Posts Tagged ‘skydiving’

Readers of our site will also be happy to know that you can skydive, whitewater raft and scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef  from this town…

It is one of only two areas in Australia where the Wet Tropics rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef meet and is a culmination of the best that Far North Queensland has to offer. Not only does the golden beach stretch for over 14 kilometres with tropical islands scattered close by, but the water is calm, crystal clear, and brimming with fish.

What’re you waiting for?!

You might have heard of Major Phil Packer… the man who was paralysed in February last year when the vehicle he was in was hit by a rocket in Iraq. He suffered broken ribs and a crushed lower spine. He was the man who was told he would never walk again and yet he finished the London marathon, albeit painfully slowly, but remember – 18 months before the doctors said he would never get out of a wheelchair.

We like talking about extreme personalities and this is one man who is definitely worth a mention or two. Thanks to AffiliAid for this introductory video:

Phil Packer says: “From the original prognosis that I would never walk again, I have been very lucky and my injuries have improved. I set out to raise £1million by completing a number of challenges including 3 Main Events; Rowing the Channel, walking the London Marathon, and pulling myself up a Mountain. El Capitan is the last event before I concentrate on providing opportunities for people with disabilities and raising the profile of disability sports. I will travel to the USA during the first two weeks in June and with the expertise & support of Andy Kirkpatrick, Ian Parnell and Paul Tatersal, will pull myself up 1800ft in 3 days”.

A quick excerpt of Maj. Phil Packer completing the London Marathon (6MadeInEngland9):

and how he has successfully got others involved in his charity efforts (AffiliAid)

Packer started his 1,800 ft climb up the sheer rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park yesterday, 8th June.

His ascent of El Cap. is being attempted despite the fact that he was told he would never walk again.

Major Packer, who lives in Westminster, London, has said the three-day climb will be his final fundraising campaign before concentrating his efforts on promoting opportunities for disabled people.

Climbing a rock face would be a challenge most of us would balk at but with a characteristic display of courage over disability, Major Packer is determined to conquer the face that many able-bodied people have failed to do.

Pulling yourself up with your arms (the equivalent of doing more than 4,000 push-ups) is a painfully slow way to scale a rock face and though he’s in constant pain since the rocket attack last year, it’s not enough to discourage him from taking up this challenge.

He wants to prove that his disability is no bar to rock climbing even though he’s no fan of its dizzying heights.

Unseasonable rain over the Yosemite Valley won’t make his task any easier though experience suggests this trifling inconvenience won’t interrupt his attempt.

He and his team are climbing to support ‘Help for Heroes’ and to raise awareness of Disabled Climbing Opportunites.

Packer’s live update of his climb states: “Great day, currently at 250 meters. Very tough, arms are tired, but every pull up is one pull up nearer the top. Passed Pitch 6 out of 16. Sleeping on a portaledge tonight.”

Having attempted and completed a marathon, kayaked, sky-dived with the Red Devils and accepted El Cap’s challenge, Major Phil Packer is, in our opinion, the perfect candidate as one of our extreme sports personalities.

To find out more about him, or if you would like to contribute to his fund-raising efforts, please go to: www.philpacker.com

His is a noble cause and I will keep you posted on the climb…

MTV recently began airing a new Sunday night line-up. “Nitro Circus,” “Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory,” and “Bully Beatdown” are three of the new shows. They focus heavily on extreme sports, which have been steadily becoming more popular throughout recent years.

“Nitro Circus” is centered on freestyle motocross rider, Travis Pastrana, and a small group of other extreme athletes. Some of their stunts have included dirt bikes, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, tricycles, skydiving, base jumping, and even attempting a back flip with a monster truck.

Being professionals in extreme sports, the Nitro Circus gang is always taking their skills to a higher level. On a recent episode, Jim DeChamp lands the first front flip on a dirtbike. There is never a dull moment with the crew on “Nitro Circus.”

From what can be seen in the video below from mtvfanscape it is without doubt going to be an adrenaline fuelled show – wow – what are these guys on?……………and could they send some this way!

Rob Dyrdek created “Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory,” after finishing “Rob & Big. He purchased a 25,000 square foot warehouse and turned it into a “Fantasy Factory.” The factory consists of an indoor skate park complete with a foam pit, basketball hoops and a lot of other extreme kit. There is also a recording studio Rob had made for his cousin Drama to work on his music production. Upstairs are offices for his corporate team who often join in the Fantasy Factory fun. Iit is always fun to see what Rob and his friends are planning next.

Here’s Rob explaining what his show is going to be all about and showing us around his ‘factory’ – gonna be a lot of fun – and thanks to EpicExtremeSports for the video.

“Bully Beatdown” is a show hosted by Jason “Mayhem” Miller that focuses on Mixed Martial Arts. The premise of the show is that a victim of bullying can have their bully challenged to an MMA fight against a professional fighter. This is the classic, ‘pick on someone your own size’ scenario.

The bully is able to turn the offer down in which case he looks like a wimp or fight with the opportunity to win $10,000. Every fight consists of two 3-minutes rounds. In the first round the bully loses $1000 of $5000 every time he is tapped out. The second round is strictly kickboxing and the bully will win $5000 for just surviving the round. At the end of the fight, the victim wins whatever money the bully has lost.

