Skydiving Accessories And Gadgets

Skydiving Accessories And Gadgets

Other than weights and jumpsuits, there are other gadgets that you may need for you jump. Here are some of them.

          

Altitude Devices

Altimeters are one of the obligatory pieces that you would use for skydiving. You may be surprised with the vast variety of choices. However, it is recommend that you use one that’s easy to read and can give you outstanding after-sales services. In fact there are ones that even give free lifetime warranty for your device. Such kind of service is especially useful if ever you drop your device on the creeper pad.

Audibles

Even though these are not strictly compulsory, you might enjoy the extra security and benefits of wearing one. Although you do not really have to rely on it, getting an extra altitude warning would be very useful. These are very useful if you’re doing various disciplines like: freefly, flat-fly, and breaking off high. This is because your freefall time would vary from one dive to another.

                             

If you want to go freeflying, most coaches wouldn’t let you jump if you don’t have an audible, since they’re such a helpful safety precaution, especially if you’re learning how to fly with higher speeds.

Choices would vary from the basic models or the top of the line, which would also act like a log book, measuring your freefall time and speed, and could be connected to a computer to get more statistics. Basically, the more the functions, the higher the price would be.

Helmets

This is yet another mandatory piece. If you’ll be buying one, you should consider bother safety and comfort. You should try on as much as you can so you’d find the perfect fit. If you want extra protection, wearing a full-face would be your right pick. It also gives added security if you’re wearing contact lenses.

However, open-faced helmets can allow you easier communication, since you’re able to see the whole face of the person. Nevertheless, they don’t protect your mouth and jaw. You would have to get another pair of goggles for this one.

                   

There are also leather frappe hats. Although they do meet the mandatory requirements of wearing a helmet, these can provide you little protection only from injuries. If you’re an experienced diver, these can be an acceptable choice.

Gloves

These are exceptionally useful as protection for your hands. Wearing a pair can protect you from scrapes, line burns, mishaps, and the cold weather. To know if a pair is good for skydiving, they must be appropriately thick to protect you from the cold, while thin enough that you can still feel your handles. To ensure that gloves are suitable for skydiving, you should buy from a skydiving store instead of a general sports shop.

                    

Hook Knives

Hook knives are also important when you’re jumping. This is another safety measure, just in case you’ll be having a line-over malfunction with your reserve chute. There are various types of hook knives and they all do work. In choosing one, you should get a piece that you particularly like yet can still conveniently fit in your rig. Placing a hook knife on your chest strap is not really a good idea, since it can be easy to lose. Your leg strap is the more preferred choice. To keep your knife sharp, try not to use it for other tasks.

               

Indoor Skydiving

Indoor Skydiving

Most people think that skydiving can only be done outdoors in the sky. However, with the development of technology, there is now an indoor rendition of the sport, which is done through vertical wind tunnels.

What Is A Vertical Wind Tunnel?

Vertical wind tunnels (VWT) are wind tunnels that blows up air in a column. This is actually a recreational wind tunnel that is most of the time advertised as "bodyflight" or "indoor skydiving". It’s also a training tool that most skydivers use.

These wind tunnels can give people the ability to fly on air without needing parachutes or planes, simply by the force of wind that’s generated vertically. The wind inside these tunnels generally moves upward at 120 mph, which is also a falling human body’s terminal velocity, although it can vary from one person to another.

VWT’s are most of the time called 'indoor skydiving'because of its popularity with skydivers that say the sensation they get is very similar to the real thing. As the person 'floats' in midair inside the wind tunnel, this is termed as 'bodyflight'.

Bodyflight

Bodyflight is said to be the art of 'flying your body' but in a controlled method. Control would include rolls, fall rate control, turns, lateral movement and some other acrobatic stunts in mid-air. Knowing bodyflight skills help skydivers go closer to each other while freefalling, so that they can link for formation skydiving, and then fly away from each other again until they reach a safe distance so that they can open their parachutes.

A lot of bodyflight skills could be learned and practiced from VWTs. Most skydivers use this as practice equipment so that they can be better in controlling their bodies while falling from the sky. Bodyflight can be done through decreasing/increasing your body drag, by using your legs and arms as rudders for motion control. Additionally, other techniques used similar by airplanes are used.

Types Of Vertical Wind Tunnels

Basically, there are 2 main types of VWTs, namely: outdoor and indoor. The outdoor type can be either portable or stationary. The portable ones are the types that are often used for movie productions, demonstrations and are usually rented for big events like state fairs and conventions.

Portable units give a dramatic effect for the spectators and the flying person, since there are no walls bounding the flight area. This kind of wind tunnel gives you the opportunity to fly with a partial or full sky/outdoor view. Some outdoor units can also have nettings around or walls so as to keep beginners from flying out the tunnel boundaries.

