matttrudeau

Staind has that new song, "its been a while." I think it goes great with sunset dives.

How many people out there have had a personal friend who died skydiving? How could you possible continue, knowing one of your friends died doing what you love?

The article said they were jumping from 19,000. Does that seem a little high to anyone else?

Thanks for the tip. We all tend to focus too much on the freefall aspect of skydiving. Canopy control is just as important as any other part of the skydive.

Sky Monkey, are you part of the "Sky Monkey" Freefly team?

Check out these stats I found. Unbelievable! Activity Participants Fatalities Rate per 100,000 per year participants All accidents 230,000,000 96,000 42 Traffic Fatalities 162,850,000 46,000 28 Power Boat Racing 7,000 5 71 SCUBA 300,000 140 47 Mountaineering 60,000 30 50 Boxing 6,000 3 50 AIR VEHICLES: Air Shows 1,000 5 500 Homebuilt 8,000 25 312 General Aviation 550,000 800 145 Sailplane 20,000 9 45 Balloon 4,500 3 67 Hang Gliding 25,000 10 40 SKYDIVING 110,000 28 25

How ya doing? I haven't been in a windtunnel yet but I will be going this month. July 23 to July 28. I'm going on vacation in Las Vegas and I plan on visiting the wind tunnel. I think its going to be a great place to learn stability and maybe even a few tricks. I'm doing it so I can feel comfortable in free fall and that's it. As you know, there are many other parts to a skydive that should not be overlooked.

Thanks a lot for all your contributions to my post.

I've made two tandem jumps and I loved every second of it. I'm debating on whether or not to continue because of the risks. It seems like most people I talk to associate skydiving with death. I know that skydiving is a lot safer than it used to be. How safe is it, really? I know on average 25 to 30 people die every year from skydiving. I'm wondering how many could have been avoided and how many are unavoidable?

I am new to the sport of skydiving. The staff at Skydive New England treated me as if I was a veteran. Everyone was willing to help if I had a question. Because of this, I will hopefully be a part of the AFF graduating class of 2001. Blue skies!