Air sphering – what is it?

Monday, November 7th, 2011

The wind in the tunnel can reach speeds of up to 150 mph which is comparable to a hurricane apparently, so the experience you will feel is at the same time unpredictable and exhilarating. Once you are lifted off the ground you are suspended in mid-air whilst the ball floats and bounces around the top of the wind tunnel.

Although it is certainly not a leisure activity for the faint hearted, Air Sphering is not just about crazy facts and used solely for the pleasure of adrenaline junkies, it can be an alternative less scary experience than other more dangerous leisure activities. Have you ever wanted to do skydiving but are too afraid to because of the heights involved and the fear of falling? Air Sphering is a great alternative to skydiving as it gives you a similar sensation of feeling what it is like to move through air quickly without the need to get into an airplane and being pushed out the door, plus it is totally safe. Safety is a priority and the wind levels can be controlled by the machine so the height the ball can go and the level of the experience can be controlled to suit the user. Plus you are strapped into an inflatable ball so risk is minimalized.

Hopefully this article hasn’t scared you off from experiencing Air Sphering as it is a fun activity which can be enjoyed safely by all the family as all you need to do is sit back and relax!

By Daniel from Wish.co.uk. For more adrenaline experiences click here

Skydiving in Cars

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Skydiving can be, if you’ve got the balls for it, unbelievably exhilarating. Most people are too scared to even consider jumping out of a plane at 100ft, never mind 5,000ft, so when you find out people are skydiving in cars, it makes you wonder just what these people have had for breakfast.

With that being said, then, here are some clips of the best skydiving in cars we could find. It’s an odd hobby, and it must be, presumably, quite xpensive, because no car is going to survive hitting ground at terminal velocity.

Just chillin’

For when normal skydiving is just so boring and mundane; this video shows that skydiving in a car is not only a possibility but a reality, too. It’s quickly an eye-opener, as it proves that people will do anything for a buzz. Their adrenaline must be – and pardon the pun – sky- high.

Rather worryingly, however, the video doesn’t show how they landed. Did they manage to get out of the car, or did they struggle to undo their seat belt? Let’s hope it’s the former!

Death by Polo

It may only be a bit of marketing, but VW’s Polo advert from 2007 represents the world’s weird love of car skydiving. Yes, it is fake, and obviously produced in a controllable CGI environment, but it still looks really good!

If you’ve got a £14k to spend on a VW Polo and you fancy destroying it in some car skydiving, then you go and pursue that dream!

Grannie diving!

Electric scooters, you know them; they’re the mobility aids that older people tend to use when the legs are starting to rust up a little. You’ll see them in Asda, down your street and in your towns, and, surprisingly, in the sky! That’s right; somebody thought that the electric scooter should be used in a far more practical way than helping the elderly do their weekly shop, and so we were blessed with scooter kydiving.

Awesome.

Maniacs

These adrenaline-seeking young uns are too much for us old folk. They just re-define what is possible, and when you see videos like this, you realise just how insane they are. These couple of guys are putting themselves at risk just to shift the car in a different direction!

The car, thankfully, ends up in a worse state, as it hits the ground at biblical speed.

“We can’t tell you why people do stuff”

The skydivers in this clip all look so happy. They’re just chilling in a car that’s falling at hundreds of feet per second, but do they care? They’re having a ball! The car begins to rock like a bucking bronco, as the divers jump out and continue on their dive.

Surely, this type of skydiving can be made into a sport? It could be introduced at the London Olympics 2012, perhaps.

Lee Pickering writes for both netcars.com, a used car classified website and Car Finance 247 who specialise in helping people obtain car finance deals.

Skydiving Directory

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Our site focuses mostly on the safety aspects of skydiving. We know that you may want to learn more and start skydiving for real. So we decided to create this skydiving resource center with links to some of the best sites about skydiving. We don’t aim to create the largest directory – instead of that we are looking to list only the must-visit resources. If you feel a great resource is missing, use the comments to suggest one.

General Skydiving Information

U.S. Parachute Association – this official site is a huge source of general information and current news and events from USA.

Skydive World is the best portal with links to other skydiving resources, just like ours here.

Top 10 Fascinating Skydiving Myths is just one page but well worth reading.

Skydiving Training

Here are few useful resources that can point you where to learn skydiving. I will not list any specific schools because I can’t recommend them without trying them.

Learn to Skydive – Dropzone’s great article will help you jump-start with skydiving.

The 7 Best Places to Skydive Around the World is a great article by Turner Wright that will give you some good ideas.

