You’ve watched the jaw-dropping videos. You’ve checked out other successful students’ AFF videos to get an idea of what to expect. Now, naturally, you want to put yourself in their securely-tied shoes. If you’re looking for how to become a certified skydiver, you’ve come to the right place: Skydive Perris has one of the longest-running, most trusted learn to skydive programs on the planet. You couldn’t be in better hands.

How To Get Certified To Skydive Solo

Your journey to fulfill those freefall fantasies starts with your enrolment in the First Jump Course. At Perris, we teach new skydivers using the AFF method. The method is described in this little presentation (second tab from the left) on the United States Parachuting Association website, but we’ll summarize: AFF includes a ground school, eight levels of mastery and a few more supervised jumps afterward before the student nabs that coveted A-license. 

We’ve put together some AFF videos that break down step-by-step what you’ll cover in AFF training, just so you have some forewarning and forearming when you march onto the Perris campus. Research is a good thing.

How Many Jumps To Become A Certified Skydiver?

Riddle me this: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop? It depends on your technique, your focus and your determination. (In learning to skydive, y’know, biting will get you nowhere.) However, you do need a minimum of 25 jumps to obtain a skydiving ‘A’ license.

As in any well-run training program of any type, students don’t progress to the next level until they’ve demonstrated mastery of the level with which they’re currently engaged. As there are eight levels within the AFF curriculum, each with a determined set of skills to be mastered and demonstrated, you’ll jump at least eight times (and that’s if you’re a stone-cold natural). Some people may jump a couple of times at a certain level, but it all depends on you.

Luckily, at Perris, we have a “hack”: our on-site indoor skydiving vertical wind tunnel. The tunnel allows our AFF students to work on bodyflight skills in a low-stress, variable-controlled environment that makes passing in-the-sky tests a lot easier and more efficient. The tunnel is a key part of our curriculum, and you’re going to be super-glad that it is.

Your next question is very probably going to be, “So–how much does it cost to become a certified skydiver?” Check it out: Skydive Perris offers a range of AFF packages to fit any budget and help control costs.

How To Become A Skydiver

You think we’re borrowing a duplicated page from the Department of Redundancy Department, huh? Guess what: We’re not.

Becoming a skydiver is actually a very different animal indeed from simply getting certified to skydive without a tandem instructor strapped to your back. Becoming a skydiver involves integrating yourself into the community. It involves making a second home at the dropzone and dropping deep into the culture and the living history that undergirds the sport. It involves a lot of beer-nursing and campfire-gazing and craning your neck to peer upwards. And it’s the best becoming you’ll ever become.

Are you ready to become a skydiver? It’s not that big a leap; in your heart, you probably already are. What are you waiting for? Let’s do this thing.

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So you have your eyes set on the skies? Congratulations!

Completing your Accelerated Freefall Course is one of the most satisfying, exciting and life-changing experiences you’ll ever have. We know it’s a challenge and we want to help you succeed, so we’ve put together our very best tips to smooth the way.

1. Jump Often.

Get to the drop zone as often as possible. To build skills and feel confident, you’ll need to jump much more than the minimum of once every 30 days. Ideally, you’ll do a couple of jumps a day, at least twice a week.

2. Get Comfortable In The Tunnel.

If you want to fast-track your way to success in an AFF program, be sure to spend as much time in the wind tunnel as humanly possible. At Skydive Perris we include wind tunnel time as part of our ground training for AFF-1 so you’ll already have the basics down by the time you’re crouching in the aircraft door.

3. Review Your AFF Jump Prior To Arriving At The DZ.

Each AFF jump is a little different. To help our students prepare, we made all of our AFF training videos and dive flows available on our website which explains the procedure for each level. We highly recommend that you spend a few minutes of your morning reviewing this information and using it to pre-visualise a successful jump.

4. Don’t Expect Perfection.

Getting your skydiving certification is hard. What you’re asked to do isn’t easy, and there’s a lot of pressure on. If it turns out that you have to repeat an AFF level, don’t beat yourself up. Some of today’s world champions have repeated AFF levels. Just work on it in the tunnel, if you need to, and try again with a smile.

5. Scared? That’s Normal–and Totally Okay.

Every new skydiver is scared, whether it shows or not. This isn’t skee ball, after all–this is a couple miles’ worth of high-speed descent from a flying airplane. The more you do it, the more you’ll learn to take control of the fears you experience. Not acknowledging your fear is a waste, anyway–the bravery lies in the fact that you’re terrified, but work diligently despite your fears.

6. Be Patient.

You’ll experience delays. Weather holds will keep you on the ground. You’ll hang tight for a slow-turning load or two. Remember to keep your sense of humor.

7. Remember To Have Fun!

Along those lines: a smile and a sense of humor will go far to helping you along your path to your A-license stamp. Don’t forget to reach out to the community for encouragement; we’re here for you. Talk to people, ask questions and enjoy the journey!
Learn more about our Accelerated Freefall Course or contact a member of our team with questions about how to become a certified skydiver.

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When people find out that it is possible to skydive with your own parachute without first having done a tandem, they’re often very surprised. A tandem skydive and an AFF skydive, of course, are mighty different. Here, we’ll take a look at the main differences between the two experiences–and help you work out for yourself the one that’s best for you.

