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jnjusticar

How did everyone get into skydiving?

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Well i was involved in a serious car crash (which was not my fault) & i was talking to my mate after i healed (broke my radius & ulna in my right arm - 18 pins & plates etc + nerve damage) saying how lucky i was & that it made me think i wanted to do more in life & he basically said that he had done a tandem & if i had the b*lls to do one. So i took his challege & did a tandem, 2 months later i went to free fall university in spain & did my AFF lol

Michael

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I was pretty lucky. My dad was a skydiver in the 70's and being a single parent he decided to become an instructor in the mid 70's. So we were at the dz either with his students or when he wanted to attend a boogie at one of the popular so cal DZ's. He bought some property and 2 planes(small cessna's) and owned/ran his own DZ for a couple of years in the early 80's.
I made my first 2 jumps at 16 with dad as my instructor on a static line with a Russian PC. in the mid 80's.
The first 2 were free then he wanted me to pay for them. Not knowing the opportunity I had in front of me a I did not stick with it. Got back into it in 2002 and have not stopped since.

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I did a tandem on a whim in June 2015 with a few friends. I couldn't get it out of my head and knew I had to do it again. I was in the FJC 2 weeks later and couldn't imagine backing away. Not licensed yet, but only a couple of jumps to go, with the goal of getting my B license by the end of the season here.

Still have to deal with a lot of fear/anxiety when I have gaps between jumps, but desperate to get back in the sky now that the season is open. Its been too windy lately and I am going stir crazy.

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I get this question a lot, and I never know how to answer it. Why does anyone start doing something they love? I don't know, I have always been drawn to it. I started later in life, but I can't even begin to explain the attraction. No, my boyfriend didn't convince me to do it. I just like being in the air.

I do like hearing other people's reasons, though.
I'm not a lady, I'm a skydiver.

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I'm supper noob. Still going through AFF. I have always wanted to become a skydiver/wing suit pilot but the time has come to make it happen. Wing suit was a huge dream to my brother and myself. He died at 33 a single dad. Though it is a far out goal, one that requires a lot of training and possible failures to face along the way, I will fly his ashes on his 1 year. We will have smoke made with the ash to strap on for flight. I hope to get some other wing suit pilots to fly formation with me. It is my tribute, my salute to his life that ended way to early. His death changed everything. I am here to live this dream for the both of us. Skydiving is my healing process. I am so excited for the journey ahead and what it will bring

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I had no intentions of ever skydiving. I got laid off and was working nights at a bar to make ends meet. The manager there, who i thought was an arrogant asshole when I first met him, asked me if I wanted to go on his annual skydiving adventure. I figured if this guy could do it so could I. I ended up loving it and the rest is history. Oh yeah the manger is now one of the friends I respect most on this planet. Funny how things change if you open yourself up and allow it.:)

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Sill in AFF, but will have license by next month! Ive always loved parachutes... Ever since i was a kid, parachute fireworks and model rockets were my jam. I taught myself how to paraglide with a cheap craigslist find. Then recently after getting my first really good job, Ive finally started my dream of skydiving! Im rocketing through the A license, and plan to have B within 2016. Flying is amazing when you leave an aircraft, but in my opinion (because i love parachutes so much) being under canopy is the most beautiful thing in the world.
"Take Risks not to escape life... but to prevent life from escaping."

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2011 Christmas gift from my wife was a gift certificate for AFF-1. Never saw that one coming and to further the incredulity of the gift, she tells me she's going to do it too. The gift in large part was a result of an ongoing battle with cancer that I finally had won a few months before but left me in a few pieces as they say. We had a long talk a few months down the road and decided that "one and done" would not be enough...it wasn't. Four years later, we're still at it. Happy we did and not looking back.

