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matt1215

Poor man's jump, question for scuba guys

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Hey, I don't think that will be very effective. First of all your time of descent will be really short (time wise) and your descent rate will be pretty slow. Although water is denser than air your movements to achieve say a 360 will have to be far greater than up in the air or in the tunnel, where you basically just have to change your hand position.

I'm not the mega skydiver yet, but I have some tunnel time and am a divemaster with padi so thats where my $0.02 are from. ;)

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Just had an interesting thought. Equipped with diving weights, a deep pool (say 12 feet), a mask, and a length of rope to retrieve said weights; how effectively could one simulate/practice freefall maneuvers during weighted descent?



That's one of the more innovative ideas I have heard for a while! I'm sure you are aware of the limitations of it, but hey, sounds like fun. And I think it could simulate simple things like turns OK. What you might have fun doing is taking a non-skydiver and show them how to do turns to see how quickly it lets them learn.

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Just had an interesting thought. Equipped with diving weights, a deep pool (say 12 feet), a mask, and a length of rope to retrieve said weights; how effectively could one simulate/practice freefall maneuvers during weighted descent?



You won't really know until you try it, but from playing around with freefall body positions in the pool myself, I think you'll find that bouyancy will have a hugely different effect on things than you get in the air. As you breath in, your lungs expand and become considerably lighter which will make you go head high. As you breath out, this tends to equalize out, but not enough to bring you back to level. You *may* be able to compensate a little by the placement of your weights, but unless they move around as you breath, I doubt you'll be able to maintain stability in the waterstream using freefall moves alone unless you're practising head down, standing or any other position you can think of where the centre of balance of your lungs is aligned vertically with your body's centre of balance.

What I have found to be possibly useful in a pool is practising the sitfly position. Put your calves on the deck, thighs 90 degrees down the side of the pool and your back floating on top of the water. Then concentrate on feeling what the 90 degree angles at hips, knees and feet feels like, arch your back, keep the head back and the arms out to the side. It's not exactly the same feeling as the sky, but it feels a lot closer than trying to practice against a wall or something. Whether it's effective training or not, you'll have to wait until I get to do some freefall again. There's not much going on up here in the frozen north at the moment.

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The water might be too responsive to your movements. Waving your had would rotate you while that wouldn't happen in the air. And for it to be more than two or three seconds the water depth might hurt your ears. Water is good for practicing arch, but that is just floating on the surface.

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I was diving in some really low visibility water that was about 90 ft. I was descending next to the anchor line, and had let quite a bit of air out of my BC. I was in a face-down freefall-type position and was descending pretty fast, playing with controlling movement with body positioning and grooving on the whole thing. As I said, the vis. was bad, about 1 foot. I saw the bottom about 1/2 sec. before I pounded in on my face.[:/] I guess it was better than doing it in freefall, but I really felt like I had burned in.

Kevin
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Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

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Sorry for the reality check but -- YOUR UNDERWATER -- you have a JOB TO DO just as if you were skydiving. Before you know it you'll be paying attention to how your skydiving position is underwater and how it is going to simulate this that and the other thing and you find yourself sinking too fast at 100FT on your way to blowing out your sinuses and/or doing other damage to yourself.

I understand the spirit of your post but I figured I'd point it out -- I ski, scuba, and skydive and every time I do any of this xing stuff I've been lucky enough to have someone near me telling me something akin to what I stated above. (That said I am planning on skiing, skydiving, and going scuba on the same day ;) (yes in that order))

That said I have been known to try to put a invisible regulator into my mouth before getting into the door...
-Patrick

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what on earth are you doing at 90 ft in 1 ft visibility water??

As for the thread starter, padi divemaster speaking here as well (even if that's hardly worth the paper it's written on), I don't think that idea is of much use. sorry. :) Diving can still be fun though. But lose the tanks, go freediving. :)

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If not a good tool for skydiving, that might be a new interesting sport :)

Have a tunnel with water flow instead of air, and a rope to tie you down to what would be the net in an wind tunnel.

I wonder if the energy necessary for such a water flow would be similar to the energy that a wind tunnel requires.
I guess it would need less energy, but what do I know...
"We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance."
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In a pool you won't accomplish much in the way of freefall simulation. But with 130 feet or so of SCUBAfall you can have a blast doing slo-mo bellyfly and freefly moves. I haven't gotten underwater wingsuit time though. Just don't lose track of your depth or your descent speed lest you end up as crab bait.
Sometimes you eat the bear..............

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