Hot Air Balloon Jump

A hot air balloon jump is a lot different than a normal skydive. In a normal skydive, you jump out of the plane, which is going about 100 mph horizontally; so you are not really falling straight down when you exit the plane because you have some horizontal movement as well. This horizontal movement takes away from the true weightlessness feeling, which is achieved in a hot air balloon jump where you fall straight down. Another big difference is that when you are about to jump out of the plane it is very loud because you are right behind the propeller, but there is almost no noise when you are about to jump out of the hot air balloon. Hot air balloon jumps are an extreme thrill, but they are also said to be very peaceful and scenic.

Here are some awesome videos:
1. base jumping at the beginning and then balloon jumps
2. go pro balloon jump
3. world record balloon jump

The safety of skydiving

Today, I am going to talk about the safety of skydiving; and believe it or not skydiving is a very safe sport. Every year over 3.1 million skydives are made, and last year there were only 19 fatalities. I will talk about this fatality rate in a minute, but first I will compare this rate to other rates.

Every time you get into a car, you are 25 times more likely to die in a car crash than in a skydiving accident. I know what your thinking, way more people drive cars than skydive. I am not talking about the number of people killed in car crashes versus the number of people killed in skydiving accidents, I am talking your percent chance of dying in a car crash verse a skydiving accident. The percent of people that die in car crashes is 25 times higher than the percent of people that die in skydiving accidents. You are also more likely to be killed by a strike of lightning or a bee sting than to die skydiving.

Now I will talk about why the deaths in skydiving occur. In almost every case of a skydiving fatality, there was a perfectly good parachute over the head of the jumper. This is because some jumpers try to perform crazy stunts under canopy. In skydiving believe it or not, experts are more likely to have fatal accidents than beginners because they are over confident and try to push their limits. Experts tend to have small parachutes that allow them to have more forward movement. Some experts also perform a very dangerous maneuver called swooping. In swooping the skydiver purposely aims his parachute towards the ground when he is getting close to the ground to gain speed and then at the last second try pulls up in an attempt to be going very fast right above the ground. One skydiver that likes to swoop told me that you spend 10-12 seconds getting into a "kill mode" and then spend the next 5-6 trying to get out of it and go flying across the ground. Swooping is the cause of the large majority of the deaths in skydiving; so, if you were to eliminate the deaths from swooping from the skydiving death statistic, skydiving would have almost no deaths every year.

Swooping done right and swooping gone wrong and cool red bull swooping video

Skydiving Licences

The next step after completing AFF is to obtain a skydiving license. There are four different types of licenses: A,B,C, and D. The A license is the lowest and the D license is the highest. Each license allows you to perform new things like packing your own parachute or going on a night jump. You must complete a certain amount of maneuvers on the ground, in freefall, and under canopy that are listed on the USPA A License Proficiency Card and at least 25 jumps to get your A license. Once you have your A license, you can begin working on your B license. The B license requires at least 50 jumps and also has a certain amount of maneuvers that you must perform. The C license requires 200 jumps, and the D license requires 500 jumps; and both the C and D licenses have a certain amount of required maneuvers that you must perform.

Here are two more awesome skydiving videos: Some free flying and some more free flying

AFF Jumps 2-7

Every AFF jump has a very structured set of maneuvers that must be performed, which is called a dive flow. The dive flow for each jump is fairly similar to the level one AFF jump that I described in my last post, so I am going to simply go over the main skills involved in each jump. Every AFF jump the instructors put a lot of emphasis on having a good body position and ATTITUDE AWARENESS!! In the level two AFF jump, the student does practice pulls, 90 degree turns, and forward movement with two instructors holding onto the student the entire time. In the level three jump, the student exits the plane with two instructors; but, once he or she is in the correct body position, the instructors let go. The student must simply stay stable. After the level three jump, the student only jumps with one instructor for the rest AFF. In the level four jump, the instructor lets go of the student after he or she is stable; and then the student does 90 degree turns and forward movement. In the level five jump, the instructor releases the student once stable; and the student performs 360 degree turns and forward movement. In the level six jump, the instructor does not hold onto the student at all; and the student performs a backflip to become unstable and have to regain stability. The student then performs tracking, which is the skill that allows the skydiver to move horizontally relative to the ground. In the level seven and final jump, the student performs a solo diving exit from the plane; and then performs a front flip followed by tracking and 360 degree turns. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of these jumps, but the later jumps where the instructors were not holding onto you were insanely fun especially the level six and seven jumps where you got to perform awesome maneuvers.

Another cool video

AFF Level one

Accelerated Freefall, AFF, is a course that teaches a student how to skydive and is the first step to becoming a certified skydiver. AFF has seven different levels that the student must complete to pass the course. Level one consists of exiting the plane, performing a circle of awareness, performing three practice pulls, performing another circle of awareness, checking a heading, checking attitude, locking on at 6000 feet, pulling at 5500 feet, performing a landing pattern, and landing. Throughout the freefall portion of the jump there are two instructors holding onto the student to keep the student steady and to insure that the parachute is pulled at the correct altitude. When doing a circle of awareness, the student must locate a point on the horizon to make sure that he or she is not spinning; and the second part of the circle of awareness is checking ones altitude. When performing a practice pull, the student practices how he or she would pull the parachute; so that he or she will have no trouble locating the handle when it comes time to pull the parachute. Locking on means that the student locks on to his or her altimeter, so that he or she does not miss the correct pull altitude. On the level one jump, the instructors are mainly worried about the student's body position and his or her altitude awareness. My level one jump went according to this dive flow and was obviously a lot of fun! EVERY SKYDIVE IS AWESOME!!!

Awesome Skydiving video

Types of Skydiving for Beginners

There are three types of skydiving for beginners: tandem, IAD/Static line, and AFF. A tandem skydive is a jump where the student is strapped into a harness and attached to a certified tandem instructor. This method of skydiving is often used for people that only want to jump one time or people that are testing out the sport to see if they like it. I did this type of jump as my first jump. In an IAD or static line jump the student has his or her own parachute, but it is pulled out right as they leave the plane.  In a static line jump the parachute is tied to a line that is tied to the plane; so that the line will pull out the parachute as one jumps out of the plane, and the line will detached from the parachute. In a IAD, Instructor Assisted Deployment, the instructor pulls the parachute for the student as he or she is jumping out of the plane. AFF is a progression of jumps that will allow for a student to become a certified skydiver. In AFF there are multiple levels that teach the student different skills. The student must demonstrate these different skills to pass each level to move on to the next one. I went through AFF and actually just graduated.

These are two videos of the world record vertical freeflying formation.
1. The world record with the song radioactive playing in the background
2. The world record from one persons point of view

Critical Thinking

"Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action." (Michael Scriven & Richard Paul)
"Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself." (criticalthinking.org)
"disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence" (dictionary.com)
"Critical thinking is a set of skills and attitudes that are deployed selectively to evaluate arguments (reasons and their companion conclusions) according to explicit standards of rationality." (ius.edu)"The process of independently analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information as a guide to behavior and beliefs." (about.com)

After doing my research, I think that critical thinking is obviously a deeper form of thinking; but it seems like you can make up any type of definition that you want because of the ambiguity of the phrase critical thinking.