Kevin McLauchlan makes me laugh. He posts frequently to Techwr-L and I take guilty pleasure reading his posts. Today, at the end of one of his posts, he mentioned sky diving.
I wrote back to him:
Does it hurt your knees when you land? I had a torn meniscus repaired in my left knee. I turn 40 on 12/4 and I've been saying for a couple of years that I wanted to try skydiving. That was before my knee surgery. I'm petrified of landing and reinjuring my knee.
Kevin McLauchlan wrote back the following essay. Visit his cool website: http://www.mens-health-tips.com/
So, the essay begins now:
This is a “LONG one here. Get a coffee and have a pee-break before you start reading.
The short answer is "only if you do something stupid".
The [much] longer answer is:
The first few jumps would be tandem - you attached to the instructor who in turn is attached to the giant (built-for-two) parachute. So, the instructor controls everything in freefall and under the open parachute. You start out at 10,000 to 13,000 feet AGL (depending on the drop zone, the planes they have available, the current weather, etc.) and enjoy a segment of freefall up to 45 seconds, after which the instructor deploys high (maybe 4500 to 5000 feet AGL) and you enjoy an extended canopy ride (maybe 4 minutes). The instructor then lines you up (still together, obviously) for a nice landing.
If you are heavy-ish - and even if you are not - there's a second set of handles on the steering lines, and the instructor will probably have had you participating in turns on the way down, and in braking during the final flare and landing.
Your landings under the tandem chutes depend on the skills of your instructor and on how much help you are. :-)
It takes a strong arm to crank out a tight turn, or to pull off a good swoop and soft flare with the weight of two bodies on the rig. If you've already done several today, as instructor, you appreciate every ounce that the student/passenger helps.
ON THE OTHER HAND, some nervous-Nelly students/passengers get a grip on the auxiliary handles and won't let go. This slows the forward speed of the parachute, but also robs it of performance, especially when it's most needed.
Performance can be "most needed" in two situations (at least)
- when you are away from the drop-zone and need optimum glide and speed to get back
- when you land - the best flare, for the softest landing, is preceded by the maximum of speed on approach.
A too-early pull on the breaks can result in a mushy, wobbly, off-heading, or fast-sinking arrival, which is how ankles and knees and other bits get hurt.
If you got past the first two or three jumps (wanting more, I mean... I wasn't talking about survival, which is a given), you switch to jumping wearing your own (school-supplied) rig with a large, forgiving parachute. That can limit the conditions (winds) in which you can jump, but is very soft on landing, through a wide range of control inputs/mis-inputs.
Basically, to do it right, you do what you would do in an unpowered aircraft (which is what you are under a gliding parachute). You line up your final approach toward a clear spot on the ground - no obstacles like buildings, trees, power-lines, crowds of squishy litigious by-standers - face into the wind, open up to maximum speed, come straight in.... and "flare when you get scared". Flaring - putting on the brakes - is the same as lowering the flaps on a winged plane or tipping the nose up into a gentle stall at just the right moment. Done right, it converts all your remaining forward speed into lift, and you come to a stop inches above the ground, landing gracefully and with ever-so-much cool, on your tippy-toes. For the first few "solo" landings, the instructor talks you in via a radio in your helmet. Tells you when to turn, and when to flare for a good landing. As I mentioned, the docile chute you'll have ensures that even a "bad" landing is probably damaging only to your ego... having grass-stains on your butt will do that.
Continuing instruction (for about 20 jumps) gets you to the point of self-supervision, with basic skills at:
- dressing yourself (proper clothing and equipment)
- gear self-check and buddy check
- handling yourself in the plane - awareness, proper procedure to keep you and everybody else safe
- exiting the plane (controlled exit)
- basic freefall skills (includes being in control upon exiting the plane, but also includes... ) regaining stability if your exit (or later activity) is less than graceful, awareness and body maneuvers in freefall,
- altitude awareness and proper procedure at deployment altitude (you don't just dump a parachute without looking for other people above you)
- handling the parachute after you deploy it, to get yourself home while having fun and
- proper approach and landing, both for benefit of your own landing and for doing so in a possibly crowded environment
- and... in case something goes wrong, how to recognize that something is wrong and the appropriate action to take to correct it.
