Terminal Velocity

Today I went skydiving with my son! First time for both of us. Until you’ve done lots of dives you have to go in tandem with an experienced skydiver. So we went to the Sussex Skydiving, and checked in. We each got hooked into one half of a tandem rig. Then we went up in the airplane to 14,000 feet (along with our instructors and the other people jumping). At that altitude the plane leveled off and pairs started jumping out.

First the instructor attaches you to their suit (the other half of the tandem rig). He tightens the straps so you’re up nice and snug, as one unit. Then we moved together to the open door, and I put my feet out. My instructor then pushed us out of the plane.

The first few seconds were somewhat disorienting, but I quickly got my bearings and started hooting and hollering. Of course, now that we were falling up to 120 mph the wind was so loud I couldn’t hear anything!

So the title of the post refers to the maximum downward velocity, in this case 120 mph. At this speed the downward pull of gravity is canceled out by the drag of falling through the air, so this is the fastest we went going down. We had about 60 seconds of free fall. Now, it turns out that in tandem jumping the instructor uses a drogue chute to stabilize the two of you. This means our drag was higher than without it, so our terminal velocity was lower. Also, two people falling in a tandem rig would have more weight for the amount of surface area, and their terminal velocity (without the drogue) would be higher. So I don’t really know what a single person’s terminal velocity would be.

Then the instructor pulled the chute and we slowed down. The chute provided much more drag, so our terminal velocity was less. Finally we landed back at the airport. For this the instructor had us dive, then level out just above the ground. We stuck our feet out in front, and hit the ground. Our forward and downward momentum was very low and we skidded for a few feet before stopping.

So Rileysci, how was it?

It was very exciting! Certainly more thrilling than large roller coasters. But I’m kind of old, and I had issues. Isome ear pain when going up in the airplane. Surprisingly, I didn’t notice any pain on the way down, but my body was overwhelmed with other things at the time and didn’t notice. While going down with the chute open I was kind of dizzy, probably from my nervous system being overwhelmed. It’s taken a while for my body to get back to equilibrium (yay homeostasis!). Overall it was something to check off my bucket list, but I won’t do this again.

My son enjoyed it much more and will definitely be doing this again before the summer ends.

#sussexskydiving