Myth’s About Skydiving
There are a lot of myths concerned with skydiving, why don’t we take a look at a few of these myths and see if we can discover whether they are true or false?
1. When you are skydiving you cannot breathe.
This is a total nonsense, if people could not breathe when they were skydiving how on Earth would they be able to open their parachutes and how would they be able to execute their safe landings, nobody would willingly jump out of an airplane if they knew that they would not be able to keep conscious throughout the experience.
2. You are able to hold a conversation whilst skydiving.
This may be true in all the films of skydiving that you watch, but unfortunately due to the onrushing wind on your descent you are unable to hear anything, this is why sky divers do all their hand signals.
3. If you fall without a parachute, grabbing hold of somebody that has a parachute will help you.
This is not entirely true, it is virtually impossible to say that this will help you, it may have occurred a few times, but it is very unlikely that this is going to save you.
4. You can free fall for at least five minutes.
This would be true if you were skydiving from over 60,000 feet, unfortunately this is not the case, and the average free fall before a parachute is opened is probably more like 40 seconds.
5. The parachute will not open when I jump.
You are not alone in assuming this, many people today have the same fear, but today’s parachutes are almost failsafe, most of the accidents associated with skydiving nowadays are due to people being ill prepared for the jump or even miscalculations whilst jumping.