From there, your progress depends on you, your bank account, and the drop zone or club where you spend your skydiving time.
For-profit drop zones are in business. They'll be business-like about whatever progression you want to undertake. You can jump by yourself forever if you really want to. Most people want to pick up skills that will let them jump with others. It's lots more fun.
Most larger drop zones will have a bunch of experienced people who are into various disciplines of the sport, though a given drop zone tends to attract specialists in just a few, and not the entire gamut. SOME of them will be there for just themselves and their friends. They'll be happy to include you when you've got sufficient skills. SOME of them will be staff or the equivalent of "consultants" either of which will provide your further training in this-or-that skill for a price. The price involves
- the cost of their jump, for each training/coaching jump they take with you
- the cost of the video guy - if the coach is not doing the video while participating with you
- salary or cost-plus equivalent if the person is doing this as their employment
- profit for the drop zone.
The profit for the drop zone might be extra, or it might be included in the other stuff. For example, everybody's jump includes the operating costs (plane, av-gas/jet-fuel, pilot, etc.) plus a little for the drop zone operator. They have to price everything to cover their costs, but not to be exorbitant or non-competitive and discourage customers.
SOME of the skilled people at the drop zone might be just friendly sorts who like to coach and will do it for free, or for the occasional beer, or the cost of their jumps on which they coach you. They might be very skilled, or they might be just far enough ahead of you to be useful, and be in the process of qualifying for this or that instructor or coach rating. Or they might just like you. :-)
Not-for-profit drop zones are usually run by clubs. The club might even use the facilities of a for-profit drop zone. OR, they might run a beat-up old plane or two out of a beat-up old airstrip that they own/lease themselves and that they might or might not share with a gliding or flying club (or even RC-model fliers)... I've seen all sorts of combos. They are interested in keeping up membership, providing fun-and-useful services for their membership, covering costs, having enough stray money left over for the occasional new equipment and a few parties per year. Usually clubs are run on volunteer labor.
If the club is active and well-run, it can be a great choice. But you kinda hafta be the type who is willing (even eager) to "give back" with your own labor and skills. Clubs - whether with their own facilities or using a commercial drop zone as their base - often have a convivial atmosphere that continues after the jump day is over, with camping, partying/socializing, off-season activities and trips, etc.
A club that's not extremely well-funded will often represent a slower way to progress as a jumper, though possibly far less costly than paying for every increment of skill at a commercial place.
As one example, (unless it's changed in the past few years) commercial drop zones tend to fly larger planes, which means that larger groups of people go up each time. Which means that organizing is required. Which means that ONE person is in charge of "spotting" determining that the aircraft is above the desired exit point and people should start getting out in their various clumps and bunches. The advantage is that such people are chosen for their experience, so you rarely get stuck landing way off the drop zone, with a long walk back, or calling for a taxi or sheepishly "volunteering" to pay the farmer for the corn plants that you squashed when you landed in his field. Ahem....
BUT, that means the average participant on all those commercial jump loads gets little or no opportunity to learn and practice their own spotting skills. Looking out the open door of a plane that's climbing through 13,500 feet at 200mph on a hazy day, and guiding the pilot (via hand signals or a makeshift indicator light "left... left more... left.... steady... CUT!" is an acquired skill that is nowhere near as easy as you might imagine (even if you imagine it to be rather difficult).
Clubs tend to have smaller operations and smaller aircraft, and they encourage everybody to have frequent turns at spotting, so you tend to pick up the skills. As well, it's common to have everybody (or most members) go through some kind of instructor or coaching phase as part of "growing up" in the club. It encourages people to branch out and learn skills and get certifications/ratings that they might otherwise not have got. It's very common for a northern club (northern US or any part of Canada) to have very little jumping during winter, but to organize "keeping a hand in" activities like a rigger course. That'd be where jumpers learn to repair and maintain parachute equipment (and get tested and certified to do so) and - at higher levels of achievement - to make and modify equipment - as well as to pack reserve (emergency) parachutes.