Where is the best place to go skydiving? – that’s a Yahoo answers page and the best answer is really very informative.

If you were looking for skydiving school better use the search engines – but do check forums and local groups for opinions about the school you plan to attend!

Skydiving Gear

Once again I’m not going to give you links to specific stores at least until I research them enough to be sure in their quality. Instead of that here are some good resources which will help you to buy your skydiving equipment. Of course don’t forget to check our detailed article on the topic as well.

Buying skydiving equipment for the new skydiver is an article that will answer your most important questions if you are just starting.

Of course you should also check Dropzone Skydiving Gear which offers not only good links in categories but also reviews of the equipment.

If you are ready to buy you may also check the Yahoo directory on skydiving gear and equipment.

Skydiving Discussions

You guessed right, DropZone has also a skydiving forum and it’s probably the most popular. But let’s list few other places with good discussions about skydiving.

UKSkydiver Forum is the favorite places of those who live in UK, but even if you are not there you can learn a lot from the discussions there and participate in them.

College Skydiving Forum is a relatively new place and less active but still a good one.

Skydive Safety is a small community dedicated to skydiving safety (just like this site is)

Indoor Skydiving

Once again, there are hundreds of places where you can go to try some indoor skydiving. My target is not to give you links to all of them – it wouldn’t make sense because you need one which is close to where you live. Instead of that, here are few resources where you can learn more about it:

Vertical Wind Tunnel – indoor skydiving explained in deep details in Wikipedia

How to Indoor Skydive In a Vertical Wind Tunnel – eHow’s guides usually aren’t very good, but this one is.

Other Sites of Interest

As we are building sites about other topics too, we believe you may find some of them interesting. This section will list some of these sites, even if they don’t seem too much related to skydiving.

Retro and Mechanical Toys – a site about old fashioned toys with a lot of information and pictures.

Outdoor Garden Benches – know everything about garden benches and even learn to build benches yourself.

Is It A Good Idea To Buy Used Skydiving Gear?

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Excluding the debatable areas, there are some pieces of equipment that most skydivers agree can be bough second hand and others that are not.

It’s not recommended to buy used…

…Helmet. Skydiving helmets (and most helmets for other sports as well) are created to handle one impact only. The helmet you are buying may have no visible damage, but even if it has been dropped on the ground it might have lost its protection power. Buying a second hand skydiving helmet is unsafe.

I wouldn’t buy used jumpsuit either. First, it’s like used clothes, they fit to someone’s body and will never fit as good on yours. Second, the wears on the windsuit are also hard to notice and although there is no such danger like with the helmet, it can be very unpleasant to have it tear while jumping.

Some used skydiving equipment you could consider buying

The less sensitive and related to safety the equipment is, the more appropriate for buying second hand it is. Also generally the electronic stuffs like the altimeter for example either works or not. It’s fairly easy to see if the altimeter is damaged or not, so it’s kind of OK to buy it used.

The AAD is sensitive, but is also electronics and could be bough used if you are sure in the seller or if it is still in warranty.

The best gears you can safe from are these unrelated directly to the jump things like video cameras, jumptracks, batteries, shoes etc.

Buying second hand harness is a questionable idea, I would say “no” to it.

Whatever parts of your skydiving gear you decide to buy second hand, don’t rely on seller’s word: carefully check the quality of the items yourself and spoil the deal for the smallest doubt.

If you have luck finding good second hand equipment and choose carefully, you can save from few hundreds to few thousands bucks.

Skydiving Wind Tunnel And Indoor Skydiving

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Even you have not been convinced about skydiving safety regardless of all the facts and statistics, there is still a chance to experience the joy of skydiving. Indoor skydiving is as safe as skydiving can be – not riskier than any contact sport for example. Of course you can be injured if you practice this sport, but the incidents are much lighter compared to the incidents in real skydiving or base jumping. In fact, up to this moment, for 20 years of history of indoor skydiving only one fatal incident has been documented.

Photo by Gaetan Lee at Flickr

When reading about skydiving wind tunnel you may meet also the terms indoor skydiving tunnel and bodyflight – it all means basically the same.

How Does it Work

Types of Wind Tunnels

There are two main types of skydiving wind tunnels: Sucker/Vaccuum Pressure Suction and Blower/Air-Pusher. The Vaccuum Pressure was invented in the mid 1990′s to make flying easier as opposed to the flying in the Air-Pushers. The problem with the Blowers is they require solid skydiving skills and falling out of the air column happens often. Of course these tunnels have a lot of safety air-bags around them, so this is not a safety issue but still many people find it just too hard to fly this way.

