Sky diving (parachuting)

Sky diving (parachuting)

Parachuting, also known as skydiving, is the activity of jumping from enough height to deploy a fabric parachute and land. Parachuting is performed as a recreational activity and a competitive sport.

There are four basic parachuting skills: basic safety, free fall maneuvers, parachute operation, and landing. Many people make their first jump with an instructor.

There are two kinds of parachutes: parachute with a round dome (round parachute) and parachute with rectangular gliding dome (parachute-wing).

In freefall most skydivers start by learning "arch" position. Next, jumpers learn to move or turn in any direction while remaining belly to earth. Using these skills a group of jumpers can create sequences of formations on a single jump, known as formation skydiving (FS).

Formation skydiving is the art of building formations in free-fall with multiple people united to each other. The kinds of formation skydiving are: 4-way sequential 4-way vertical sequential (VRW) 8-way sequential 16-way sequential 10-way speed Large formations (Big-ways)

There are two kinds of formations, called randoms and blocks. The randoms are singular formations with full separation of all grips both before and after building the formation. The blocks are double formations with a special movement pattern, called an inter. The start and the end of formation can be the same or not.

A competition consists of up to 10 rounds, and each round consists of 5 or 6 points. The working time is 35 seconds. The scores giving depend on the video material.

Blocks are marked by numbers, while randoms got letters. For blocks the team get 1 point for each correct formation, and randoms count as 1 point. There are 22 blocks and 16 randoms.

The winning team will be the team that has collected most points, by completing the most correct formations.

The recent FAI world record for largest free-fall formation is a 400-way, set on February 8, 2006 in Thailand by World Team. It was held for 4.25 seconds.