Freefall is the magical part of the skydive. It’s why people try skydiving.
As you fall forward out and down from the airplane you enter into the airstream created by the horizontal speed of the aircraft. Right from the exit, the sensation is different then jumping from a cliff where wind and speed increase from zero. As you exit, you gently enter the airstream and gradually, over the first 12 seconds of freefall, accelerate until you reach your top freefall speed of about 200km/h only you will not feel the acceleration or the sense that you’re falling at 200km/h. There’s a lot of science surrounding the why (link) but essentially your brain needs relative objects to detect speed. Our eyes are not capable of detecting closing distances of such magnitude therefore it doesn’t appear that you’ve moved in five seconds even though you’ve fell 1000 feet.
For many first time jumpers, sensory overload is a common phenomena for the first few seconds of the skydive. It’s simply that we’re overloaded with nuerochemicals responding to what they perceive as a threatening situation and the mind trying to focus on the most critical tasks. This can sometimes mean that people forget exactly what happened the first few seconds of the jump until they establish a new equilibrium. To that, the best thing we can tell people is breath deeply and smile to control your heart rate; otherwise buy video and pictures in case your forgot, or come back and do a second jump (sensory overload exponentially decreases with repetitions).
Or if you completely on the other end of the spectrum and want to crank the adrenaline dial all the way over to super stoked, let your instructor know you want a wild ride for a sweet gainer (backflip) on exit or lots of spinning and turning in freefall. And if it’s not how you roll, thats cool with us. We’re here to celebrate and experience your first jump. So, if you want to keep the horizon level, slow everything down and just look out to the mountains or the sunset, let us know that too! We’ll customize it for your adventure level.
During freefall, you are in front/below the tandem instructor with a horizontal attitude toward the ground (as in the position you would be if you were laying face first on the ground). While it really is hard to describe the actual feeling of human flight, and nothing really does do it justice other than the experience itself, it does resemble floating on a tunnel of column of air with 200km/h wind in your face and body. Paradoxically, it’s simultaneously an intense, adrenaline inducing yet zen and free experience.
Even though you’re doing the highest jumps in Canada and thus the longest freefalls, all good things must come to an end. And after an incredible 9000 feet (60 seconds) of freefall, it’s time to change your speed, perspective, orientation and control system. We’re at about 5000 feet above the ground and that means it’s time for the instructor to start the parachute deployment sequence.
