Formation Skydiving

Formation Skydiving

Formation skydiving is the art of building formations in free-fall with multiple people gripping each others' limbs or specially built "grippers" on their jumpsuits.

Formation skydiving can be further divided into several sub-categories, so named for the number of members in a team:

• 4-way sequential
• 4-way vertical sequential (VRW)
• 8-way sequential
• 16-way sequential
• 10-way speed
• Large formations (Big-ways)

A competition in 4-way formation skydiving (FS-4) takes place like this:

There are two kinds of formations, called randoms and blocks. The randoms are singular formations with full separation of all grips both before and after building the formation. The blocks are double formations with a special designated movement pattern in between, called an inter. The start formation may, or may not be similar to the ending formation. The inters are differently performed. Here are some examples:

Inter 1: The grips are released between some of the flyers, so they become two pieces of two team members. they both do a 270 degree turn, and reconnect to a different formation

Inter 2: Three people stay connected, and do a 360 turn, while the last person, flies alone.

Inter 15: All grips are released and everyone does a 360 turn back to the original formation.

Blocks are designated by numbers, while randoms got letters. Blocks are worth one point for each correct formation, that makes 2 points, and randoms count as 1 point. There are 22 blocks and 16 randoms.

A competition consists of up to 10 rounds, and each round consists of 5 or 6 points, which the teams are to repeat as many times as they can within the working time of 35 seconds. The score judging are based on the videographers material.

A competition draw may look like this:

1. C-E-B-13 2. 14-20-8 3. 15-16-H 4. J-O-1-D 5. 6-18-19 6. 5-F-21 7. 10-K-G-M 8. 22-3-P 9. 12-9-4 10. 11-17-Q

The winning team will be the team that has collected most points, by completing the most correct formations within time after the final round is ended. In case of weather or technical problems, or other causes, a competition will be valid as long as all teams has completed at least one round.

The current FAI world record for largest free-fall formation is a 400-way, set on February 8, 2006 in Udon Thani, Thailand by World Team. It was held for 4.25 seconds. They used five C-130 Hercules airplanes and exited from an altitude of 25,000 feet.

A recent sub-category of formation skydiving is vertical formation skydiving (VRW). Skydivers build formations using higher-speed body positions normally associated with freeflying, such as head down and sitflying.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_skydiving

Variations of Skydiving

Variations of Skydiving

In addition to disciplines for which people train, purchase equipment and get coaching/lessons, the recreational skydiver finds ways to just have fun. Today, there are twelve Variations of Skydiving:

1. Hit and Rock. "Hit and Rock" is a variant of Accuracy landing devised to let people of varying skill levels compete for fun. "Hit and Rock" is originally from POPS (Parachutists Over Phorty Society). The object is to land as close as possible to the chair, remove the parachute harness, sprint to the chair, sit fully in the chair and rock back and forth at least one time. The contestant is timed from the moment that feet touch the ground until that first rock is completed. This event is considered a race.

2. Freeflying

3. Tracking. Tracking is where skydivers take a body position to achieve a high forward speed, flying their body to achieve separation from other jumpers and cover distance over the ground.

4. Formation skydiving

5. Pond swooping. "Pond swooping" is a form of competitive parachuting wherein canopy pilots attempt to touch down at a glide across a small body of water, and onto the shore. Events provide lighthearted competition, rating accuracy, speed, distance and style. Points and peer approval are reduced when a participant "chows", or fails to reach shore and sinks into the water. Some danger involved with pond swooping is when pilots "chow" they land in the water and then the parachute slowly begins to sink. Some divers get tangled in the cord and are dragged to the bottom and drown. To avoid being dragged down, some divers will cut the cord if they sense that they cannot make it across to the shore.

6. Cross-country. A cross-country jump is a skydive where the participants open their parachutes immediately after jumping, with the intention of covering as much ground under canopy as possible. Usual distance from Jump Run to the dropzone can be as much as several miles.

