Skydiving has a lot of types. However, there are ones that are commonly known such as freestyle, formation and freeflying. Although these three are considered to be the ones that are always done and seen on television or in media, there are still other types of skydiving that are most likely not known to many.
Skydiving has a lot of types. However,
there are ones that are commonly known such as freestyle, formation and freeflying. Although these three are considered to be the ones that are always done and seen on television or in media, there are still other types of skydiving that are most likely not known to many.
If you are new to the sport of skydiving and want to know more about it, then knowing the less popular types would still be important. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be having a knack for these less popular types!
Skysurfing
This type is actually said to be an even more extreme and radical rendition of skydiving. In skysurfing, the diver would be diving with a board that is somewhat like a snowboard, but a bit smaller in size. This board would be attached to the diver’s feet.
Skysurfing is said to be hard simply because board attached to your feet is extremely difficult to control. In fact, even simply standing straight would require you some skill and precise balance that you can only get from considerable experience in free flying.
Once you gain some experience and become a master of skysurfing, you would have the ability to use your boards to execute rapid rolls, tumbles, and spinning helicopter acrobatic stunts. Just like in Freestyle skydiving, you would have to have an auxiliary partner, whose duty is to film your skysurfing performance. As a safety measure, the boards can be detached while you are in mid-aie. However, this can cause extra hazard fro those people on the ground, which is why not every skydiving club allow this kind of skydiving.
BASE Jumping: As Close As It Gets
BASE jumping is actually considered to be the most extreme and dangerous among the types of skydiving. "BASE" is actually an acronym which refers to the Antennae, which can be an uninhabited structure, aerial mast or tower; Span, which are bridge-like structures; and Earth, such as cliffs or canyons.
This kind of skydiving is only done by very experienced divers. This is so, because such kind of diving includes huge risks due to the fact that the jump is quite a short one and has close proximity to a lot of structures that give huge risks of entanglement, collision and the likes.
According to statistics, in between 1981 to 2007, there is an estimate of one hundred eleven experienced BASE jumpers have already met fatal endings due to some complications in the jump, that basically lead to a failure.
Wingsuit Flying: Flying In Style
This branch of skydiving is a recent one. A winsgsuit is an up to date invention in which skydivers put on a specially designed suit that has webbings stitched in between the arms and legs.
When the wingsuit is worn while skydiving, it results to an airfoil, which gives the skydiver a lift. Thus the diver is apportioned with an even more highly developed level of control over his descent speed and trajectory that seems impossible at normal circumstances.
However, this kind of dive would usually entail you to use portable computers and other gadgets to record your velocity and distance travelled. Records show that the slowest speed ever accomplished with a wingsuit is 25mph. Once you get to reach the specified altitude, you would have to unzip your wingsuit’s arm webbing in order to deploy your parachute.
Wingsuits are commonly used and popular with BASE jumpers. This is due to the reason that when they wear wingsuits, they can have the ability to turn their 60 second freefall period into a longer span of 3 minutes. Nevertheless, this kind of skydiving is only done by very experienced divers. I fact, it‘s recommended that you should have hundreds of jumps under your belt even before you decide to embark on this kind of skydiving.
Accuracy Landing: Getting It Straight To The Point
This type of skydiving is a competitive one in which a skydiver would earn points in the competition for being able to land as closely as he can to a specific target point or area on the ground. It is usually done solo and the landing part is the one given the most attention.
