Freefall Frenzy

I did a ton of jumps this weekend, which was a lot of fun. Skydiving is pure fun. It is very scary, but man is it incredible. I have been doing a lot of tracking dives to prepare myself for wingsuiting in the hopefully near future, and this weekend was full of some pretty amazing jumps.

For a couple of them, Simon wore a GPS unit on his hand in order to map out our trajectory across the sky. In tracking dives, the objective is to obtain as much horizontal distance as possible, mainly by flattening the body and creating a pseudo-airfoil with your shoulders, arms and legs. Looking at the map of the trajectories, we covered some serious ground! Approximately 1 to 1.5 miles was the distance traveled during our tracks, which is the equivalent of 60-90 miles per hour forward movement (as well as 110 mph downward).

Click Here to see the flight path. The straight line pointing southwest was our tracking vector, which we covered in a mere 58 seconds.

I had a great weekend, did some great jumps (including the sunset load highpull where we deployed our parachutes at 13,000 feet above the ground (18,000 above sea level) and flew all the way down, enjoying the setting sun. Also, my pack-jobs are becoming more consistent, and faster, which is definitely a positive thing. Its always nice jumping out of a plane knowing that your parachute will probably open correctly...