AFF Students Get Their Own Parachute

The biggest difference between an AFF jump and a tandem jump is perhaps the most obvious one: a tandem student shares his/her parachute with a tandem instructor, whereas an AFF student jumps on his/her own.

An AFF Student Jumps With Two Instructors, Not Just One

An accredited AFF training program like ours puts three pro skydivers on each AFF jump with the student: two licensed, professional, experienced skydiving instructors, one on each side of the student, and a professional skydiving cameraperson. A tandem student enjoys the company of just two pros, not three: the tandem instructor with whom he/she shares a parachute, and the lucky pro jumper who gets to capture it all for posterity.

Tandem Is A Lesser Commitment

A tandem skydive places the responsibility for the entire process (directing freefall, then opening and steering the parachute) in the hands of the tandem instructor. The tandem student learns the rudimentary workings of the system, but the training is much simplified. Because of that, the time and training commitment for a tandem student is shorter and simpler than that of AFF. Therefore, it can be less stressful.

AFF Students Learn Much More

An AFF student can expect about six hours of ground school training to begin his/her journey. That time is spent learning about the gear and practicing emergency procedures on the ground until the student and his/her instructor are confident that a solo parachute jump is appropriate.

Tandem Is A Great Stepping Stone

This much is inarguable: Tandem skydiving is an excellent introduction to the sport. Since it incurs a lower cost and tends to be a less anxious method of introduction to the sky, it’s a lovely taster. If you love it, then, by all means step it up to AFF–which is the clear path for those who wish to begin the process of becoming a skydiver.

Tandem Isn’t For Everyone

If you’re a high-test, all-out adventurer who likes to go for the gold, you may fast-forward through this whole parachute-sharing business and proceed directly to the AFF part, dear reader. It’s not the commonest route, but it’s well within the realm of possibility–and we’ll high five the heck out of you for it!

Both Are Amazing Experiences

No matter which path you choose, you’ll love the sky. We’re thrilled at the prospect of taking you there. Choose the one that calls to you and go, go, go!

Learn more about our AFF Skydiving Program or contact a member of our team with questions about which path is right for you.

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When you show up at our dropzone to make your first tandem skydive, you might be surprised at how busy the place is. You’ll see dozens of people in custom gear running around, bustling about the business of skydiving–and they’re not working. They’re playing. If you’re intrigued about what it might be like to have skydiving as a hobby, or how to get a skydiving license, you’ve come to the right place. At Skydive Perris, we have a thriving community of experienced skydivers.

There are a few things you’ll be interested to know about the typical life of a skydiver. Curious? Here are a few choice facts.

1. It’s Not Just A Weekend Thing (Depending Where You Go).

If you’re like most tandem passengers, you’ll come out to make a skydive on a weekend day when you have time to do the class and celebrate a job well done after the jump is over. For most sport skydivers, however, weekends are not enough.

“Fun jumpers” in many places are limited to weekends just because of plane availability, or they’re stuck on the ground by bad weather. A big dropzone in a place with mild, consistent weather–like our “home DZ” of Perris–is open all week long, year-round.

Skydive Perris is pretty special, actually. We’re one of the busiest dropzones on the planet, capable of sending up over 100 planes full of skydivers every single day we’re open. Because of that, people come from all over the world to jump here.

2. We Go Again And Again And Again And Again.

The average sport skydiver, on a good day at the dropzone, will jump five or six times over the course of a day, packing his or her parachute in-between jumps. Highly motivated skydivers can double that number–and a member of a team training for a skydiving competition can jump twenty times a day. (Yeah. That’s, like, totally exhausting.)

3. We Have A Bunch Of Different Ways That We Can Go About This “Falling” Business.

When you do a tandem skydive, you exit the plane and freefall in a belly-to-earth configuration. It’s super-rad and works brilliantly. That said–when you get your skydiving license and take it up as a hobby, you’ll find that there are a lot of other ways to skydive.

For example: you can choose to stay belly-to-earth, but get out of the plane in a group and make different formations with each other as you fall. (That’s called “relative work”.) You can freefall in a sitting position, standing up, with your feet pointed up and your head pointed down, or in any number of positions where your belly button isn’t looking down at the dropzone. (That’s called “freeflying”.) You can put on a wingsuit–the proper name for the “flying squirrel” suit you’ve undoubtedly seen on viral videos–or a tracking suit, and zoom along a more horizontal path. You can focus entirely on the many special methodologies of flying a parachute. You can even try indoor skydiving at a vertical wind tunnel like the one we have right on the Perris dropzone. There are so many ways to do it, you can have thousands of jumps and still experience a new skydive every time.

4. We Look At The World A Little Differently.

We think about purchases in the context of how many jump tickets the cost represents. We analyze every flag we see in terms of how windy it is for landing our parachutes. We pray for bad weather on days we can’t make it to the dropzone so the climate can “get it out of its system”. We plan our vacations around skydiving get-togethers (of which there are hundreds, all over the world!) We spend free hours adding new and exciting entries to our logbooks–aircraft types, new dropzones; new jumping buddies; new ways of getting out of the plane; etc. And we can’t think of a better way to relax and let off some steam than falling for 13,500 feet.

Leonardo Da Vinci summarized it best, really. “Once you have tasted flight,” he said, “You will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Ready to become part of our skydiving community? At Skydive Perris, you can work towards a skydiving license through our accelerated freefall (AFF) course and learn to skydive solo. We look forward to welcoming you into our thriving skydiver community!

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