Parachuting

Parachuting, or skydiving, is a recreational activity, competitive sport and method of deployment of military personnel (and occasionally, firefighters). It involves the breaking of a free fall from a height through the use of a parachute.

Skills

Parachuting has complex skills that can take thousands of jumps to master but the basics are often fully understood and useful during the first few jumps. There are four basic areas of skill: basic safety, free fall maneuvers, parachute operation, and landing.

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Basic safety includes knowing how and when to: do a gear check, exit normally, react in an emergency, deploy a parachute, handle common malfunctions, pick a landing area, and set up and execute a landing. Most national sport organizations certify instructors, most operators who fly skydivers retain an instructor, and all certified instructors can teach the basics well enough for a student to be licensed by the national sport organization.

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In freefall most skydivers start by learning to maintain a stable belly to earth "box" position. In this position the average fallrate is around 125 mph. Learning a stable box position is a basic skill essential for a reliable parachute deployment. Next, jumpers learn to move or turn in any direction while remaining belly to earth. Using these skills a group of jumpers can create sequences of formations on a single jump, a discipline known as relative work (RW). In the late 1980s more experienced jumpers started experimenting with freeflying, falling in any orientation other than belly to earth. Today many jumpers start freeflying soon after they earn their license, bypassing the RW stepping stone.

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Choosing when to deploy the parachute is a matter of safety. A parachute should be deployed high enough to give the parachutist time to handle a malfunction should one occur. Two thousand feet is the practical minimum for advanced skydivers. In freefall, skydivers monitor their altitude meters to decide when to break off from the formation (if applicable) and when to open their parachutes. Many skydivers open higher to practice flying their parachute. On a "hop-and-pop," a jump in which the parachute is immediately deployed upon exiting the aircraft, it is not uncommon for a skydiver to be under canopy as high as 4000 or 5000 feet.

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Flying the parachute has two basic challenges: to land where planned, often on a target; and to avoid injury. On a more advanced note, some skydivers enjoy performing aerobatic maneuvers with parachutes.

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A modern parachute or canopy "wing" can glide substantial distances. Elliptical canopies go faster and farther, and some small, highly loaded canopies glide faster than a man can run, which can make them very challenging to land. A highly experienced skydiver using a very small canopy can achieve over 60 mph horizontal speeds in landing.

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A good landing will not have any discomfort at all, and will land the skydiver within a few feet of his intended location. Champion accuracy skydivers routinely land less than two inches from the center of a target even in competitions.

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Nowadays, most of the skydiving related injuries happen under a fully opened and functioning parachute, the most common reasons for these injuries are badly-executed, radical maneuvers near to the ground, like quick turns, or too-low or too-high landing flares.

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