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Adventure Skydiving – an Introduction
Adventure Skydiving, also known as Parachuting, is one of the popular adventure sports that requires high level of physical energy, skills and courage. In adventure skydiving, one jumps from the high altitude to deploy a fabric parachute and land safely. In adventure skydiving, one jumps off the aircraft for a free-fall for some time and then to float on the air and finally landing on the ground with the help of a parachute. This adventure sport is performed as a recreational activity. It is also organized as competitive sport.
The Jump
A typical skydive involves a jump from the aircraft. It can either be an airplane or a helicopter. You can even see the gondola of a balloon is in use for skydiving. You jump from about 4,000 meters high, free-fall for some period of time and finally activate your parachute to slow down the pace of your landing. Once the parachute gets opened, you can control your direction and speed of your landing, including generating turns, forward and backward motion and even lift. As you can control the parachute, you can choose your landing place in the surrounding are.
Immediately after jumping from the aircraft, due to the momentum created by the speed of the aircraft, a skydiver gets a horizontal as well as vertical movement at the same time as he starts moving forward as well as downward concurrently. After a few while, the horizontal movement changes into completely vertical. This perception of change in movement is known as the “relative wind” or “being on the hill”.
The free-falling experience in adventure skydiving is a bit different from other falling experiences. As the skydiver falls from a great height, the falling sensation disappears here due to the air resistance of air to their body.
However, one thing must be kept in mind while going for skydiving, weather plays a major role in skydiving. Parachuting in the poor weather condition could be a fatal one, especially when there are high winds, thunderstorms and dust devils etc.
Training
Training is very important in adventure skydiving. There are quite a few ways to practice different aspects of skydiving without jumping. Vertical wind tunnel is the place where you can practice skills for free fall. To learn parachute control, you can use Virtual Reality Parachute Simulators.
As you start learning skydiving, you have a number of options to choose from. You can learn anyone of Tandem Skydiving, Static Line, Instructor Assisted Deployment, and Accelerated Freefall.
United States Air Force Academy offers the unique program AM490 where the students of skydiving can accomplish their very first jump as a solo freefall.
Types of Skydiving
There can be several types of skydiving. One can find parachuting variations like Accuracy Landing, BASE Jumping, Blade Running, Big-ways, Canopy Formation, Formation Skydiving, Freefall Style, Freeflying, Freestyle Skydiving, Military Parachuting, Para-ski, Speed Skydiving, Skysurfing, Vertical Formation Skydiving, and Wingsuit Flying.
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