In 1997 while trying to figure out something new to do for the weekend a friend of mine suggested we try Skydiving. It's something I've always wanted to do but never looked into seriously. I made some phone calls and found a Drop Zone close by my house. Trouble was now my buddy was having second thoughts. My wife suggested she go too but I told her no because it wasn't a sport for girls.
Well, after being the only guy on the first jump course that week she insisted I let her try the next week. As it happened we both started skydiving regularly and got into the sport.
Skydiving is an amazing adventure. You first have to put your survival instinct in check especially when that door pops open next to you. Fear of heights doesn't matter because the height is surreal.
Once we got our 'A' License, which give you the ability to skydive at any Drop Zone around the world, we were off. You'd think that falling out of a "perfectly good airplane" would be just that - uncontrolled falling while praying your chute opens. It's actually far from that. Controlling the rushing air is a fine tuned skill and there are many different skydiving disciplines. You've probably seen most of them;
| Flat Flying | Falling on your belly. Used for creating large falling formations. This is the most common form of skydiving. Hundreds of skydivers link up to form huge "big-ways". Small groups compete to see how many formation changes they can make in a jump. |
| Freeflying | A newer form of "all-axis" flying involving head-up and head-down orientation. Freefly formations are 3 dimensional. Freefly also involves toys like Skyballs and Tubes. |
| CReW (Canopy Relative Work) | Linking up large numbers of skydivers while their parachutes are open. This involves opening at high altitudes and building formation during descent. These dives are where most of the Real TV footage comes from |
| Skyboarding | Many have seen skydivers riding a snow-board like device. This is an excellent form of skydiving requiring great skill. Skyboarders perform assigned maneuvers in an allotted time. They fly in pairs with a Camera-Flyer |
| Accuracy | Seeing how close to the target you can land. The parachutes used in Accuracy jumping are porous so that the canopy sinks onto target. The target is a 1 cm point. Yawn. Accuracy is boring |
| Swooping | While not actually part of the "dive" in skydiving, swooping high performance canopies has become a competition sport. Competitors swoop through courses of Airblades or over ponds for distance. |
Through this site I hope to bring you some of the excitement I felt during the time my family and I jumped out of planes. I hope to inspire some to try it for themselves!
That said, here's my caveat: Skydiving is DANGEROUS. It is a sport where you can do everything right and still die. You can even die going to watch it done. It requires the type of person who is cool under pressure and who really wants to have a great time. Be aware that nobody can swoop in and save you like in the movies. There's nobody to turn off the ride.
Now, I hope I haven't put you off too much. Follow the sub-pages to learn more about my skydiving adventures.
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