In fact, some commercial places let people get hundreds of jumps without ever learning to pack their own main (not reserve) parachutes, or without doing it enough to be really proficient. Instead, they provide paid packers who do thousands of pack-jobs per year, like little robots, so that the jumpers don't need to slow down their jumping activity. You can be planning and "dirt-diving" (practicing your moves) the next jump instead of taking the time (and tiring yourself) to pack your rig.
A club would have members packing for students and people who hadn't yet gotten signed-off for the skill, but otherwise, everybody does their own, and therefore has plenty of practice. That constant practice also gives you a better eye for things that might not be broken, but are getting to the point of needing attention on your rig.
Probably the best all-round skydivers have sampled both worlds. They've got hotshot in-the-air skills, and they are well-rounded and competent when it comes to taking care of gear and of just running a drop zone.
Either way, it takes money.
A lot of younger folk pay for their first years of skydiving by being drop zone gofers (not to be confused with gophers), packers, manifest dragons (the annoying person who keeps prodding and yelling to "get this load in the air!") and handles the scheduling and payment-taking, etc. They work as instructors, freefall camera persons, etc. At smaller centers, a lot of young pilots fly jumpers for free, in exchange for the opportunity to log hundreds of flying hours toward commercial and other tickets. People rotate through whatever jobs they [can/want-to] handle, in exchange for "free" or reduced jump costs.
Big commercial centers, mostly in the southern and western US states tend to have full-time employees for most positions.
Jumpers with money don't have to do all that. They can just buy their way to the skills, paying full shot for all their jumps, and paying full shot for the jumps and tutoring of instructors and coaches.
It costs hundreds of dollars for the first jumps, and then drops to thirty or forty per jump once you are self-supervising.
It's also cheaper (and better) per jump to have your own equipment. Rental takes a chunk, and you get equipment that's designed to be safely docile. Nothing wrong with that, until you get confident and want to start jumping something sporty.
Except for the very-well-heeled, a common approach is to jump club/school equipment for your first twenty-or-so jumps, then to purchase second-hand middle-of-the-road gear. That means, it's sportier than what you learned on, but was flown by a conservative or duffer jumper, so you don't have to concentrate so hard that your eyeballs bleed, just to not kill yourself while flying it.
You get accustomed to that and stretch your skills for a few hundred jumps, then sell that (modern equipment, well-maintained, is good for thousands of jumps) and get something sportier/scarier.
Sporty almost always means smaller, and more radical in design, which translates to "touchy" and requires the pilot to be very, good and VERY damned attentive to what they're doing, especially anywhere near the ground, Consider that under a very small parachute - which means a very high wing loading - you are coming down quite fast, and moving forward quite fast. You'd get hurt (or worse) if you just let the thing fly itself (and you) into the ground (unlike the bigger, comfier chutes that might bump you over the ground in ungainly fashion, but would likely land you unhurt). Anyway, the only way to land a tiny, hot canopy and keep yourself intact is to fly it _very_ fast at the ground - experienced fliers often pull radical turns at just a couple of hundred feet, causing them to drop out of the sky, but also to be moving forward at plus-sixty-miles-per hour as they near the grass. They then flare and cruise along clipping the weeds, sometimes hundreds of feet, before running off whatever forward velocity is left after the lo-o-o-o-ong swooping flare.
Anyway, I tended to be a relatively conservative flier and had a parachute that was in the 1:1 (pound of suspended weight per square foot of canopy) wing-loading range. I could pick up a good turn of speed by hauling down my front risers to dive straight ahead, rather than pulling a hook-turn (180-degree swooping turn that's been the death of many), so I could be relaxed about my wing control and not worry that it would kill me if I blinked or farted at the wrong time. :-)
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