Awesome! Both the double embed and the vid!

I jumped 14,000ft two weeks ago. f***ing awesome!

I jumped 14,000ft two weeks ago. f***ing awesome!

So you going to come back and jump solo?

The 108-way head down record recently is pretty amazing.

Hey CHUB,

Do you know where those wind tunnel joints are where you can simulate freefall?

Highhhh speeeeeeeed dirttttt

There's none in Australia.

A bloke is opening up one at Surfers though in the near future.

Basically all old wind tunnel designs are obsolete. Slow + choppy air... you could only belly fly in them and usually you wore a massive baggy jumpsuit. I'm not sure if there's any left in Aus?

Skyventure created a new tunnel design, SUPER fast air and smooth air (170mph+), allowed serious coaching of freefall and all the various freefly positions (backflying, sitflying, headdown etc).

So yeah, Skyventure has everybody by the balls and is juicing the money hard.... I'm very glad the bloke purchased the rights to build one on the GC.

You can do ANYTHING in these tunnels.

Yup, that's what I was thinking of.

What sorta crash is being asked?

Windtunnels are very expensive.

There bread and butter business model is 2 minute intro flights for tourists, would cost somewhere around $100-$150.

Better to just go skydiving.

Tunnel time for skydivers is nearly on par with jump tickets, the trick as you see above is getting multiple people in the tunnel at the sametime and suddenly you're getting 2-4x as much freefall for your $$$.

Ultimately though you miss out on the best bit of skydiving, flying your canopy.

last edited by CHUB at 00:21:16 18/Nov/09

Chub, that 108-way vid is awesome man. Watched a few times full screen. Its one of the cleanest youtube vids I've seen I think.

Its hard to imagine how you guys can control the rate, and direction of fall so accurately. Very cool stuff.

Its hard to imagine how you guys can control the rate, and direction of fall so accurately. Very cool stuff.

Extremely experienced jumpers.

Flying headdown is a feat most people don't accomplish till the 1000 jump mark and then another 1000+ jumps to actually learn to FLY and dock.

We grin ear to ear when we build 8-ways belly flying, freefall is very frustrating at times. I've got 180 jumps atm but that only translates to roughly 1.5 hours of freefall and if you imagine doing anything for 1.5 hours you're going to be pretty useless.

It's all fun though, I'm having a blast learning to freefly atm. When you get in a solid stand and break past 300km/hr, s*** starts going very hectic.

Some cool 2-way freefly.

I jumped 14,000ft two weeks ago. f***ing awesome!

Where at? and how much? I wouldn't mind doing this at least once before I die.

I did a 14,000ft jump at redcliffe (mob had a storefront just on the boardwalk) a couple of weeks ago and it set me back about $250 after the 8 person group discount. They try and gouge you another $150 for the video+photo's which admittedly are pretty funny/good for a keepsake.

Tandems are a waste of money, it costs the same amount to do AFF stage 1. Better to do that even if you're only looking at a single jump.

Plus places like Redcliffe are what we call a "tandem factory" and do nothing for the sport. They exclude sports jumpers and students, take all the tandem masters and then bend tourists and noobs over for $500.

Now what you end up with is every single tandem master is 50+, verging on retiring and there's NO tandem masters up and coming to take their place because 3/4 of the dropzones jumped on the gravy train, shafted skydivers for monetary gain and really hampered the sport.

Bit of a rant, but support a REAL dropzone rather then a tandem only money machine.

CHUBBY - is it necessary to tandem on your first jump?

Nop.

I did AFF my first jump, I would say 50% of the people that through our dropzone go straight into AFF without a tandem.

I didn't do a tandem till jump ~75 when I was strapped onto the front of an tandem master on probatation (after they get rated, they do 10 jumps with a licensed skydiver before moving to a real passenger)... f***ing horrific :D

More people should look at AFF instead of tandem. Sports gear is MUCH safer then tandem gear, it's just an illusion that jumping tandem is safer then solo because you have an instructor on your back... couldn't be more wrong and you just have to look at the injuries/fatalities to see that tandem skydiving is some of the most dangerous you can participate in.

Here's an AFF stage 1 just incase people don't know. Roughly 8 hours of training followed by a skydive where you're in control, 2 AFF instructors come along for safety and assesment (each level gets harder obviously). You deploy your own canopy and fly down alone via radio (usually the chief instructor talking you down).

Thats all well and good, but buggered if I'd want to sit and do 8 hours of training just to say I've jumped out of a plane once. I'd rather go out with 5 other mates for 2 hours, do the skydiving thing and then sit around and have lunchtime beers talking it up after it.


edit: Not to try and sound like I'm s***ting on your fun at all, cause I think it would be a great recreational activity. Dude sitting next to me atm does it as does his son. But each to their own :)

last edited by Azaria at 14:23:50 18/Nov/09

Tandem isn't a true skydiving experience though, it's more an amusement ride.

Apples and oranges.

Just wish more people would consider AFF, the majority of people don't even realise it's an option.