I’ve done 2 tandem jumps. It was awesome. I looked into doing the school to jump solo, but the time and money to get into skydiving is more than I want to invest right now. I’m more sure what option you’re talking about to do 25 tandems to jump solo. Doing the USPA course you start with ground school. Then your first jump, you jump solo with 3-4 instructors surrounding you. Then as you progress through the training you jump with fewer instructors and proceed through more advanced maneuvering etc. That’s the gist of it at least.
When I was about 19 I went with a bunch of buddies. We wanted to freefall, and the only way to do that was a bunch of static line jumps $$$ or a tandem. So being a cheap and broke college student, tandem it was. Was a lot of fun, but not sure I could do it again. I just process risk differently these days.
It’s been 20 years or so .. but I did 6 jumps … all static line .. never could wrap my head around jumping with another Dude strapped to my back .. no thanks ! But I would love to go again ..
Tina has been twice, 1st time was from 14,000, We went together her 2nd time with it being my first, we jumped from 18,000 though the clouds. It was a blast but I will say that short amount of time at 18,000 dried me out and I was exhausted. That said, of 18,000 is an option go for that. We went to the Lake Wales area to jump.
hold on... @jrsamples... you’re a woman? It makes no difference of course but I always pictured an overall wearing Hee Haw type character from your user name...
Oh man I hate line twists. Talk about anxiety-inducing! I just bought a rig from a guy who quit the sport because his last jump had line twists so bad he had to go to his reserve. 20+ years and no more.
I have jumped once, definitely would do it again if the opportunity arose. My wife wants to go as well so we might make it a family affair. Wingsuit jumps are on my bucket list so I am saving up for those after the kids turn 18 and I get the go ahead.
I watch a lot of Friday Freakout by JOINTHETEAM on youtoob, so I was very familiar with situation, even though I'm just a rider. I know roughly what it takes to clear them, but he never indicated for help, so I didn't get involved and possibly counteract his moves. There was a point when I was thinking about reserve and the lack thereof, but it was out of my hands.
They're not difficult to fix: spread the rear risers and start bicycle kicking in the opposite direction. I have no idea how you'd deal with that on a tandem though, with all the extra mass to get moving around. Tandems don't have reserves?
Of course they have reserves, you are right, it takes a lot of effort to turn both of us and unwind the fubar. There was a tandem who deployed reserve on the same day. My buddy jumped with him afterwards and the guy used the glide time to spot his main that was high up in the pines. I was just saying that I thought that the guy was spending too much time trying to clear the twist versus deploying the reserve.
Just once, I asked the guy to do some tricks as I thought it would be boring. We did all sorts of spinny sh1t on the way down, up high to low, then round and round and round and round. Faaark. I tapped out before we touched down and spewed the rest of the day.
Some of these comments...lol. "Your first jump your surrounded by 4 instructors" really where was this? Never heard of that before. Have around 3,000 jumps, USPA A,B,C and D licenses, AFF Instructor, AFF Jumpmaster, SL instructor/jump master. Event organizer. State record RW holder, Safety advisor. A few world record RW attempts. High performance canopy test pilot. Now retired due to medical
I did one tandem, and for me it was fun, and worth doing, but also kind of dull. Being so far away from a visual reference gave me virtually no "sensation of speed" and I guess that is what I really like.
Then maybe you should try base jumping off the New River Gorge Bridge on a high performance elliptical zeroP canopy with no reserve. Tandem is the equivalent of going down an NHRA track in a Volkswagen beetle as a passenger; Or I guess a better comparison here would be going around COTA on a moped 2up riding bitch....