Are you interested in tasting flight for yourself? You may think, skydiving is skydiving right? Not exactly. There are certainly quite a few similarities between indoor skydiving in a wind tunnel and outdoor skydiving, but indoor skydiving replicates just one portion of the skydiving experience: freefall. The benefit of indoor skydiving is a freefall time of two minutes and up. The typical freefall time on a skydive is approximately 60 seconds.

Often individuals who regularly skydive use the wind tunnel to hone and refine their body flight skills and improve their performance on skydives because of the increased amount of freefall time, but many aspects of the skydiving experience simply cannot be replicated.

Altitude and Airplanes

There’s something unique about taking off in an airplane, feeling the wheels shudder as you lift off, knowing soon you’ll be exiting the very same plane. As you watch the world grow smaller and smaller beneath you, you’ll feel butterflies of excitement and anticipation. On a skydive at Skydive Perris, you’ll travel to an awe-inspiring height of 13,500 feet. With indoor skydiving, you will enter into the flow of wind through a door located on the side of the chamber. For those that might not be ready for the thrill of exiting an airplane in flight roughly two miles above the ground, indoor skydiving is the perfect way to experience body flight.

Canopy Flight

Another aspect of skydiving that cannot be replicated within the confines of the wind tunnel is flight beneath a parachute. Canopy flight can be as serene or as exciting as you’d like it to be. You can gently float to the ground or turn and zip about. Many skydivers dedicate their entire careers to developing their skills as a canopy pilot by learning and performing various parachuting maneuvers.

A Bird’s Eye View

Indoor skydiving takes place on the ground within a round tube. While the walls are clear, the view is limited to the spectators around you. On a skydive, the world is your oyster. You’ll see the world from an entirely new perspective. The wild blue yonder beckons. There’s a freedom found in the sky that just can’t quite be replicated within the tunnel.

Which is right for you?

Indoor skydiving is a great way to dip your toe in the water, as it were, and get a feel for how the freefall portion of a skydive will feel. So, which experience is right for you? At Skydive Perris, you don’t have to choose; we have both of the incredible experiences available at the same facility! As a matter of fact, we are the ONLY center in California and one of only two in the nation to be able to offer this.  While there are certain restrictions for both indoor and outdoor skydiving, indoor skydiving is a bit more accessible for the young and for those with disabilities.

Take a trip to Skydive Perris today and decide which experience is perfect for you! If you’d like to hear what’s it is like from people like you, check out some of our reviews.

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When you picture skydiving, you probably picture an ecstatic guest in plastic goggles falling through the sky, attached to a smiling instructor. Once you’ve checked that off your bucket list, then that’s it, right? Been there, done that.

You might not know this, but oh how wrong you are.  

Most do not even know that there is much more to skydiving than doing a tandem jump. The moment you show up to Skydive Perris and have a look around, it’ll become immediately obvious to you that there’s a world of wonderment and athleticism waiting just past that open aircraft door. It neither has to be nor should be a one-time bucket list item. Do we have your attention? We thought so. Here’s a peek.

You could be cleared for freefall self-supervision in just 7 jumps!

From the year-round amenable weather to the world-level caliber of our instructor team, our dropzone here in Southern California is the perfect place to learn how to skydive. If you make the commitment, being able to skydive solo in only seven jumps is an easy feat to accomplish.  Furthermore, becoming a fully licensed skydiver in as little as a week is totally possible.

When you join the ranks of Skydive Perris’ elite group, you’ll be going through the same program that has safely guided thousands of new skydivers to earn their solo skydiving certification. It’s called AFF (which stands for “Accelerated Freefall”). The AFF program — as created and governed by the United States Parachute Association — is comprised of vital preparatory classroom time, and seven levels of skill-building in freefall and parachute landing (parachute coaching is done via radio from the ground). From there, you’ll make several more coached jumps before being issued your full USPA A-License. It’s the “golden ticket” that allows you to jump solo (or with friends) at skydiving dropzones all over the world.

From there, you’re welcome to head to infinity and beyond

Got that license? Great! You’re off to the races now.

No matter what flavor of freefall adventurer you are, skydiving has a discipline that’ll fit you like a — well — custom skydiving suit. Once you’re licensed, you can explore them all with expert coaches right here at Skydive Perris and pick one to focus on. (Not into commitment? Dabble in a few!) 

You can make linked shapes in freefall with groups of your friends (“relative work”), you can get out there and fly your body in multiple orientations (“freefly”), you can forego the freefall almost entirely and focus on your parachute (“canopy relative work” and “swooping”), or you could even put on one of those ‘flying squirrel suits’ you’ve been checking out for years (“wingsuiting”). There’s even speed skydiving, freestyle (kind of like freefalling figure skating), tracking (gets a little complicated, ask us in person). Honestly, more than you can shake an altimeter at. 

