Skydiving Parachuting Guide

1. Skydiving Safety
2. Varieties for Skydiving
3. Parachutes, History & Designs

Skydiving takes place for a variety of reasons. The most common is recreation. Each year millions of people skydive all across the United States simply for the thrill of it. Besides being a recreational activity there are also professional careers that require skydiving. These include airborne soldiers from the military, firefighters and sometimes medical personnel.

At first glance skydiving may seem an extremely hazardous thing but in actuality deaths are very rare. This is because of the training and modern equipment skydivers now use. In most countries a skydiver will need to complete 20 jumps with at least one certified instructor before they can parachute alone. These jumps can only take place after classes on parachute safety and procedures are completed on the ground.

Skydiving Safety

Besides the training and assisted skydives the modern parachutist has excellent safety equipment. To begin with all skydivers carry a reserve parachute.

This reserve parachute is examined and packed by a certified parachute rigger (FAA) . This is as close to a guarantee as you can get that the reserve parachute will open. Not only carrying a reserve parachute a skydiver carries an - automatic activation device -.

This device opens the reserve parachute without the assistance of the parachutist in any way. This safety device has saved many lives in skydiving. There are cases where skydivers have collided, become unconscious and the automatic activation device saved their life.

Other safety items skydivers carry is both visual and audible altimeters. This may seem like a silly thing but it is not. When a person is skydiving it is difficult to tell how close to the ground you are. It is absolutely necessary to open a parachute at a specific altitude while skydiving to make sure it fully deploys before you reach the ground.

With all these safety items in place and with the great safety record skydiving has its no wonder many people go skydiving. The reasons they go skydiving vary from person to person.

Some do it as a test of courage. Others for the simple thrill or as a means for stress relief. If you ever take the big jump into skydiving what will be your reason? Have you ever been to an airport and seen people skydiving? If you have, you might have asked yourself why they do it.

You may have even thought about skydiving yourself once or twice. The reasons people skydive varies from person to person. Some people do it for the thrill, others as a test of courage. Still yet, some people do it as part of a birthday celebration like President George Bush Sr. He goes parachuting on his birthdays with army airborne soldiers.

If you are thinking about going skydiving you should know some things about the sport. The first being what the risk is. Speaking statistically parachuting is a very safe sport.

It's not the same as watching a football game on your couch but it's not supposed to be. Every year there are around 3 million skydives performed, of these 3 million jumps an average of 35 deaths result.

Over 90% of these fatalities resulted from human error. This is not to say skydiving is not dangerous because it is. However, if you do everything as you are instructed, your odds of being injured or killed are extremely low.

Once you have looked at the risk involved, you need to discover where you can skydive. Your first stop should be calling your local county airport or searching in the Yellow Pages under "skydiving".

Perhaps the idea place would be asking one of your friends who has skydived before. After you have found a place you will receive instruction by a certified skydiving instructor. This professional skydiver will teach you everything you need to know for your first jump.

After your instructions you will have to sign legal waivers in case you are injured or killed. Once this is out of the way you will pick the type of skydiving you want for your first jump.

Skydiving Varieties

You have 3 varieties to pick from for your first jump. Tandem skydiving , you are attached to a skilled skydiver and are basically along for the ride. You will not worry about pulling the chord or controlling the parachute because the skilled skydiver will take care of all this for you.

This is the most popular selection for first time skydivers. Static Line, this is the way parachuting for military airborne soldiers is done. You jump about 3,000 feet high with a chord hooked on a plane that pulls your parachute open.

It's a bit more risky than tandem skydiving because you have to land yourself. However, it's also a popular choice for first time skydivers. The final option available is Accelerated Freefall.

This is for the first time skydivers who want every thrill there is. You jump with 2 instructors but have your own parachute and the responsibility of deploying your own parachute. These instructors check that you are performing everything safely and will stay with you until you open your parachute.

Once your chute is open they will help you with landing by instructions on radio.Whatever method you pick for your first skydive, you will find skydiving extremely exciting

Down To Earth With Parachutes

The year was 1617; Fauste Veranzio steps to the edge of a four story tower in Venice, Italy.It is unknown exactly what was going through Veranzios’ mind at the time, but one thing is certain, shortly after stepping to the edge of that tower.

Veranzio stepped off. On that beautifully clear day in 1617, Veranzio stepped off the edge of that tower and gently floated into the history books as the first man to utilize a Maximum Drag Decelerator, more widely known as a parachute.Did Fauste invent the device?No; the credit for that concept once again goes to Da Vinci.Faust had based the design for his parachute on a drawing done by Da Vinci in 1495.

Since that fateful day in Venice, the use of parachute and parachute design has grown by leaps and bounds.Since Jean Pierre Blanchard first used a rigid frame parachute in 1785 to jump from his hot air balloon, when it inadvertently exploded, parachutes have been adding an extra level of safety to aviation as a life saving device. Today these are used in every corner of the world for everything from commercial aviation to military special operations to recreational sky diving and more.

Parachutes History and Designs

For recreational use, parachutes have been utilized for skydiving in a wide range of designs, from the solid cloth canopy to the parawing. Nothing beats the feeling of that first rush as you step to the door of the airplane strapped in tandem to an instructor, and suddenly you are in freefall.The feeling of being suspended, floating on a stream of air high above the world lasts mere seconds, but those seconds seem to go on forever.It is a feeling that more and more people are experiencing every year as the sport of skydiving grows.

They are also utilized in a number of other ways. How many of us as children had a parachute strapped to one or more of our toys? High-speed drag racers deploy a specially designed parachute to assist in slowing them down at the end of that quarter mile.

Parachutes are also used in peace and relief missions to rapidly deploy food and medical supplies to third world countries. The use of the parachute is becoming more and more common, and is a device that could not be easily replaced.