumps they brought me on a demo jump (meaning, you go skydiving into a public place that pays you to land there, the first one was for the Woman's March of Dimes or whatever.) The other skydivers all had over a 1,000-2,000 jumps and I had 50!

For those who haven't tried it: try it! It's impossible to explain the feeling. You literally hurl your body out of the plane, and you literally fly. It's you and the sky. That's it. You fly down, then deploy your canopy. Oh my god it's such a feeling.

It's fun man. My advice: get certified! Learn all you can and ask questions and think about what you're doing! And if you see the pilot of the aircraft doing anything stupid, call him out on it (I lost a lot of friends at Texas A&M back in '99 because of a stupid pilot.)

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about this sport of sports.