For the indoor types, you also have to sub categories, namely: re-circulating and non-re-circulating. Non-re-circulating wind tunnels generally suck air via inlets found in the building’s bottom portion. Then the air would go up the bodyflight area, and exit through the top portion of the building. However, the re-circulating type would create an aerodynamic loop that has turning vanes, which are similar to scientific wind tunnels, but has a vertical loop and a bodyflight chamber inside the vertical portion of the loop.

Re-circulating tunnels are usually used in places where the climate is too cold for non-re-circulating types. Indoor types usually have a smoother and controlled airflow than outdoor types. They also have more control on temperature. Thus, they can be operated year-round in places with cold climate.

Skydiving Equipment

Skydiving Equipment: Knowing Your Jumpsuit

Appropriate equipment is vital if you want to try or even pursue the sport of skydiving. Your jumpsuit is considered to be one of the most important equipments that you’ll need to take a dive. If you’re new to the sport, you should learn some certain jumpsuit essentials first before you go off on a jumpsuit shopping spree. Here are some of the things you should consider when buying a jumpsuit.

To Get A New One Or Not? To get a new equipment or a used one is actually more of a financial choice rather than something to be done out of fear or a want to impress. This doesn’t only apply for jumpsuits but other equipments as well. If money would not be a problem for you, then obtaining all these toys would be an exciting game for you.

However, if like most people, your finances took a big bite from finishing your recent skydiving course, then your mortgage is already due yet your salary is still 2 weeks away, then you’d probably have to deliberate
on buying equipment based on your budget.

To think of it, there is no point when you have all brand new gadgets but have no money to pay for the jump itself. There’s nothing wrong in purchasing used gear or even a mix of old and new. In fact it can be a good way to save up for this new obsession of yours!

Something About Jumpsuits

Having a well fitted jumpsuit, that is customized for your fall rate requirements and the type of skydiving jump you’ll be doing is valued in gold, and is most likely your shopping lists’ best value for money item. Initially, you may think that the price is very expensive just for a clothing item. Nevertheless, for sure you’d appreciate its value in terms of its excellent materials, durability, and workmanship.

What’s So Special About Jumpsuits?

Generally, formation skydiving jumpsuits are custom made starting from materials used up to its measurements. The industry’s best manufacturers would usually sponsor a top team that provide them research and development feedbacks. The suits made are regularly updated and modified from the recommendations that are based on numerous tunnel hours and thousands of jumps. Those suits that you should avoid are the ones that are cheap copycats of the originals in which their manufacturers do not even know how to jump.

First Suit Tips

It is highly recommended that you buy your 1st suit from a dealer, instead of measuring yourself. Generally, dealers would provide you excellent advice about the suit type, which is most appropriate for your fall rate and skydiving requirements. Additionally, they would take expert measurements. Plus, they would also consider what you’d be wearing underneath your jumpsuit to make your suit a much tailored one.

Dealers also show you colour fabric swatches coming from various manufacturers and would assist you in picking out your jumpsuit options. If ever you have any alterations, it would be in their expense. In general, suits would take 8 weeks to be done, unless if you want a rush order. Factors like time of the year also matter on how long your suit would finish.

However, if you do want to take measurements by yourself or ask your friend to do it, it’s important to take note the weight vests and warmwear you’ll be wearing.

Type Of Skydiving

The Less Popular Types Of Skydiving

Skydiving has a lot of types. However, there are ones that are commonly known such as freestyle,formation and freeflying. Although these three are considered to be the ones that are always done and seen on television or in media, there are still other types of skydiving that are most likely not known to many. If you are new to the sport of skydiving and want to know more about it, then knowing the less popular types would still be important. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be having a knack for these less popular types!

Skysurfing

This type is actually said to be an even more extreme and radical rendition of skydiving. In skysurfing, the diver would be diving with a board that is somewhat like a snowboard, but a bit smaller in size. This board would be attached to the diver’s feet. Skysurfing is said to be hard simply because board attached to your feet is extremely difficult to control. In fact, even simply standing straight would require you some skill and precise balance that you can only get from considerable experience in free flying.

Once you gain some experience and become a master of skysurfing, you would have the ability to use your boards to execute rapid rolls, tumbles, and spinning helicopter acrobatic stunts. Just like in Freestyle skydiving, you  would have to have an auxiliary partner, whose duty is to film your skysurfing performance. As a safety measure, the boards can be detached while you are in mid-aie. However, this can cause extra hazard fro those people on the ground, which is why not every skydiving club allow this kind of skydiving.

BASE Jumping: As Close As It Gets

BASE jumping is actually considered to be the most extreme and dangerous among the types of skydiving. "BASE" is actually an acronym which refers to the structures that the skydivers jump from: Building; Antennae, which can be an uninhabited structure, aerial mast or tower; Span, which are bridge-like structures; and Earth, such as cliffs or canyons.

