Jumping from an airplane and plummeting to the ground at 160 miles-per-hour with only a thin sheet standing between you and certain death sounds like a torture device used to make someone talk. Picture Phillip Seymour Hoffman dangling from the plane as Tom Cruise interrogates him in “Mission Impossible III.”
You even have to sign a release form that admits this activity in which you are about to engage can lead to serious injury or death. However, around the world there are hundreds of skydiving enthusiasts who have made hundreds of jumps and can’t seem to get enough. Something about it makes all the risks worth it, besides the bragging rights.
It’s called adrenaline. Active skydiving enthusiast and participant Sarah Mears attests to the intense nature of a freefall experience.
“Originally, I wanted to go skydiving because I’m addicted to adrenaline rushes,” Mears said.
If you want to learn to skydive, starting out will cost you a little extra—around $165. Then again, you are jumping out of a plane. You might want to shell out the extra cash for the promise of more safety. At Flying Tigers Sport Parachute Center in Seneca, they have a special class for skydiving virgins. The Static Line Class is a great foundation for skydiving fun. Plus, it’s required. In this class, they teach you all the safety basics of flying a parachute and proper body positioning.
Your first jump is extensively supervised and coordinated. The parachute automatically opens via a tether cord attached to the plane. You also have a ground-to-air radio to receive instruction from your instructor while in the air. While this may sound like a far cry from the freedom ride that you signed up for, remember that it’s not as easy as it may look.
“Skydiving is harder than people realize. There are a lot of different disciplines that you have to master like relative work and free flying,” Mears said.
While your first jump only provides two to three seconds of freefall time, you can gradually work your way up to the graduation jump at 9,000 feet, which provides you with 45 seconds of freefall time. Usually this progression from beginner to graduation jump requires 25 jumps.
If safety, or lack of it, is the only thing holding you back, remember this: each skydiver carries two parachutes — a main canopy and a backup. Each student is required to wear a helmet and have air-to-ground contact with an instructor. Also, each parachute is rigged with a device that will cause it to automatically deploy if it has not already done so by 1,000 feet. These precautions definitely do not ensure total safety, but they do make it harder for injury to occur if things go wrong. However, for those of you who need to hear that you cheat death by skydiving, then just ignore all of the above.
So if you can get over the fear of jumping out of a plane a few thousand feet in the air, then try it out. Mears offers some advice to any first-time skydiver: “Have a lot of fun. Listen to your instructor, and don’t do anything dumb under the canopy.”
Contact the Flying Tiger Sport Parachute Center at www.flyingtigerspc.com for more information. If you’re a college student, you can also look up the Dixie Skydivers (http://people.clemson.edu/~dixsky/). They are a student run organization that participates in skydiving and will help set you up with the right training courses. They meet every Wednesday on the Clemson University campus in Brackett Hall Room 220 at 7 p.m.
