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PAST |
March 10, 2005 |
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Geographical Thursday |
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PAST |
March 10, 2005 |
NEXT | |
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* New Wind Tunnel * |
While in Eloy, at Skydive Arizona this past weekend, a thunderstorm blew through and literally put a damper on the day's activities. But during the storm I looked out and across the alternate landing area, towards the construction site of the new wind tunnel, I noticed a rainbow and got this shot.
For those of you that are not familiar with skydiving and/or what a skydive wind tunnel is for, I will explain.
As a normal skydive from an aircraft usually only provides approximately 60 seconds of free fall time, this leaves such a small amount of time to perfect the skills and maneuvers necessary for such a quick paced sport. You jump out of the plane, do a few moves and before you know it, the ground is coming up at you at 120 miles per hour, and its time to pull and open that chute. It seems that you struggle and struggle just to accomplish the simplest of tasks. And every one of these jumps costing you more than $20 each. But wouldn't it be nice if there was a way that you could continue that freefall time indefinitely, and not have to worry the whole time about pulling that chute. You could get the equivalent of 60 jumps in one hour's block of time. Then, of course, the only thing you have to worry about is getting all you can out of a whole hour or so.
The wind tunnels usually consist of huge motors with huge fans that can produce enough wind to lift and support a human being. Much like balancing a ping-pong ball on the exhaust end of a vacuum cleaner, a person can float above this cushion of air. As the wind is thrust up through the tunnel, the divers get to practice their skills in a more controlled environment, giving them more freedom to experiment and try different things.
I just can't wait till they get it finished and I get my chance to play in the tunnel, myself.
For more information about this tunnel
and many others around the country, and just skydiving in general, check out
these links.
http://www.skydiveaz.com
http://www.perristunnel.com/index.html
http://www.skyventure.com/
http://www.skyventureorlando.com
http://www.flyawayindoorskydiving.com/
http://www.skydiveorange.com
