Learning Through Tandem Skydiving
Tandem Skydiving is a safe and easy way to experience one of the most thrilling sports imaginable. There’s a certain rush with free-falling through the air. And then to float softly down to the earth under a parachute to complete the dive? It’s all an amazing experience. But skydiving, for all its thrills, can be an extremely dangerous sport, too, for those who don’t follow certain safety rules.
The best way to learn to be a safe skydiver, is by going on one or more tandem jumps. These jumps are recommended before enthusiasts take their first solo skydiving jumps. Tandem skydiving is a great way for inexperienced divers to get the feel of what jumping out of an airplane feels like. For novice jumpers, the fear of that feeling can be a big hurdle. With tandem skydiving, though, it’s a hurdle that’s easy to overcome. In tandem skydiving, new divers jump out of a plane without just a parachute.
With this kind of skydiving, they’re jumping with an entire instructor strapped to their backs. It’s a method of skydiving that is highly recommended for new divers by drop zones. The key here is that it’s the instructor who does all the work in a tandem skydive. The student, usually a novice diver, simply falls. That’s not too hard to do, right?
Because tandem skydiving is so safe, the training for it usually lasts only about an hour. Then it’s time to leap out of that airplane. It is the best and safest option for divers taking their first few jumps. It’s also a good choice for divers who plan to do just one jump and then leave the sport. This is more common than you might think. Many people are interested in feeling the rush of a dive once, but have no desire to make the sport, which can be a pricey one, part of their normal lives.
Another good training jump is the static line jump. Under this jump, divers experience what it’s like to jump with their own parachute. But they don’t have to worry about deploying it at the right time. A static line jump starts from a lower altitude, usually around 3,000 to 5,000 feet. For tandem skydiving, divers jump from an altitude of 12,000 to 14,000 feet. When the diver jumps, a safety line attached to their parachute deploys it as the diver leaps from the moving plane and falls toward the earth. There is very limited free-fall in this kind of jump- many say that tandem skydiving provides more of a rush.
