Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ok so...flying...or gliding seems to lure me as any human I suppose, everyone dreams of flying? Well has anyone tried this sort of thing (picture), gliding, or skydiving? Is it reall worth the risk? Tell me... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! or is anyone else wishing to do something like this? Another thing...if I fly to close to the sun...will I burn my wings?
If you need the thrill, I guess there'll be no stopping you. Too dangerous for my tastes. I get all the sense of flying I need and in the safest and cheapest way: X-Plane .
I have always wanted to do some sky diving. I think a tandom jump costs $120 or so.. depending on where you go. Perhaps as my second jump would be solo. Go for it dude! Odds of you dying are slim Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Perhaps we could start the SF Jumping Club? First meeting is next tuesday at my house... or any burger joint Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I did a parachute jump (solo) with an old army style chute (none of this pansy stuff with brakes Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ) when I was 19. It was an amazing experience but it did not quite go to plan and for that reason I don't reccomend it, it has to be a personal decision. I had a days training before the actual jump, and part of that involved being told about the accidents that can occur etc, and there were people at the airbase on crutches. This is what happened to me: I was sitting on the edge of the plane, half in half out waiting for them to tell me when to jump. They do push you out by the way! Anyway they pushed me out, but I wasn't sitting right so when I exited my pack got stuck a bit in the door way and and it twisted my exit so I bumped into the side of the plane when I went out. Thus my lovely position I'd be trained to adopt kind of was non exisitant and I just went hurling downwards in a ball (felt like being trapped inside ball of wind) . I still counted though. After counting we were told if parachute not open, we must immediately pull reserve. My cool head that day saved my life. My chute did not open after counting. However, I had been dropped over trees and whereas you can steer the main chute, you can't steer the reserve, so I did not want to land in a tree and brake a few bones, so I figured I'd just wait a bit longer and see if it did open. So I waited, and I waited, then It DID open. The reason this delay saved my life is that had I done as trained and opened that reserve, my main when it also opened would have become tangled with the reserve and I'd have dropped like a stone. After my chute opened, I had tangles (this is normal) so I had to pull the ropes apart and did a nice little spin as I untangled! Then it was a case of steering to my destination and making sure I didn't hit ground at 70miles an hour. My landing, I thought was ok, but I got marked down for it as I wasn't quite on the landing dot and position not that great (allegedly! ). It was great, but three days later I kind of experienced delayed shock. So Dragon, you want to try it, your choice. For me, great experience, totally enjoyed being at one with the world. Also when chute opens, you feel like you are flying back upwards at top speed, but of course its just case of falling at something like 100miles and hour to stop (ish). When it is open, you don't feel like you are moving but that the earth is moving up towards you. The whole thing only lasts about 3mins! Seems longer though.
There are 35 skydiving deaths a year, in two million jumps. The odds of dying in a jump are one in 200,000. Compare that to the odds of dying in an automobile drive. I can't find the stats broken down that way but it's roughly one in five million. So skydiving is about one and a half orders of magnitude more dangerous than driving--if you analyze it as a sport and measure it on an event basis, which is the right way to analyze it, rather than analyzing it as a lifestyle component and measuring it on the basis of hours spent precisely in the action. Skydiving is a recreational activity that provides value during the hours of planning, anticipation, preparation, transportation, and conversation. Driving only provides value when you're between point A and point B, which is why the statistics are compiled strictly per passenger-mile. That isn't much of a difference in risk in the psychological decision making process. Skydiving is safer than whitewater kayaking (one death per 30,000 trips) and comparable to motorcycling (one in 150,000). The most dangerous thing you can do in America is to become President. Your chances of being assassinated are just about one in ten (four out of 43).
Skydiving is a blast. There is no rush that equals it. My first pilot lesson the instructor asked what I wanted to do most. I told him take the plane off by myself. He instructed me on what to do (it's quite simple really) and that rush was awesome too.
Yea I got to fly a small plane once. The pilot let me fly it for a few miles. Man it was cool. Too bad he wouldn't let me land it Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
How difficult is it to land the Space Shuttle? I was told it's like trying to land a gliding brick... you have one try and if you mess up, there's no trying again. I ask because I used to play a Space Shuttle Landing Sim on my old 486 computer with a joystick. After a few weeks I got good at it. Then I went to the Huntsville Space Center and tried a more realistic landing simulator for the shuttle and did not find it too hard... Strangers watched me from behind and said I did an amazing job as non of them could do it. Was I just fooling myself? lol.
Does the plane have to travel at a particular speed to do a jump? What is the unlucky chance to hit the plane while jumping out of it and is there a special technique to do the initial jump out of the plane? thanks
From what I understand, when someone jumps they usually get their feet out onto the support beams for the wheels. I seen a video of a guy get his leg caught in them, though.. they actually had to land the plane with him dangling at about 40 knots or so.. basically the slowest the plane could go without stalling.
A few years ago one skydiver from our military (I didn't know our dirtcheap military has any airplanes) got his hand in the propeller engine of the craft. Landed with one limb less.