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i was a sophomore at a college that had a skydiving club !!!, AND the damn airport was 4 miles from the campus !! Having never been in an airplane at that point in my life :S (I was a kid ) :P I really was just looking for an airplane ride.
SO I and 2 friends went to the static line training class ON campus,,, 2 evenings a thurs and a Friday and we were 3 of about 25 ..We Showed Up.... the next morning,,( some didn't ) :o ahead of schedule and with excited smiles. We got geared up with 28 foot cheapos or T 10s and chest mounted reserves....
Up I went Really enjoyed the take off and flight and grinned when I looked out the window to see the dormitory building, that we had walked out Of...... an hour earlier !!!:ph34r: Birds' EYE View, as they Say :)The climb out, and poised exit was daunting but I pressed on and when the JM said " GO " Ya' Know What !?????... I WENT....
I really liked it.. I landed OK and within 50 feet of the X and so I made the rest of the static line jumps... and was into freefall within 2 weeks time....Jumps 1 through 6 cost me 96 dollars. 50 for # 1 and then 10 bucks for each of the 4 other SLs and then SIX dollars !!! hahaaha for my first freefall !!B|

It was 1972. First jump course ( called for 5 S.L. jumps with drcp on #'s 3,4,5,..)( That was the standard curriculum at most places, thanks to USPA BSRs and common sense...... There was no AFF, there was NO Tandem heck "piggyback container systems " were JUST starting to show up on DZs as were the first ram-airs ) Actually the term "tandem" USED to mean a container system which carried Both Main and reserve on the back " in tandem "......
Anyway...Enough with the History lesson:D
If you did Ok with the dummy rip cord pulls AND didn't drop the D-ring handle, they'd cut you loose for a clear and pull at around 3,200 feet..
We all 3 jumped and one of my friends made it to freefall and then faded.. I continued on and here we are today !!! It took sooo long to build up freefall time.... I think I had 100 jumps and 25 minutes or something....Total !!!..
we mostly exited at 3 grand, my 2nd & 3 rd year I did a lot of jumpmaster loads spotting and assisting newbies as they made THEIR first jump.... 3 passes,,, one at a time,,, then i'd pull in the last S.Line and exit.... we'd get 5 maybe 10 seconds, but lots of canopy time A max altitude jump would have been to 7 -Five.... but it only cost five bucks..... for 30 seconds, logged in the book.. Mostly cessnas around here at the time....

anyway :)Real nice posts here each one reflecting a love of flight... have fun. skydive safely...

jmy A 3914 D 12122

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Same here! My friend and I got groupons for tandems. As soon as I landed I knew I needed to skydive again. At the time I wasn't aware skydiving was a sport, thought it was just bucket list type of thing and figured occasional tandems would have to suffice.

Searched the web and showed a friend the HALO tandem I'd found to which she informed me that for that kind of money I could get certified to jump on my own. I said, "THAT'S A THING!?"

Here I am 200+ jumps later :)
I was put on this earth to do one thing. Luckily I forgot what it was so I do whatever I want.

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I got into skydiving by jumping out of an airplane!!B|B|:P

Bought my little brother and I tandem for his bachelor thing... Now I am doing AFF. I've spent the last couple of months obsessing over everything skydiving...

------------------------------------
Scientist and Physicist still do not understand gravity... Jumping out of an airplane is my attempt to help them in their quest to explain gravity.

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Hollywood5581

Rode motorcycles for 10 yrs. Wanted to get into something safer.



Was the same for me, after I did my first jump ... ;)

Seeing "Ripcord" and some Jumps from ElCap on TV,
I always knew that I also want to do that ... Sometime ...

In the late 80s, a DC3-Boogie was held by our local DZ.
(Even it was only 7 miles away, I didn´t knew that there is any skydiving ..)
Reading the Newspapers, saying that Tandems are possible, I phoned the contact and showed up.

After that jump, I asked where to sign ..
Addicted to that sport since then ...
--------------------------------------------------

With sufficient thrust,
pigs just fly well

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It was something I always wanted to do but never got around to, in no small part because none of my friends were interested. Summer 2015 I was on a military course with the Team Captain of the Canadian Army's Skyhawks and somehow it came up that he was a TI at a DZ we passed several times while doing course work. So I decided to take the extra cash I made from the course and try a tandem, was hooked, and started their FFP as soon as I could.