This kind of skydiving is only done by very experienced divers. This is so, because such kind of diving includes huge risks due to the fact that the jump is quite a short one and has close proximity to a lot of structures that give huge risks of entanglement, collision and the likes.

According to statistics, in between 1981 to 2007, there is an estimate of one hundred eleven experienced BASE jumpers have already met fatal endings due to some complications in the jump, that basically lead to a failure.

Wingsuit Flying: Flying In Style

This branch of skydiving is a recent one. A winsgsuit is an up to date invention in which skydivers put on  a specially designed suit that has webbings stitched in between the arms and legs. When the wingsuit is worn while skydiving, it results to an airfoil, which gives the skydiver a lift. Thus the diver is apportioned with an even more highly developed level of control over his descent speed and trajectory that seems impossible at normal circumstances.

However, this kind of dive would usually entail you to use portable computers and other gadgets to record your velocity and distance travelled. Records show that the slowest speed ever accomplished with a wingsuit is 25mph. Once you get to reach the specified altitude, you would have to unzip your wingsuit’s arm webbing in order to deploy your parachute.

Wingsuits are commonly used and popular with BASE jumpers. This is due to the reason that when they wear wingsuits, they can have the ability to turn their 60 second freefall period into a longer span of 3 minutes. Nevertheless, this kind of skydiving is only done by very experienced divers. I fact, it‘s recommended that you should have hundreds of jumps under your belt even before you decide to embark on

this kind of skydiving.

Accuracy Landing: Getting It Straight To The Point

This type of skydiving is a competitive one in which a skydiver would earn points in the competition for being able to land as closely as he can to a specific target point or area on the ground. It is usually done solo and the landing part is the one given the most attention.

The Skydiving

The Skydiving History
Skydiving is a well loved sport, especially for the extreme goers out there. However,it may seem that
skydiving is something new as a sport, but in reality, it has a very rich and colourful history that can be very interesting to know, whether you are a fan of the sport or simply curious about it.


Milestones And More

Although most of skydiving milestones happened during the 20th century, its history actually goes back further more.  Originally, parachuting started around the 1100s in China, which is about a thousand years ago. Although there were no airplanes during that time, people would find natural formations in which they can leap off and float safely towards the ground below.  Additionally, Da Vinci actually made a design that shows a wooden frame parachute that has a pyramid shape. This is just one of the proofs that parachuting is actually way older than most people think.

Skydiving Sport History
If you’ll be talking about the sport of skydiving, this matter would have a much recent history in themaking. The very first person who did this daring act was Jacques Garnerin. He didn’t jump from an airplane though. What he did was jump off from balloons, around late 18th century. He also performed fanciful displays when he did so. After he executed his jumps, he would then make use of a parachute to have a safe landing.


When Women Came In
Women had a part in skydiving history too. However, it was not until the 19th century that they started having participation in the sport. One of the most famous women in skydiving history is Kathe Paulus. She parachuted in Germany during the end of the 19th century and became very well known for this skill of hers.


Airplane Generation
Ever since the airplane was invented, the skydiving history became even more colourful than ever. Indeed,it took a great leap of faith, literally and metaphorically! With the evolution of the airplane, the more did  skydiving evolved and became even more daring. Now, daredevils had the opportunity to parachute from a fast-moving mechanical device, which caused even more spectacular and breathtaking skydiving routines.


The first woman to ever jump off from an airplane is Tiny Broadwick. She did this daring stunt back in 1913. Additionally, she is also the first woman to do a free fall jump from an airplane, which she did in 1914.


Skydiving: It’s Official!
One interesting fact about skydiving is that it wasn’t called skydiving before. The term skydiving was only coined in the mid-1950’s and used for Raymond Young. This was the first time when it was actually declared as skydiving. Before it was termed as such, "skydiving" was simply called as "parachuting" by many.


From Novelty To Sport
Before, skydiving was considered to be more of a novelty act than a sport. It was only during the period after World War II that this art became an actual sport that a lot of people could engage in, just like basketball. This transition was due to the fact that skydiving and parachuting was commonly done as a tactical move by many countries throughout the war.


In fact, pilots during World War I were even told to crash their planes into enemy territory rather than bailing out and were just given parachutes for survival. Ever since the 1st successful bailout in 1922 of an airplane, parachuting became a popular method of bailing out for pilots.

After the Second World War, it became a mainstream hobby for many. This is because the soldiers who came back enjoyed this activity and even have the courage to do a freefall. They held some competitions which then became a popular sport for civilians too. It was in 1957 that the first skydiving schools appeared and up until now, more people are having the courage to face this extreme sport.