Me and a friend are considering doing parachuting next easter for Charity (HDA - Hampshire Deaf Accosiation) and am wondering if anyone here has done it and give their experiences on it. Jumping out of a plane is a lil scary, but it should be a good experience... I hope!
Had a friend who did it - he said it's amazing, absolutely not to be missed. I'm considering doing it sometime soon, no ideas when though. I'd say go for it!
I want to go sky diving even though I'm afraid of heights. http://www.zerop.net/videos/bridge_day_dsl.wmv There's you a video from Bridge Day 2003. The only day of the year when you can jump off of the New River Gorge Bridge legally. In order to jump though, you have to have at least 50 skydives or BASE jumps but they prefer you to have over 150 jumps.
As luck would have it, yes i have. I did my Tandem jump 2 weeks ago. Its possibly the most scary thing in the whole entire world..... ever- But damn its fun. I've done bunjee (sp?) jumps before but they are nothing compared to Skydiving. We went to 12,000 feet which was pretty nippy in that little plane. I intend on learning to do Solo jumps after x-mas. Its a once in a lifetime experiance forsure. I have to say if you do it get it video'd because you don't remember alot of it since its such a rush. The free-fall part is amazing, you do around 120-130mph, falling for about 45seconds to a minute, then glide back down to earth under canopy for around 5 minutes. I didnt remember alot of the jump but watching the video over and over still gives me a rush and i remember more and more each time. I say you should deffo go for it if it's for charity. I did mine just for the hell of wanting to really, but once i've learnt the Solo Jumps i may do some charity work (help pay for it! lol) If you want any other info ect ask Mike
19 Parachute jumps in all First time I went up in a plane I jumped out was not till about 5 times later I actually landed in one I have bungee'd, catapulted, swung, and other such things but the ol chute is the best Only thing that was half as scary was the rollercoaster that goes of the edge of the stratosphere in Vegas
The act of jumping out of the plane is the scariest bit once you are out of the plane its great fun. You dont have any concept of the height untill you come somewhere near landing and then the ground does seem to come up fairly fast.
Does anyone have any idea of price? Me and a few mates want to do it over summer, and if we don't do it for charity we will pay ourselves.
Apparently there's a thing that you can do where you can get the experience of freefalling, but without the whole jumping out of a plane thing. It's like a vertical wind tunnel. Can't remember where I saw it, but it's pretty cool.
yeah on Discovery channel.Unfortunately its a bit expensive and there is only 1 place for that i think.Also there was some plane which goes way up in the atmosphere and goes straight down as a result of that you have half-a-minute zero gravity.It costs somewhere around 100k tho Freefalling sounds cool,i might jump one day.
They go around a lot of the plane shows over the summer with the freefall experience. I think its Red Bull and/or Virgin that sponsor it./
TBH, if you're going to do it for charity, you should pay the costs yourself. Doing something like that for charity is basicly just an excuse many people use to do these things for free, and they actually feel good about it at the same time. If you're doing it because it scares the hell out of you, for charity, and to "do the right thing" as it were, then pay the costs, or at least most of the costs, and then actually donate what people give to you, to charity. If you just want to jump out of a plane because it could be fun, then pay for it yourself and don't masquerade behind good causes. That said, its something I've always wanted to do, I'm sure it's an absolute tonne of fun, so go for it!
Er, surely if you're still raising money (after the costs of the jump) then how can that not be seen as a good thing? The charity is getting money which they wouldn't have been getting anyway. Admittedly it's not on if the money you raise for the charity doesn't cover the costs, but if it does then it's not "masquerading behind good causes".
I didn't say it was a bad thing, it's just pretty disingenuous. People act like they're doing costly enjoyable things for charity. I mean, I don't hire out the donnington race track just because I'd be scared of going at 160Mph around a race track, on other peoples money, in the name of charity. While overall the charity may benefit, basicly what you're doing is saying "I want you people, to pay for me to go parachuting, I'll also try and raise money above and beyond the costs, so that some of it goes to charity". Bottom line is, first and foremost people are getting their friends and family to pay for them to go for a wonderfull experience, all under the guise of being charitable. Frankly it's bull****. If you care about a cause, and want to help it by parachuting, pay your own costs, and make the donations actually go to the cause, not to a pilot and 'chuting school.
I do see your point specofdust, but raising money and using that to pay part of the cost is better than raising nothing at all. But of course I'll be contributing myself! They more or less asked me to do it rather than me asking them to do it and I've pretty much accepted the challenge! Afaik all I need to do is attend some training sessions and health checks then jump out of the plane! And of course I need to raise more than the cost of the jump hopefully I will raise a good amount, every penny counts. Since some people here have had good times parachuting it's giving me more of an urge to do it, I'm not scared of heights or planes but anyone would be scared jumping out of the sky! The event will be held at Sailsbury Plain fyi.
Well, to an extent yes, but the jump itself is utterly needless. So what valid excuse there is for doing the jump and then giving say 40% of the money you earned in total to charity, I'm not sure I really see. There are plenty of ways to collect for charity, most not nearly as expensive a parachute jump. I just find bringing charity into it very...disingenuous, to repeat myself I guess, since I can't think of any better word. I think the cause you selected is a good one, and I wouldn't say you were doing a bad thing, but I think so many people consider it to be a good deed, and it really really isn't. It's a selfish morally neutral deed at best. Y'know me, I love to rant against anything
I have to say that I do agree with you to an extent yes, but consider this... would I gain more money by doing a sponsored silence/walk or by doing a parachute jump? My bet is that a parachute jump gets more attention hence more money, no? Because I am doing the jump does not mean that I won't be contributing money myself!