Didn't go so well, I broke my ankle on my second jump - but after a year I went back at it and just bought my first rig.

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I always thought jumping would be fun but just never did it. About 5 years ago (at age 54) my mother made a statement about, "doing stuff while your health will still allow it". Skydiving was not on either of our minds at the moment but in a few days I had signed up for AFF.
Instructor quote, “What's weird is that you're older than my dad!”

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I guess you'd be surprised just how many thousands of people only ever do one tandem, tick it off their bucket list and never come back, lol.

I got into it kind of by accident. I never had any interest in jumping, it was never on my bucket list to do a tandem, my motto was basically "if the pilot is landing in the plane, I don't see any good reason why I shouldn't either".

My boyfriend at the time (now-ex) had been a skydiver for several years but had given it up a long time before he met me. We had talked about him getting back into it and me possibly giving it a go, I'd even gone so far as to get a medical but then just shoved it in a drawer for a couple of years. Long story but we both did a tandem for my birthday (ironically, his first tandem, he had over 700 jumps logged at that point) and I was a bit, meh, take it or leave it, lol. I liked some bits, didn't like others, my right ear was incredibly painful on the way down, we had a hard opening and a hard landing and I really couldn't see the attraction.

After talking it over with a couple of people, they eventually persuaded me that I had to try doing it by myself to really judge whether I liked it or not. So two weeks later I was back at the dz on my ground school. It was a real battle to get through AFF, the winds were frequently too high and even with rocking up every Friday night, staying all weekend and taking a week off work to try for mid-week jumping, it still took me over 6 weeks from ground school to getting my 18th jump and my (BPA) A licence.

I was pretty disheartened by the whole process and it took me another 6 weeks before I came back to the dz. My first qualified jump ended up being a reserve ride because someone had packed a mal (locked brake toggle, I didn't even get to pull it out of the keeper) though I still managed to get back to the landing area.

I went on to do 6 more jumps that weekend and just made it a whole series of firsts. Since I'd already had a cutaway, I didn't have any real nerves of jumping my first pack job (my instructor was also jumping one of my pack jobs on the same jump so he obviously had confidence in me, lol).

I have never been really obsessed with jumping and even now, I can take it or leave it. If someone told me that I had to give up jumping for medical reasons for example, I would head off to another type of activity without really looking back.

I have done a lot in 3 years of jumping, including competing in 4-way and Speed 8, big way, multi-plane big way, lots of tunnel time, helping to coach newbies and so on. There is still a huge amount to learn and lots more I could try, but if none of them materialise, I could walk away happy with what I've already achieved :)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

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My first jump was not planned at all. I got my first big paycheck and still had 800 € left to spend so I figured on a Saturday night at about 2 am I want to do something one-time-only with my Money!
After searching for some fun activities I ended up with a Budget of 200 € for this one time only Thing and ended up on a page where there was a tandemskydive for 199 € (so right in the Budget!)
After thinking a Long time about it I ordered the jump 2 minutes later and set a date in 3 weeks.
After that I pretty much didn't think about the jump until one day before the jump and had to look up where I had to go the next morning.
At the DZ I had no clue what I was going to do, got my instructions and had to wait a couple of hours cause of bad weather... (was complety cloudy)
In the plane I was thinking what the heck am I doing here?! and then we jumped and it was incredible! I knew it was not a one time Thing for sure!

Well after that I was on adrenaline for a few days and ended up doing 4 more Tandem jumps, just because I had worked on 400 € a month and couldn't afford the AFF. After my 5th Tandem a skydiver came up to me and told me that I was no longer allowed to tandem there and that he wants to see me in the next aff. (This was in the winter time)

A few month later he wrote me on fb that there is an AFF starting next month so I signed up for it and since then I've been jumping ;)

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