Indoor Skydiving And Canada

Skydiving As It Used To Be

The sport of skydiving has some pretty advanced equipment these days, but it wasn't always so. The sport began with skydiving pioneers using ex, or surplus military equipment. parachute manufacturers did latch on to the new market but much of the development was done by their customers, whilst tiny companies, often just one man bands built packs and harnesses for sport jumpers. Discover some of the history here and a lot more in the book 'Of Land, Sea and Sky'. www.oflandseaandsky.com

After

World War Two a skydiving club was established at Thruxton airfield

near Andover in Hampshire, southern England. The British skydiving

Club used old (even then) Jackaroo biplanes, ex military parachutes

and the club members were pioneers who would go on to found other

skydiving clubs, become National Coaches and so on.

Today

we're quite familiar with square parachutes that glide and perform

like a hang glider, indeed it's possible to strap an engine to

someone's back with a propeller in a cage, attach a modern square

parachute to their shoulders and hey presto they can fly. We're also

accustomed to the idea of buddy jumps where a would-be skydiver, or

someone who just wants a one off experience can be attached to the

front of an experienced jumper and do a minute's free-fall from

twelve thousand feet on their first jump, often their only jump for

the 'I've done that' box ticking character.

The

buddy jump is only possible because these days reserve parachutes are

worn on the back as well as the main parachute, which has

traditionally been worn there, this in turn is a result of parachutes

getting smaller and lighter, making it possible for two to be worn

mounted one above the other in a tandem rig as they were originally

called. No need to differentiate today, all kit is like that.

Not

so long ago all parachutes were round, heavy and bulky and reserve

parachutes were worn on the front of the body. Strangely parachuting

as a sport may even have peaked in the nineteen seventies, when this

was still largely the case. In the early nineteen seventies the

Parafoil square parachute became available and even triangular

parachutes based on the Rogallo wing were experimented with, whilst

other companies developed the high performance round with an inverted

apex, extended high pressure area and a myriad of slits, holes and

control lines.

None

of these designs was a hundred percent certain to open without

malfunction, so skydivers used a plain round reserve that was more

than ninety nine percent reliable! The first commercially successful

square parachute was the Strato Star, later followed by a larger

version, the Strato Cloud. Early 'Stars' had a reefing system using

lines and rings around the periphery to control the potentially back

breaking opening shock. This was also a complexity that could lead to

a malfunction and it was ordinary sport jumpers who pioneered the use

of a slider which slid down the rigging lines as the parachute opened

to control the opening sequence.

The

slider itself could cause a problem if too large or too small and

sliders with holes in and various designs were experimented with

until reliability was achieved. Today, sport jumpers use square

reserves and are happy to wear them on their backs, where they cannot

see them, nor reach them with their hands, so reliable has the

equipment become.

the nineteen seventies experienced sport parachutists generally

jumped high performance rounds and by the end of that decade pretty

much all of them were jumping squares, all students however were

still jumping rounds, usually ex military kit even then. Experienced

jumpers on squares still trusted to round reserves. The accelerated

free-fall course hadn't been invented and the sponsored jump for

charity was a new trendy innovation.

Both

Britain and America had a plethora of sport parachute clubs and there

were quite a few in Spain, France and elsewhere in Europe not to

mention Australia and elsewhere. The British Parachute Club at

Thruxton did not survive but the RSA Parachute Club moved to Thruxton

from Blackbushe airport and at it's peak in the mid seventies trained

as many as seven thousand new jumpers a year quite something given

the British weather. The other full time club at Peterborough almost

certainly did similar numbers and before long there was a third full

time club at Headcorn in Kent as well as weekend only clubs spread

around the country. For an in depth understanding of the skydiving

scene in the nineteen seventies get a copy of the book 'Of Land, Sea

And Sky'.

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Canada Weekends #2 (KT indoor skydiving experience)

14 Aug 2008 at 9:31pm

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