And here is the video from mayhemmiller – whether you like it or not this is different and certainly very extreme.

This move into extreme sports by MTV certainly suggests that the ‘wave’ of popularity behind extreme sports is still building momentum – thats good news as far as we are concerned. Check out the action on a Sunday evening and tell us what you think.

A bit of madness for Monday morning – skydiving taken to an extreme… or, instead of bar hopping it’s plane hopping…

Thanks to chrisdevins for this video.

“Nine skydivers leapt from a plane in eastern Spain yesterday when the aircraft lost a wing and plunged to earth. Four of the parachutists were injured, two of them seriously. Two other skydivers suffered light injuries and the remaining five were unhurt, the network said. The plane burned on impact, killing the pilot and a passenger.” So reported The Associated Press in Madrid.

What a tragic accident.

So you want to learn to fly a wingsuit?

Well, they say the path to that is a full and fun one. We have talked about it before and mentioned The Brothers Gray in Orange, Virginia as some of the instructors available to teach you the how’s and wherefore’s, but here’s another little drop in the ocean to think about. A quick a – z of what you are taking on.

You must first learn to skydive and to do this you need to find a drop zone. Depending on how much time you have, how much money you’ve got to spend, and how brave you are, you have three options for what method of skydiving you’ll use for your first jump:

• tandem (where you are strapped to the front of your instructor),
• static line (where a cord attached from the plane to your parachute pulls the parachute open almost immediately after you jump out), and
• accelerated freefall (AFF) (you pull your own rip cord and you float to the ground solo). These offer varying levels of airborne freedom and varying levels of training time.

Then you must go through levels 1 – 7 of the AFF course which will teach you, in 7 jumps, how to belly fly and how to land a parachute. ‘Belly fly’ is the most basic style of free fall body control.

Follow the AFF up with a few coached jumps where you are jumping on your own. By the end of 25 jumps you will know how to pack a parachute, airplane protocol, belly flight body control and various landing patterns and what to do in an emergency. Both the Accelerated Freefall and the Advanced licence can be done in a week. You can of course take longer to do them but constant repetition makes you feel far more confident and it is important to be confident if you are going to continue your skydiving into wingsuit flying!

From Skdiving to Wingsuit Flying

Wingsuit flying is more regulated and also potentially far more dangerous than skydiving as there are a lot of things that can go wrong when your arms and legs are zipped up into the wings of the suit. It is highly unlikely that you will be allowed to progress to wingsuit lessons if you do not already have at least 200 skydives – we have discussed this before in an earlier blog.

By becoming an adept skydiver you will learn the various types of skydiving such as the above mentioned belly flying (the most basic), free flying, tracking (where you use your body to choose the direction of your flight) and relative work where you join with other people in the air. Learning how to do tracking is a very useful exercise as you learn to fly your body as if you are in a wingsuit.

It should also be said at this point that mistakes in judgment and procedure are the cause of 92% of skydiving fatalities. What does that mean? It means that if you do everything you’re supposed to do during that exhilarating 60 second drop to the ground, you’ll be fine, but if you don’t…

You will finally be ready to progress to wingsuit flying and when you do this you will understand why skydivers are so regulatory about the learning process. A wingsuit instructor will teach you everything from how to connect the wingsuit to your skydiving rig, to how to exit the plane and throw your pilot chute, and what flight pattern to take.

You need to imagine yourself as an aeroplane during the jump! So the more you know and understand the actual flight of a plane the more you will understand your own flight in a wingsuit – talk to the pilots! Your first jumps are likely to be scary as you will be working hard just to stay stable in the air, but you will soon be ‘flocking’ with your friends. Don’t fly ‘blind’ – which means landing miles away from the landing area!

Wingsuits or Squirrel Suits

There are various types of wing SUITS to use and they all sound like they come out of a Harry Potter novel! How about this one…Phoenix Fly Vampire 2 !!! However this particular suit is large and difficult to manage as a novice. It would be much better to start off with a small, intuitive, simple suit like the Birdman Classic or the Phoenix Fly Prodigy. When you are learning in these suits you will be able to do jumps out of helicopters, flips and barrel rolls, plus flying relative with other people. When you have built-up your confidence you can move on to the Phoenix Fly Vampire 2. It will take some getting used to as it is a very big, high performance suit and not easy to fly, but when you get used to it it is, apparently, perfect!

Obviously learning how to wingsuit fly is expensive, and costly on time too, but if you can afford to, it is recommended that you keep the lessons tightly packed so you create a habit not a hobby – skydivers call it ‘being current’. You cannot afford to be cocky in this sport – one small slip could end everything. Not a nice thought.

Don’t take my word for it though. Go to a skydive club and do everything by the book. Listen to and learn from your instructors. You are a braver person than I am! This is what Steph Potter (wife of Dean Potter the amazing mountain climber, baseliner, etc etc etc) has to say:

“Flying like a bird, with my friends, is perhaps the most amazing experience a human being can have. The more you fly, the more natural it becomes, and it just gets better and better”.