Do you like shiny medals and hard work? Well, once you get good at one (or several) of these disciplines, you can start competing at the local, state, national and international levels!

All that’s pretty amazing, right? This author’s mind was blown when I first discovered all there is to do in the sport. And there’s only one way to get started — make a reservation and get that first jump under your belt. From there, the whole sky is your oyster!

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How well do you know your emergency procedures?

I’m asking the question because it has become a big issue in the sport. Most skydivers perform their Emergency Procedures (EPs) correctly if asked to demonstrate them. Most can write down the correct answer if taking a written test. But have you trained them to the point of muscle memory? Are the perfect EPs an instinctive response to recognizing a malfunction? If faced with a high pressure, physically strenuous, time sensitive situation are you ready to execute your EPs perfectly and without hesitation? Unfortunately, the honest answer to these questions is too often ‘no’.

Far too many people do not know their emergency procedures anywhere near as well as they need to. As the DZ Manager of one of the world’s largest drop zones, any time I see someone pull too low, or have an AAD fire, I always sit them down and speak to them. Together we try to figure out how they got down there so we can be sure they know what to do differently to be certain it never happens again.

One beautiful, busy day at Skydive Perris we had two AAD fires within an hour of each other. One of the individuals had about 100 jumps and initiated deployment at 4,000 feet. He had a slow speed malfunction, cut away at a high enough altitude but didn’t pull his reserve before his AAD fired. The other had about 400 jumps, started his deployment at 3000’, had a pilot chute in tow, cut away and went for his reserve but not before his AAD beat him to it.

Since both of them had initiated deployment plenty high there was no reason they should have ended up still in freefall so dangerously low. I asked them to demonstrate their emergency procedures for me. They both did. Then I asked them to talk me through the malfunction, their thought processes and show me what they did. Neither of them executed their emergency procedures correctly! They both did something different in the air than the intended emergency procedures they had just shown me! One of them ‘reached’ before he ‘looked’. The other reached with one hand when his plan was to have both hands on both handles.

How is that possible? Skydiving equipment has advanced so much. The emergency procedures we have to do when faced with a malfunction are simple and easy to execute. Way too many fatalities – and more close calls than we can even count – happen because we don’t perform these procedures correctly within the time we have.

These three simple ideas could save your life:

#1 Practice your EPs

Emergency procedures are not practiced enough. I’ve asked many people how often they practice their EPs. The most common answer I hear is “I practice them before each jump.” That sounds like it should be plenty but the fact is, it’s not. Based on that, the jumper with 100 jumps had practiced EPs a total of 100 times. That is not nearly enough to develop the instinctive muscle memory you will need to save your life in the few seconds you have.

There are a few different ways to execute emergency procedures. Each one of them will work as long as you perform it correctly and immediately. None of them take more than five seconds. In a minute you could practice your EPs 12 times. Since your life depends on it, why not take five minutes each day and go through your EPs 60 times. We dirtdive a jump for 15 minutes but usually don’t practice saving our lives for even 5 seconds

You want to be a Badass?
Be a badass at performing your EPs.

– Dan BC

Do your EPs ten times a day for 30 seconds, or five times a day each for a minute. But somewhere in your day find five minutes you can dedicate to practicing EPs (every day, not just jumping days) and you will have rehearsed them to the point that they are totally automatic. You’ll see a malfunction and will instinctively perform the perfect procedures without hesitation.

#2 Stay one step ahead

We are too often surprised when our parachutes don’t work correctly and take too long to make the decision to cut away. Stay one step ahead. **Expect** your parachute to malfunction every jump. Be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. If you have any doubt at all about whether your parachute is good or not, it’s not. A good parachute doesn’t give you any doubt.
Don’t wait until you are faced with a stressful malfunction situation to decide what you are going to do. **Decide right now that if you aren’t 100% sure you have a good canopy over your head you will cut away without hesitation.**

#3 Pull at a safe altitude

If you don’t have enough altitude even well executed EPs won’t save you. USPA’s minimum deployment altitude is 2,500 feet. To deploy by 2,500 feet you need to be waving off no lower than 3000 feet. If you are lower you may not have the time you’ll need.
These three simple ideas could save your life. They’ve saved mine on more than 20 malfunctions. Please consider them and share them

www.danbrodsky-chenfeld.com

http://www.amazon.com/Above-All-Else-Skydivers-Adversity/dp/1616084464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382556172&sr=8-1&keywords=dan+brodsky-chenfeld

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Everyone who has made a Skydive agrees, there is nothing that compares to that first jump. You take the class, sit through the video and watch lots of people jump before you get in the plane. But even with the training and preparation, your first skydive is still the ultimate “leap of faith”.

You tried to imagine what it was going to be like, the sound of the wind, the air in your face, the incredible acceleration and speed, that moment of actually stepping out the door. You dreamt and thought about it for so long before ever jumping, but it was nothing like you expected! The adrenalin rush of your first freefall followed by the quiet serenity of the canopy flight was so completely different from anything you’d ever done before. You try to tell your friends about it but you’re at a loss for the right words and end up saying “I can’t explain it. You just have to do it.”

