Skydiving
Photo: Tomás Del Coro from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Skydiving or Parachuting is a sport in which you exit a plane from altitude, freefall for a while and then deploy a parachute to fly safely to the ground. This page doesn't describe activities such as parascending down a mountainside or on tow behind a motorboat, where you have an open parachute right from the start; nor the hazardous sport of BASE jumping (e.g. from buildings and bridges).
Skydiving doesn't work as a spectator sport because the action is too far from the ground. Sometimes teams parachute into an event, but it's just a curtain raiser to a ball game or an interlude at the county fair between the pipe band and the police dog display. Many skydivers wear cameras and download their footage back on the ground, but there isn't yet the technology to transmit images in real time. And screen images hardly convey the blast of plunging out of an aircraft into a roaring slipstream. So if you want to experience it, you have to buckle on a kit and get in that plane.
UnderstandThere are three main ways to get started.
Gear upKit is expensive. For early jumps you hire the centre's kit, then seek advice from the instructors on what sort of kit you should look to buy, given your body size and how rapidly you're progressing.
JumpJump at an approved centre, affiliated to the relevant national governing body.
DestinationsYou can skydive in just about any country with well-developed civil aviation and a population base to sustain the sport.
Sources and licences
- Guide text adapted from the Wikivoyage article "Skydiving" by its contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikivoyage · Contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Photo: Tomás Del Coro from Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons