Anyone here know about skydiving?

[rockhound]

If at first you don't succeed, it isn't for you.

now that is funny right there, i don't care who you are

[Hoser]

Blue sky black death.

[TennVol]

My son went down to Canon City on his 18th birthday for a tandem jump. He loved it and it appeared to be safe - at least as far as jumping out of an airplane can be called safe. Most of the guys I work with have hundreds of jumps made when they were on active duty. Almost all of them have been injured at one time or another. Everything from broken backs/legs/feet/ankles/arms to compressed spinal fractures. Sounds like a blast to me!

[Spdu4ia]

I've got over 400 jumps but I jumped down south. I hear there is a nice drop zone in canyon city. I'm not sure about up in denver. If you wanted to for fun there is sky venture in denver you can do the wind tunnel too. No replacement for skydiving but it is fun. For his first jump I would do the tandem jump unless you want to get into it and do the full classes to get licensed.

Just to clarrify I would never do a static line jump and if I'm not mistaken I don't even think they do them at all out of the military. With a static line there is no free fall and the percentage of injury and malfunctions is very high.


A tandem jump will have 60sec of free fall with about 10min of parachute time with an instructor. Highly recommend this one for the first time (gotta do this once in life) person.


If he wants to get into it it is a great sport but be warned it is the only hobby I have more expensive than guns...

here is the official website of the us parachute association and you can use their drop zone locator to find a good/safe place to go as well as information.. http://www.uspa.org/FindaDZ.aspx

[Great-Kazoo]

the wife jumped a few times says on of the most adrenaline pushing hobby's you can have.
Myself all i know is this. It's a Big Planet and Never Misses.

[Monky]

Didn't someone post some pics from a Hawaii trip? Jake?

[DSB OUTDOORS]

^^^ Yup, TriggerHappy aka Jake did the jump. Had some cool pics too.

[Robb]

Thanks for all the responses, I could have done without hearing about all the injuries though.
Anyway, if anyone still can recommend other companies to do business with or companies to avoid, let me know.

[HoneyBadger]

A tandem jump will have 60sec of free fall with about 10min of parachute time with an instructor.

Good luck getting 60 seconds of free fall here unless you have oxygen and lots of experience. I've got 5 solo jumps. If you jump from 12,000ft MSL, in most of Colorado you can assume this is about 7000ft AGL. If you open at 2000ft AGL (which is a safe and fun amount of time under canopy), that will give you 31 seconds of free fall, max. In my experience, the time under canopy is way more fun than the time spent in free fall. 20 seconds of free fall didn't ever feel more exciting than 5 seconds of free fall, but having several minutes under canopy to fly yourself around was a lot of fun. This is just my limited experience, so YMMV.

Also, I've spent about 2 hours in the tunnel at SkyVenture in Denver and this is a lot of fun. You can learn to stabilize and maneuver yourself around in a safe environment. Keep in mind though, that this skips out on the best part of skydiving: jumping out of the plane.

[Spdu4ia]

I'm used to jumping at sea level , I never really thought about that since I haven't jumped here in altitude. Hhmmmmm. We used to jump at 14000 and do a 16000 sunset jump.