Anyway most more advanced skydivers prefer the Blower/Air-Pushes type because flying outdoor is more enjoyable. The Vaccuum Pressure Suction is preferred by less experienced participants because they are surrounded by walls which make it much easier to stay in the air and perform various figures.

The Costs

One more advantage to using wind tunnels as opposed to real skydiving is cost. There is no need of an airplane, parachutes or other expensive special equipment. The flights in USA and Canada usually cost $20 – $50 per flight (2-3 minutes) with discounts for families, full hour flight or frequent visitors. In Europe you can often find longer flights (10 mins) to be offered for 25 – 50 Euro. Usually the flight tunnels will give you equipment included in this price.

Going to a skydiving wind tunnel is a wonderful, affordable and quick way to test whether you will like skydiving or not. Of course, the real skydiving is a different experience but the tunnel will give you enough “taste” before you decide whether you want to make the “big real jump“.

Skydiving Risks

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

“Skydiving is risk free!”

If someone told you this you have the full right to doubt their sanity. Yes, skydiving can be a very safe extreme sport. But safety depends on many factors – your experience, your equipment and your knowledge about the potential risks.

Photo by -Xv at Flickr

Yes, there are risks in skydiving and you need to know them if you want to prevent incidents. So the purpose of this article is not to scarе you to death and put you away of this wonderful sport. Its purpose is only to encourage you think twice before doing stupid “brave” things that you have seen in movies. 92% of the fatalities in skydiving are due to mistakes in judgement and procedure. If that sounds like too many kids overestimate their capabilities, it may just be the true.

Let’s explore the main skydiving risks that you should be aware of:

• Equipment failure As opposed to what most people believe, equipment failure is very rare reason for skydiving fatalities. Of course, sometimes the parachutes doesn’t open, but all reasonable skydivers have a reserve parachute. Having both parachutes fail to open is an exceptionally rare thing. The obvious way to reduce the risk of equipment failure is to choose reliable equipment and keep it in good shape. There is still something you can do if your parachute does not open.
• Working with unknown equipment The equipment can get you in trouble if you don’t know how it works. The different types of parachutes can carry different weight and have different characteristics so not knowing the specific of yours increases the risk to open a parachute too late, too early or do something else wrong.
• Bad weather conditions Here is the real reason for many of the skydiving accidents. Strong sudden wind or shifting winds can sweep away the skydiver and cause him to crash. To avoid such risks you need to stay informed about the climatic conditions at the time and place of the jump.
• Medical risks Skydiving is not extremely exhausting sport but still requires a decent level of fitness. People with heart diseases, fever, osteoporosis and similar diseases should think twice before skydiving and do it only after consultation with specialist. The first skydiving jumps can be quite stressful so you’d better be in good mental health as well. Read more about doing it with high blood pressure.
• Landing injures The risk of small landing injures is not to be neglected – you can sprain, dislocate or break a leg or hand. While these incidents usually are not fatal, it’s good to be extra careful at the time of landing.
• Fatality due to overconfidence in yourself. This is maybe the second top reason for skydiving fatalities. Young skydivers often overestimate their capabilities and try to perform jumps that are too complex or risky for them.

Wingsuit Base Jumping

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

In this issue: What is wingsuit base jumping; Equipment and costs; Where to buy it; Is it safe?;

Get prepared for one of the hottest trends in skydiving: Wingsuit Base Jumping. If you have never seen wingsuit jumpers so far, your first thought may be “those guys are insane”. Just have a look at some YouTube videos. What Exactly Is Wingsuit Base Jumping People jump from clifs, airplanes or towers with special suits which let them slow down and control the fall – that’s basically wingsuit base jumping. Sometimes the jumpers start by skiing and throw away the ski while in the air. Then they are flying with the jumpsuit for certain amount of time which of course depends on the attitude of jumping. At some planned moment the flier has to deploy the parachute and land.

The wingsuit slows the fall to about 30m per second and lets you move 20% more horizontally than you would without it.

Wingsuit jumps can also be performed as a skydiving discipline (from an airplane) but most skydivers find the BASE jumps far more exciting.

