==> SPRING BREAK KICKOFF: "YOU JUMP I JUMP" Sky-Dive Meet on March 22, 2003!! <==
03-14-2003, 08:49 PM
#22
Had an interesting conversation with a coworker recently about skydiving and would like to share his choice for the first dive. This guy had been skydiving for over 10 years, he stopped doing it now but he brought up a pretty interesting hypothesis about the first dive. He said that if he had a choice again as a beginner, he would pick solo for the first time. Now that's sound a little weird, why would he recommend that one might ask?? Well, he explains, when you think about the personalities of people who picked skydiving as a part-time or full-time career and the number of decisions they need to make in a tandem dive, hmm... go figure. Ok now, what decisions do tandem instructors have to make? In a tandem dive, the two body mass that hop off the plane together will reach terminal velocity ~100mph (I have doubts about this figure myself, ah well) faster than putting 2 supercharged F20C in our S2K. In order to slow things down a bit (I was thinking, why would anyone want to do that?), a chute will be deployed very early on during the jump. And it is this chute, which complicates things quite a bit. He said that the instructors may need to make a decision out of up to 50+ decision points. Compared few decision points and the automatic backup chute in a solo dive, the tradeoffs are worth thinking about.
I don't know how dated or accurate this information is, but I found his hypothesis to be quite interesting. I always thought that tandem dive is better but his argument is quite convincing as well. But then I also believe that an experienced instructor will make all the difference in a tandem dive, and those 50 decision points are likely going to be second nature to them. Maybe you guys can bring back the answer to this once you guys talk to the instructors!
Enjoy the dive!
I don't know how dated or accurate this information is, but I found his hypothesis to be quite interesting. I always thought that tandem dive is better but his argument is quite convincing as well. But then I also believe that an experienced instructor will make all the difference in a tandem dive, and those 50 decision points are likely going to be second nature to them. Maybe you guys can bring back the answer to this once you guys talk to the instructors!
Enjoy the dive!