7. Camera flying. In "camera flying", a camera person jumps with other skydivers and films them. The camera flier often wears specialized equipment, such as a winged jumpsuit to provide a greater range of fall rates, helmet-mounted video and still cameras, mouth operated camera switches, and optical sights. Some skydivers specialize in camera flying and a few earn fees for filming students on coached jumps or tandem-jumpers, or producing professional footage and photographs for the media. There is always a demand for good camera fliers in the skydiving community, as many of the competitive skydiving disciplines are judged from a video record.

8. Night jumps. Parachuting is not always restricted to daytime hours; experienced skydivers sometimes perform night jumps. For safety reasons, this requires more equipment than a usual daytime jump and in most jurisdictions requires both an advanced skydiving license (at least a B-License in the U.S.) and a meeting with the local safety official covering who will be doing what on the load. A lighted altimeter (preferably accompanied with an audible altimeter) is a must. Skydivers performing night jumps often take flashlights up with them so that they can check their canopies have properly deployed.

Visibility to other skydivers and other aircraft is also a consideration; FAA regulations require skydivers jumping at night to be wearing a light visible for three miles (5 km) in every direction, and to turn it on once they are under canopy. A chemlight(glowstick) is a good idea on a night jump.

Night jumpers should be made aware of the Dark Zone, when landing at night. Above 100 feet jumpers flying their canopy have a good view of the landing zone normally because of reflected ambient light/moon light. Once they get close to the ground, this ambient light source is lost, because of the low angle of reflection. The lower they get, the darker the ground looks. At about 100 feet and below it may seem that they are landing in a black hole. Suddenly it becomes very dark, and the jumper hits the ground soon after. This ground rush should be explained and anticipated for the first time night jumper.

9. Stuff jumps. With the availability of a rear door aircraft and a large, unpopulated space to jump over, 'stuff' jumps become possible. In these jumps the skydivers jump out with some object. Rubber raft jumps are popular, where the jumpers sit in a rubber raft. Cars, bicycles, motorcycles, vacuum cleaners, water tanks and inflatable companions have also been thrown out the back of an aircraft. At a certain height the jumpers break off from the object and deploy their parachutes, leaving it to smash into the ground at terminal velocity.

10. Skysurfing

11. Base Jumping

12. Wingsuit flying

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachuting

Skydiving in Indonesia

Skydiving in Indonesia

Skydiving is an air sport is very popular because it is challenging society. Humans have long wanted to make the jump, but can not be implemented because at that time there has been no proper equipment. In 1617, Fausto Veranzio became the first man to make the jump from a tower in Venice, Italy, and landed safely use tools like a parachute. While the jump from a flying object, has been implemented for the first time in 1797, namely by Andre Jacques Garnerin in Paris, France from a hot air balloon. Leslie Irvin who was saved by a parachute in an accident in England, feels indebted to the kit. Since the events that occurred in 1919, he devoted the rest of his life to develop and refine the technology and the parachute system.

But skydiving as a sport, was introduced in Indonesia for the first time in 1962 by Mladen Milicevic (Mica), a Yugoslav, who was then conjunct in the School of the Army Command in Batujajar. Since then, skydiving evolved into a more popular sport. Society's first parachute jump was Aves. Aves was established in Bandung by the ITB students with Trisnoyuwono reporters on July 29, 1969. And since then parachuting sport continues to grow in all regions in Indonesia. On January 17, 1972, parachuting clubs are located in Indonesia there are 62 clubs, they agreed to join the parent organization of FASI.

Even this sport can not be separated from technological advances, which are able to create new devices that are increasingly sophisticated. The use of new equipment by skydiving lets athletes do new maneuvers in the air is hard to do with the old type equipment. Even using the new equipment, skydiving athletes capable of making a record, a new record in a variety of race numbers.

Skydiving hold a variety of numbers including the precision landing, air cooperation, cooperation between the canopy and free style. Other numbers are formation skydiving and skysurfing. Types of parachutes used in skydiving competitions such as the type DC-5 for the precision landing, PD-150 for cooperation in the air. Achievements at the national level has been achieved is in the class co-operation in the air as much as 23 peterjun are recorded in Bali on the sidelines of the World Parachute Championships in 1989.