New guy.

[obsessedwithrc 0]

Hey guys, I am interested in learning to skydive, my whole life I have been fastenated with flight and I can finally acheive the dream of being one of the people I used to look at with wonder and amazement as they soared through the sky. Iam considering several different methods of flight such as paragliding, Hang gliding, and powered paragliding. I was wondering if anyone could give me a few tips and suggestions as to the price of gear and the price it costs to jump after training and gear are obtained. any help would be appreciated......Ezra

[cocheese 0]

Once obsessed with the taste of flight, you will walk the earth with empty pockets and big ass grin.

in other words,... you will spend all your money on whatever form of flight you choose. Hotel California, kid.

[FlyingRhenquest 1]

Well I went through some hang gliding training back in the 90's. At the time I thought I wouldn't like skydiving because liked the idea of cross country soaring and long glide times. I never got off a student tandem glider either. Moved before I finished training.

Between flying a student parachute and a student tandem hang glider, the parachute is MUCH easier to steer and land. They pretty much just slap a radio on you and you're good to go in AFF class.

It may depend on where you are in the country, but I went looking for hang gliding training in Colorado after I moved out here, and mostly just found paragliding training. You can search around, but I think you'll find it to be a lot easier to find skydiving or paragliding training than hang gliding.

The hang gliders can fly a good bit faster than the paragliders, from what I understand. I think the paragliders have slightly better soaring characteristics (But don't quote me on that.) If you want to go up and stay up, it'd be between hang gliding and paragliding.

Skydiving came as a bit of a surprise to me. I was hooked from the first jump. You can really do a lot in freefall, and under canopy is a decent amount of time. You can do high pulls and spend more time in the air flying your parachute, too -- my high pull was fully deployed at 10600 feet and took 11 minutes to get down.

You can also do indoor skydiving if there's an indoor skydiving place close to you. It's not really the same, but it's still a blast to learn how to fly in one of those. I just put some more time in one today. I'm going to feel it tomorrow, too. I was experimenting with side slides and my instructor and I were rotating around the air column at one point. That was really a lot of fun!

Hope all this helps you decide! No matter what you decide to do, I'm sure it will be awesome! And no matter what you decide, gear will always cost more than you have or want to pay for it! Heh heh heh. You can probably get solid basic used second hand stuff for all the sports for neighborhood of $2000 give or take. It'll always end up costing more than you expect too, though. Training will, too. That's just how it goes, if you want to fly.

I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

[MikeJD 0]

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You can also do indoor skydiving if there's an indoor skydiving place close to you.

I really dislike the term 'indoor skydiving' - I guess it's more of a marketing thing than anything else. OK, it's done indoors, but there's no sky and there's no diving.

But to the OP - although it's not the same thing, it does give you a taste of what it's like to manoeuvre your body in freefall. In that sense it might be worth a trip to a wind tunnel to see whether you enjoy that experience.

[obsessedwithrc 0]

Ok I see. The tossup is really between powered paragliding and skydiving. This is how I see it, PPG, 3+ hours flying time,no need for aircraft to take you up, no flying fee each time you fly. Skydiving, Much cheaper, much shorter flying time but more exciting, but need to get up there somehow and have to pay a plane to take you up. So really not sure which.

[FlyingRhenquest 1]

Well either way you end up with useful skills that you could probably apply to other disciplines. So whatever you do would probably be cool, fun, and at least somewhat useful if you decide to try something else later!

Maybe go through AFF training and see if you like it. If you don't, you can drop it before you put a wad of cash on your own gear. If you do, you'll be going in the right direction!

I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

[ctrph8 0]

Quote

Hey guys, I am interested in learning to skydive, my whole life I have been fastenated with flight and I can finally acheive the dream of being one of the people I used to look at with wonder and amazement as they soared through the sky. Iam considering several different methods of flight such as paragliding, Hang gliding, and powered paragliding. I was wondering if anyone could give me a few tips and suggestions as to the price of gear and the price it costs to jump after training and gear are obtained. any help would be appreciated......Ezra

I'd do a tandem in each category. You might find that you like one more than another.

The problem with hang gliding and powered paragliding is that they are VERY gear intensive. You can't just have that thing in the back seat of the car. If you want to go hang gliding, you have to work out some logistics. They are huge and you probably are not going to be landing where you parked your truck.

Powered paragliders are smaller but still not going to fit in the back seat. If you do go with a powered paraglider, GET REAL TRAINING, lots of it. Everybody thinks that because they can fly "X" (fill in whatever other air sport you like) that they can just step in to powered paragliding. There are a lot of broken people and people who had nasty scares because they missed a step somewhere. I'm not saying don't do it, just do it under an instructional program. All of these sports grow new participants because the mentors are there to impart safety aspects that the new folks might not have thought about.

Of course that goes for the rest of your options as well but lack of training has been a big problem in the powered paraglider world.

My vote is for skydiving or paragliding. I do both but have had a hard time keeping current in both.

[MikeJD 0]

You don't say where in the world you are. Since you're approaching this very analytically, that should be a consideration.

If you're skydiving you'll need active dropzones within striking distance - and all aerial sports are of course weather-dependent, and the weather requirements vary somewhat according to the sport.

[obsessedwithrc 0]

Yeah I live in Ft. Campbell Ky. so fairly flat in the emediate area skydiving would be a nice solution to that but ppg would also work.