Plan B Forum

A Video From http://infinitylist.com/

Seems to me they do not fly so much as plummet....

If I live to be 120, I will never understand the appeal of jumping out of planes for fun....

Now on the other hand, if the plane is going down and I have a parachute, not a problem....

I assure you, I'll be the first one out the door....

But the choice between staying in a nice warm plane that I know is going to land safely, and risking a horrible death by diving out into a free fall thousands of feet above the ground with a parachute packed by the lowest bidder strapped to my back is pretty much a no brainer for me....

Lord Jim wrote: Seems to me they do not fly so much as plummet....

That's the trouble with most skydiving video, and this one particularly, you do not get the full sense of falling.

Believe me, and I'm sure anyone else here who has done a few drops will confirm, the overwhelming feeling of sky diving is falling at 120 mph.

Lord Jim wrote:If I live to be 120, I will never understand the appeal of jumping out of planes for fun....

You should try a tandem drop sometime Jim, it really is a fantastic experience.



Then go paragliding....

Why would someone jump out of perfectly good airpalne?

What? No one doing it with a helmetless baby strapped to their back?

How about some helmetless tandem making babies?

I have to post this clip from Youtube. This is my auntie Clare diving tandem and her family on the ground. She is fearless, even with a sprained wrist and severely bruised rib on landing. An incredible woman with an crazy sense of humour.

Great-grandmother skydives on 80th birthday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYCgIi9IKTY

Made a right mess of her hair!!

Damn. I can't play it, and I am far too lazy to get up and move to a system where I could.

I'll check back when I have more energy than a slug.

Good for your aunt, PMSP!

And she did it with a (relative) baby on her back! Nice!

If I live to be 120, I will never understand the appeal of jumping out of planes for fun....

As Gob said:

Believe me, and I'm sure anyone else here who has done a few drops will confirm, the overwhelming feeling of sky diving is falling at 120 mph.

I didn't want the guy to pull the chute. He's tapping me on the head indicationg it's time to pull the chute and I'm still making us spin and tumble and shaking my head "no".
unlike the movies, you can't hear the guy talking while falling

There's a young'un girl in my AA group who received a tandem jump gift certificate for Christmas. I told her when she wants to jump I'll go jump with her. We're trying to get some more ex-drunks to go also.

I do have the video of my jump and some pictures. Some I even scanned into the computer. Now if I can only find them and set them up one of those picture hosting sites.

Oh, I jumped a long time ago, but with a static line...

the tandem jumps are much more fun; as I recalled, when I first did a static line jump, it would take at least 10 jumps (5-7 with a static line (a couple with pulling a dummy rip cord, and then several short duration (less than 30 seconds) free fall, before longer jumps could be attempted (I never completed the course). Tandem jumping allows these free falls on the first jump.

The only way I would ever jump out of an airplane - and I have done this before - is to wait until after it lands.

a sprained wrist and severely bruised rib

See, that's another problem I have with this...

In this "sport" walking away with a "sprained wrist and severely bruised rib" is considered a "good" outcome.....

A "bad outcome" would be...

Well, you know....

When I was in college for a time I dated a girl who got into sky diving....

She would come back from a jump and I would ask her how it went and she would say things like, "Great! I only got a twisted ankle. You should try it."

I'm sorry but where I come from, "only" winding up with a twisted ankle ain't a great advertisement....

Sprained wrists, severely bruised ribs, and twisted ankles are the sorts of things that I expect to have happen in a sport I participate in when things go wrong....

Not when they go right....

When I jumped there were at least 10 of us in the plane doing tandem jumps and 4 others doing solo jumps. We all landed within 10 minutes of each other and no one had so much as a scratch. On my landing we came in moving parallel to the ground about 3 feet up and the instructor put the parachute into a stall, we lifted up a bit and then gently went straight down. My knees barely bent when we touched down. At the time I was about 205 lbs and the instructor was about 200lbs also. Over 400 lbs coming back to earth like a feather.

We were one of the first to land and all the landings I watched went pretty much the same.

Jim, the buzz you get when you land is like a line of finest Colombian, trust me on this.

PMS Princess wrote:I have to post this clip from Youtube. This is my auntie Clare diving tandem and her family on the ground. She is fearless, even with a sprained wrist and severely bruised rib on landing. An incredible woman with an crazy sense of humour.

Great-grandmother skydives on 80th birthday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYCgIi9IKTY

I just found out that my Auntie recently jumped again!! A few more of the Cooma Clan included and they had it taped! I have received a few comments and no images as of yet...

Gob, since you not only live on the same side of the planet, and love to fly, jump, cycle, etc. AND you're a photographer. Any chance of inquiring on your networks in those areas to see if anyone shot her tandem jump? If anyone else runs across anything, please post.

Thanks Much!
PMSP

Should I have posted in a new thread?