We hear it all the time, whether you only do one jump or choose to pursue skydiving as a new (and often lifelong) hobby, that first skydive is a life changing experience. You leave the drop zone with new confidence, ready to take the next leap of faith in pursuit of your dreams, to face your fears and tackle all challenges. At the moment of truth, when it came down to it, you had the courage to step off the plane and fly. If you could do that you can do anything.

What could possibly be better than your first jump? Your second jump!

Your second jump is a completely different experience than the first. The first jump is everything I just described. But the level of adrenaline and the sensation of freefall are so foreign to you that for everyone there is a certain amount of “sensory overload.” With so many new physical and emotional experiences happening simultaneously it is nearly impossible to absorb it all. It’s sometimes hard to tell if the freefall lasted 5 seconds or two minutes. When we think back after our first jump it is difficult to recall and to play it back in our minds as a moment by moment rerun.

On the second jump our hearts will be racing again, but because we’ve experienced it before we know much more what to expect. There is much less sensory overload. We can recall every second of it. Freefall actually seems like the 50ish seconds that it is. Because we are so much more aware during the jump we are actually able to enjoy the entire experience more. We don’t just have the adrenalin rush when we exit the plane, we remember it! We remember how we became more relaxed after exiting the plane as we transitioned into stable freefall (“relaxed” is a very relative term of course?). We remember the view of the beach and the mountains. We remember the smooth deceleration from freefall to the canopy flight as our parachute blossomed open.

With less sensory overload we are more aware and in touch with the entire experience and can remember it vividly and enjoy it even more. We can play that memory in our heads over and over again and relive it as many times as we want.

We experience the first jump, but we own the second one!
There is nothing that compares to that second Skydive.

www.danbrodsky-chenfeld.com

http://www.amazon.com/Above-All-Else-Skydivers-Adversity/dp/1616084464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382556172&sr=8-1&keywords=dan+brodsky-chenfeld

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Many people who don’t jump have a funny, stereotypical impression of skydivers. Some think we are a subculture of young, adrenalin junkies with a disregard for life who enjoy pushing the limits on every jump. Many of the movies that involve skydiving have not only backed that impression up, but have taken it a step further by making us into the likes of bank robbers and drug smugglers.

But one thing I’ve always loved about skydivers is that in reality we are the most diverse group of individuals you could ever find assembled in one place. Any given day on the drop zone, certainly at Skydive Perris, you will see skydivers from 18 to 80, from as many as 30 different countries (during big events), from every ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and occupation. We are teachers, students, Generals, Privates, doctors, waiters, fireman, gardeners, policeman, secretaries, mechanics, construction workers, models, actors, journalists and entrepreneurs of all types. You name it, we’ve got em!

But no matter the back ground, or financial status, when we walk on to the drop zone none of that matters. Everyone is equal.

The only thing I can think of which could possibly unite such an odd collection of individuals must be that skydivers share some kind of rare genetic disorder which makes us think that we are closer to being birds than we actually are.

There is one other thing that defines each and every one of us whether we’ve made one jump or thousands. We are all people who had a dream and dared to follow it through. Many people have dreams but far fewer have the courage to see them to fruition. Skydivers aren’t just dreamers. We are dreamers who backed it up with action. Action that was hard for us to take.

Most people who have made a jump dreamt about skydiving for years before they got up the courage to actually make it to the drop zone and do a first jump. Continuing after that is even more difficult. After each jump as new skydivers are working through the student progression towards their “A” License they experience feelings of exhilaration and freedom that are unmatched. Nothing else compares. They can’t wait for their next skydive.
But once they return home to their real world the excitement often subsides and common sense starts to take over. They start thinking of every reason to never to jump again. And there are many. For starters it’s dangerous and scary as hell, not to mention expensive, terribly inconvenient and time consuming. There are so many other things they could be doing with their time. Despite all that, their dream of flight is so strong that they find a way to make it happen.

Pursuing and achieving any dream proves to us that we don’t have to accept the status quo. That it’s actually possible to go after the things we want in life. I have seen many people who discovered this through skydiving then have the confidence and courage to pursue other dreams they had in business or relationships which were completely unrelated to skydiving.

I have two wonderful children and I couldn’t care less if they ever skydive. But I hope they find something to pursue in life that they are passionate about, something that keeps them up at night, that they can’t live without, something that will connect them with others who share that same passion. It doesn’t matter what it is, I just want them to have something they love like I love skydiving and people to share it with they love like I do skydivers.

www.danbrodsky-chenfeld.com

http://www.amazon.com/Above-All-Else-Skydivers-Adversity/dp/1616084464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382556172&sr=8-1&keywords=dan+brodsky-chenfeld

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