What Do You Need: Jumpsuit Cost

First and most important – a wingsuit. The cost of a good wingsuit is about $1,500 – $2,000 and while it’s not cheap, I would not advise you to save money exactly from it. (There are few cheaper options though, as you’ll see in the next section)

What Equipment and Where To Buy It

One of the best looking places for shopping wingsuits seems to be Phoenix-fly. They have a model well under $1,000

TonySuit is another excellent web store with their basic beginner wingsuit starting currently at $850. They have a Facebook group with a good fan base so I guess if you have questions you can ask for opinions there.

Is Wingsuit Base Jumping Safe?

The main danger in base jumping and number one reason for fatalities is striking the object you have jumped from. The wingsuit reduces this risk because of the better horizontal movement it allows you do to.

However exactly the advantages of the wingsuit can turn against you – the low fall rate can perplex your judgement about the attitude and distance from the objects which often can cause accidents.

Often some more experienced wingsuit jumpers try to do jumps that would be impossible without the wingsuit. This can lead to accidents if they overestimate their capabilities.

If you don’t let be fooled by the extra safety that the wingsuit gives you, doing this king of jumps is not more dangerous than the other skydiving disciplines. As always, play safe and don’t let the adrenaline take over your mind.

The Variety Of Skydiving Disciplines You Can Enjoy

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

How many ways to jump do you know? Probably not as many as there are in skydiving. The disciplines in skydiving are enough to be separated in two main categories – Base Jumping and Free Fall. It’s not that you should specialize in Freeflying and not do Base Jumping or the other way around. All the disciplines can be applied together and some even have to.

Photo by divemasterking2000 at Flickr

Let’s explore some of the most interesting ones:

Free Fly

Formation Skydiving

If you have ever been impressed by the skydivers watching some parachuting show, chances are you have been watching a formation skydiving performance.

Formation skydiving is practiced in groups of 4, 8 or 16 participants who perform specific figures and are usually video-recorded by another skydiver.

Formation skydiving is a sport with specific rules – each figure the participants perform is worth certain amount of points and these points are used to calculate the ranking in the competition.

Formation skydiving is considered the most popular parachuting discipline.

Base Jump

Here’s something you can do on your own. The Base Jump consists of jumping from an artificial or natural obstacle – building, tower, cliff, bridge etc.

For more information on the Base Jump it’s better to check the Wikipedia article.

This discipline is mostly practiced individually or in groups of 2-3 people.

The first base jumps have been done in the very beginning of 20-th century.

Freestyle

This discipline is different than Free Fly discussed first in this article. It’s a sport discipline with rules – typically there is one performer and one skydiver who video-records his partner’s performance.

The Freestyle skydiving includes all kind of movements and acrobatics in the three dimensions during the fall. Freestyle is considered one of the dangerous disciplines.

Style

Not “free”, just Style. This is a very different, high speed discipline including a lot of movements in series. The performer aims to make as many movements as possible in a short time.

This is clearly a competitive skydiving discipline and one of these who allows you to achieve world records.

Style is activity loved mostly within old-school skydivers.

Accuracy landing

Accuracy is one of the oldest skydiving disciplines. The performer jumps from the airplane and tries to land as close as possible to a predefined target.

This discipline is practiced individually or in groups of 4 skydivers. The performers usually land on their feet.

These were just some of the most popular skydiving disciplines. There are all kinds of crazy ones like Canopy skydiving, Blade Running, Sky Surfing and so on.

If you want to skydive just for fun, you may not be interested in following specific disciplines – they are for sportsmen who often compete professionally.

Are You Ready For Your First Parachute Jump?

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

The first parachute jump is often source for good memories and jokes for years to go. After you have made it, it’s easy to tell stories. The hard part is to do your first jump. And deciding to do it is half work done. What Can Prevent Your Jump Before discussing your first jump, you ought to know that there are some circumstances under which you are not recommended (and often not allowed) to do it:

Photo by Lowerlighter at Flickr

• If you have used spirits or drugs
• If you have high blood pressure or serious heart disseases
• If you suffer from osteoporosis
• If you have broken leg or hand

It’s not that you can’t jump drunk or with a broken hand, but it’s highly recommended to avoid that and skydive only in good physical and mental shape.

The Decision

Freefall Jump

The first classical freefall jump is usually made at 700 – 800m attitude. If you are doing your first parachute jump in a club (which is highly recommended), the instructors will prepare all the equipment for you so you can concentrate on the skydiving.

The instructor will explain you in detail what to do: how to enter and go out of the plane, how to jump, what to do in any unexpected situation and how to land. Usually the first jump instructions include also dry training inside the plane.

