The Different Types of Skydiving Jumps
If you’ve ever thought about skydiving, yet don’t know much about it, you might be interested to know that there is more to it than jumping out of a plane with a parachute. There are a few different kinds of skydiving jumps that you can do, and you need to know about each one if you want to narrow down the kind of skydiving experience you want.
Tandem Skydiving
Most first-time skydivers will opt for a tandem skydive to decide if they like the experience and to maximize their safety. At most skydiving facilities, a tandem jump is often required for first-time divers.
In a tandem skydive, the novice skydiver is tethered to the harness of a more experienced skydiver. The two make the jump together, and the experienced skydiver is the one responsible for deploying the parachute, while the novice skydiver can sit back and enjoy the experience.
Static Line Skydiving
Once skydivers have made a few tandem jumps and are more comfortable with the experience, they usually move on to static line skydiving. This is a jump made at 5,000 to 6,000 feet in which the skydiver is attached to the plane with a cord. As the skydiver is in freefall, the cord becomes tauter until it automatically deploys the parachute. This kind of jump allows the jumper to practice proper body shape and control without having to worry about when to deploy their parachute.
Accelerated Freefall Skydiving
This is what probably comes to mind when most people imagine skydiving. It’s a solo jump from 10,000 to 15,000 feet, although most freefall training will involve an instructor who holds onto the beginning jumper until they deploy their parachute. At that point, the instructor lets go to allow the student to safely drift to the ground. The training is a quick and exhilarating way for a beginning skydiver to experience longer jumps and really understand what skydiving entails.
These are the three types of skydiving jumps that beginning skydivers will experience. As you can probably guess, they range in difficulty from easy to the point of passivity to literally taking your life in your own hands. No matter how you wish to experience skydiving for the first time, there is no doubt that it one of the most exhilarating things that you can do and safer than one would imagine when it is done with the proper supervision.