Skydiving

The thought of jumping out of a plane is a little scary to most but for some its what they do.

Skidiving is both a competitive and recreational sport. The competitions began in 1951 when the International Aeronautics Federation sponsered the first World Championship skydiving tournament.

Skydiving involves three phases of activity: the free fall, the descent with open parachute, and the landing. For safety reasons skydivers are required to open there parachutes at about 2,200 ft.

There are two ways to jump there is the Tandem jump where the student skydiver is connected to the instructor via a harness. There is very little training required for this jump. The second type of jump is the AFF or the Accelerated Free Fall this is when you jump by yourself anyone can do it but in order to be able to you must have 6 hours of ground instruction and wind tunnel training. Your first jump alone you will have two professional instructors jump with you and help to make sure that you perform everything correctly before you may go off on your own.

There is one more type of skydiving that is considered the most dangerous and it is called Canopy Piloting. This consists of swooping down at very low altitudes and using smaller more agile parachutes to come just inches from the ground.

Fabioditorino "WAG 2009- Torino" __Yahoo! Inc__ 2011. 26 Jan. 2011 <[|www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com.]>. "Skydiving" __The Columbian Electronic Encyclopedia__ 2007. 26 Jan. 2011 <[|www.infoplease.com].>. Shults, Arvel "Video-Photographer" __Raeford Parachute Center__ 2011. 26 Jan. 2011 <[|www.jumpraeford.com.]>. "Tandem Skydiving" __Raeford Parchute Center__ 2011. 26 Jan. 2011 <[|www.jumpraeford.com.]>.