When you are actually doing the jump you will again be accompanied from the instructor but only to the door of the plane. He or she will tell you when to jump… and the rest is in your hands and legs. After you jump you will have just few seconds to enjoy the free fall and then the parachute will open.

The first freefall skydiving jump is a terrific experience which you are going to remember for life.

Tandem Jump

If you don’t like to be alone in your first parachute experience, you can choose a tandem jump. The tandem jumps are more expensive because they usually occupy the best instructors and very high quality equipment.

When you are doing a tandem parachute jump your harness is tied to the harness of the instructor who also holds the parachutes. The free fall duration is much bigger compared to the “freefall” jump – it can be as much as one minute! Only the drogue starts opening after the first few seconds. This is because the jump starts at attitude of 3,000 – 4,000 m. After that there is at least another minute fall with the main parachute open.

Because of the high attitude and the long duration of the jump it requires even better physical and mental shape than the freefall jump. However the experience is even more memorable.

Freefall or tandem, your first parachute jump is going to be memorized. It’s a good idea to get a video camera or audio recorder so you can share your great moment with your friends and relatives.

How To Choose Your Skydiving Equipment

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Photo by estherase at Flickr

Maybe you have just overcame the fear of skydiving or have already made your first jump, but probably so far you have used someone else’s gear. This is not wrong, skydiving is not a cheap hobby and it makes sense to try it before buying equipment. But now you are ready and convinced you want to skydive? Ok, let’s introduce you the most important parts of the skydiving gear and how to choose the most appropriate for you!

Some General Tips

Before jumping into specifics you’d better read these do-s and don’t-s. It helps to be prepared before spending money:

• Don’t rely entirely on someone else’s recommendation. Even if your friend is a professional, he or she is not you. Skydiving equipment is something individual and you are likely to feel better wearing models that are not appropriate for your friend.
• Don’t be afraid to buy used gear. If someone have used it and remained healthy, that means the equipment is most probably good. Of course you need to carefully check it but that is fine because you can save money.
• The most expensive doesn’t mean the best. Better search the Web and DropZone for reviews before purchasing.
• The cheapest is usually not good. Bad equipment can cost you life. It’s OK to want to save money, but safety first.
• You may rent some equipment. It’s not required to own everything especially if you plan to jump only once in a while.

So let’s now pay more attention to the specific items you will need.

The Helmet – a Top Priority Gear

Besides the important characteristics you will need to choose between full face and open face helmets, different colors, helmets with digital cameras or digital sound systems.

The Harness And Container

The skydiving harness is what keeps your body connected to the parachute. Obviously it need to be very robust and comfortable. Besides that there isn’t too much to say about the harness/container.

The Parachutes

They are the biggest expense and probably the most important part of your skydiving equipment. Be prepared to spend $2,000 or more on the parachutes. You need two of them – main and reserve one.

The modern skydiving parachutes are square parachutes constructed of 7 cells. The most important characteristics that should define your choice are the the construction materials and wing loading. Normally the loading should be 1lbs per sqft and you need to buy a parachute that equals your weight. Some recommend buying parachutes with lower size for better performance but that drastically increases the safety risks.

The Altimeter

This is yet another essential part of your skydiving gear. It’s a piece that you can omit, but is highly recommended. You don’t need to spend too much money here but have in mind that the less expensive altimeter watches are usually less accurate too.

The most important features of the altimeter are the compass and the attitude indicator. Other good things to have are barometric pressure, temperature levels and the attitude alarm.

Expect to spend $50 – $200 on altimeter unless you want to buy used.

The Jumpsuit

It’s important because of the impact ion your fall rate, speed and direction. Some people are falling far slower than others and the jumpsuit can control this.

The skydiving jumpsuit also protects your body from the cold (falling with 120mph can be really freezing without a good jumpsuit!).

However it is a part of equipment that can be skipped and there are many skydivers who do that. So if you think you feel cool enough and want to spare $200 or more for a jumpsuit, you can do it.

If you have decided to buy one, make sure it’s manufactured with quality fabric and has money back guarantee.

Automatic Activation Device (AAD)

It’s there to open your parachute when you reach the most appropriate attitude. The AADs have caused a major decrease in skydiving fatalities that’s why they are considered life savers and cheap life insurance.

The price of the AAD is another few hundreds, but again it’s well worth its price. Just don’t forget that like any complex technological device, AAD are not 100% reliable.

The total cost of your skydiving gear can be between $3,000 and $6,000 – $7,000. This is not a small amount but if you are planning to skydive long term it will pay of opposed to renting.