There are lots of videos available on the internet but they all look like professional skydivers. I’m guessing that first timers don’t share the same experience. If you’ve tried it, what was it like? Would you do it again?
I did it a few decades ago, in Vegas. I’d never sky dived. It was fun, but it was challenging staying in the updraft, I tended to roll out of it easily and land on the cushions.
Also, the ‘flight suit’ was very baggy, to give it more surface area and enhance lift. Unfortunately those extra flaps on the suit tended to flap back and forth very fast in the breeze, and a strategically located flap in the pants portion kept contusing the 'nads most painfully for a time.
Once was enough for me, and not just due to the suit flap issue. It was enjoyable, and I’d not mind taking it to the next level and actually doing real sky diving, but I’ve no desire to do the wind tunnel thing again.
I did it a few months ago for my birthday.
There were two “sessions”, each lasting about 90 seconds and both with a hands-on instructor controlling you and giving you tips (in hand signals, since the airflow is really loud). The sessions are so short you barely get the chance to get the hang of what you’re doing before they’re over. For the second session, the instructor takes you up to the top of the chamber, then back down several times.
Was it fun? Yes.
Would I do it again? Probably not. It’s just too expensive for the limited amount of fun.
I read that as confusing the nads.
:smack:
I did it ten years or so ago. Enjoyed it thoroughly, and would do it again, except I messed up my shoulder a few years ago, which is something they don’t want in their customers.
(No, I didn’t mess it up skydiving; I did a header off my bicycle.)
Here’s a thread from about a month ago when davidm asked the same question. Several people (including me) describe their experiences.
That happened to me as well and I’m an experienced skydiver. The newer ones don’t have a column of air in the center, surrounded by cushions. The entire circular chamber is in the column of moving air; no “dead air” around the column or cushions to fall on.
They have one of these near me here in Northern Virginia out in Loudoun County. It is called ifly and it costs essentially 80 bucks for about 2-3 min of flight. I am not sure how many repeat customers there are but how much more would jumping out of a real plane be?
A static line jump appears to cost around $175. This doesn’t really involve any freefall, though; a cord connecting you to the aircraft deploys your parachute after you have fallen maybe 15-20 feet. I did this ~20 years ago, and it included maybe 6-8 hours of instruction on how to deal with a wide variety of contingencies: twisted risers, tangled main chute, water landing, and so on. I did indoor skydiving ~7 years ago, and it included less than an hour of instruction.
A tandem jump is more like $250-$300, and typically includes ~30 seconds of freefall before your handler deploys the parachute.
If floating on air is what you’re after, then indoor skydiving seems to offer the best bang for your buck, in terms of dollars per minute. If you want to drift on a canopy for ten minutes and take in a spherical panorama, then a static line jump out in the real world is probably the better choice.
I’ll just note that the dropzone in your first link, Skydive Ohio (aka Skydive Greene County) requires a tandem jump before you can make your first static line jump. From their home page:
Many, if not most, dropzones have that policy these days. They say it’s an educational thing so you can familiarize yourself with the experience but it’s really just a money-maker. There are dropzones without that requirement but you might have to shop around a bit to find one. I made a couple of jumps there in Xenia about 20 years ago and they are a well-established business with a good reputation for safety, but they are a business and of course they need to make a profit.
Also, if you want video of your tandem jump (no video is available for static line jumps) it will probably cost another $75-$100.
One last thing- there’s no comparison between being 2 miles above the ground in freefall and being inside a vertical wind tunnel. They are a lot of fun but there’s nothing like freefall.
Agreed. The place where I did my static-line jump (somewhere in Wisconsin) didn’t have a policy like that; the “familiarize yourself with the experience” aspect was the hours and hours of classroom instruction before my jump.
We discussed this about 6 weeks ago in a very similar thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=793315&highlight=skydiving
I did it with my two daughters at iFly in Dallas last year. It was very fun but fairly short and expensive. I wasn’t the one paying for it or I probably would not have done it (my mother gave it to us as part of our birthday presents). We all did fine but it is a little harder than you might guess to stay balanced in the airstream. Some of the people that went before us had trouble staying airborne at all. I got the extra time for the instructor to take me way up in the chamber and do spins and I thought that was worth it.
In short, I thought it was well worth it as long as you have the free cash floating around but it isn’t something that most people will want to pay for more than once.
My first jump was a static-line (Wisconsin also, SkyKnights in East Troy) but that was back in the early 90s.