How People Learn To Engage In Accelerated Freefall Parachuting

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Some people really enjoy their extreme sports. These are sports with a high degree of risk which gives people that like them a great adrenaline rush and feeling of accomplishment. Adrenaline junkies love extreme sports including windsurfing, freestyle scootering, air racing, aggressive inline skating, mountain biking, and motocross.

Parachuting was first successfully performed in 1783 in France. Prior to that year, inventors had tried to parachute off structures around the world and often ended up dying as a result. It was Frenchman Louis-Sébastien Lenormand who jumped off of the Montpellier Observatory in 1783 in the south of France and successfully landed. He came up with the term “parachuting” a few years later.

For some adrenaline junkies just simply parachuting is no longer enough. These people will now perform accelerated freefall (AFF) which is an extreme version of parachuting. They intentionally fall at the fastest speed that is physically possible. They jump when the plane they are on is between 10,000 and 15,000 feet off the ground and position their bodies to minimize wind resistance on the way down before pulling their chute.

On the West Coast, accelerated free fall CA is the most popular state to engage in this extreme sport. This is no doubt due to the year-round great weather. There are a number of AFF training schools in California. All of them are part of the accelerated freefall program which was first put in place in. This program can take people from complete beginners at parachuting to become accelerated freefall masters.

This AFF program can use either numbers or letters to designate how advanced someone has become at accelerated freefalling. In the United States it is a seven level program. When someone new to this extreme sport is level’s one through three each participant is accompanied by two Jumpmasters. After learning the basics and safety skills they get to levels four through seven where they jump with just one Jumpmaster. After this, they graduated to level eight and can train on their own to get their A license.

According to  Wikipedia, the Jumpmasters use hand signals to tell students to “pull” if they run into trouble which will release their parachutes. If needed they will physically take the students hand and stick it on the ripcord if necessary. If the Jumpmaster feels it necessary they can pull their student’s ripcord themselves. Each student’s parachute assembly has some extra “pull” handles for the Jumpmaster to use if needed.

There is a specific height where the Jumpmasters must deploy their parachutes when helping students learn accelerated freefall. However, if the student’s parachute assembly still hasn’t deployed at this height they should be ok as they have an automated activation device that will deploy their reserve parachute. This is rarely needed but is a literal lifesaver when it does come out. For those who love adrenaline engaging in accelerated freefall can be a great time. It’s expensive to get started but when people can perform on their own the costs do come down.