Top 10 interesting facts about Skydiving

Posted on 03. Dec, 2011 by Thrillchimp in Activities, Adventure, Best Reads, Others, Top 10

Top 10 interesting facts about SkyDiving

If flying high has been your life long wish and adventure sports, your passion then sky diving is meant just for you! A thrilling sport activity guaranteed to get your adrenaline pumping rapidly, skydiving involves jumping off an aircraft, a breathtaking duration of freefall during which the parachute is not deployed and the sky diver drops towards the ground owing to body mass and eventually safely landing on earth, while being harnessed to a parachute. Upon nearing the ground, the parachute is opened after which the jumper can control the direction and speed with the toggles that are attached to the parachute. Read on for some interesting facts about skydiving sport:

1. Captain Kittinger recorded the highest skydive from a height of almost 102,800 feet, in 1960. Kittinger descended for almost 85,000 feet freefalling at a speed of 715mph, before deploying his parachute.
2. The youngest to accomplish the feat of sky diving was a four year old. The jump was a tandem jump (skydiving while being harnessed to a trainer), and was made from an elevation of 10,000 feet.
3. On 6^th of February 2004, a group of 357 skydivers joined hands and stayed in that formation for 6 seconds in Takhli, Thailand. This was their 6^th attempt.
4. The above record was broken in 2006, when 400 divers hailing from 31 countries, took 80 seconds to form a flower-like arrangement in the sky, at a height of over 23,000 ft. This was considered the most difficult group-skydives ever attempted.
5. On 20^th of May 2001, Michael Zang created a new world record by completing 500 jumps in a day. His jumps were made in intervals of less than 3 minutes and he performed these jumps from 2,100 feet.

1. During freefall, the wind traveling past your ears is well over 100 mph. This much makes you deaf to all sounds you cannot hear a fellow skydiver. By yelling into each other’s ears, you may hear a little but you certainly can’t have a proper conversation.
2. Jonas holds the record for getting the first tattoo while freefalling at a height of 4,000m in Sweden. He got a ‘WFFT’ tattoo made while skydiving with Nordin. WFFT stands for World’s First Freefall Tattoo!
3. Approximately 2 million skydives occur annually. Out of this, the average number of fatalities is around 35 which is less than 1% of the jumps that take place.
4. Some of the most daring skydivers include a 92 year old man sporting artificial knees, a hearing aid and weighing 105 pounds who leaped from 3,500 feet did a solo jump and a 90 years old woman who skydived from 12,000 feet to celebrate her birthday.
5. The first sky diving centre in India was set up by Sports Authority of Gujarat while the first sky diving school in India, Agni Aviation is located in Bangalore.

It is said to take about 10 to 15 jumps before an amateur jumper can do so without an instructor. Get to know all the good, bad and ugly facts about skydiving. After all, skydiving is a new era of adventure. Sky diving is going to be a memorable experience for you, just go out there, relax and have the time of your life! And for those who love a little more thrill, throw up your gears and try hot air ballooning, paragliding and even bungee jumping. For it’s all about connecting the sky and earth!

Tags: skydiving, skydiving adventure in india, Top 10