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Skydiving

 

Instead of Z0in3 through life just copin’
It was for excitement we were hopin’.

Gee, let’s be alive
_. \ We'lllearn to skydive

and pray to God our parachutes ll open

 

by Martin Hemerik

Why am]! doing this? How
did I ever get into this
situation? I must be men-
tally unsound. One thing is
for sure, I am never going to
do this again.

These thoughts _ rifle

through my brain as we soar
2,500 feet above the ground
-in the tiny Cessna. God,
“everything seems so small at
this height. I glance back at
my partner, Lori Hashimoto,
the culprit who had reaf-
firmed my desire to perform
this rather idiotic stunt. She
seems pretty calm. Then my
instructor signals for me to
approach the door. (Because
‘of the small size of the
airplar you. don’t simply
jump out, instead you step
out and hang to the wing
strut until your body is in
position.) ‘‘Get ready.” I
exit the door, mentally click-
ing off the procedure; left
leg, left arm, right arm,
right leg. I position my
body, which isn’t easy _con-
sidering the plane is flying
at 90 miles an hour, The
instructor taps me on the leg
and I let go.

 

Parachutes first came into
general use as a way of
returning to earth during
balloon flights. Although,
according to legend, their
history can be traced back to
ancient China (2200 B.C.).
Chinese actors in the four-
teenth century reportedly

 

Napoleon oncecon-
sidered invading
England by having
his soldiers jump —
from balloons.

 

made mysterious entrances
on theatre stages by para-
chuting.

In 1783, Sebastien Le-
normand, provided the first
practical demonstration of a
parachute when he jumped
from the top of Montpelier
University in Paris. Andre
Garnerin was the first per-
son to prove the parachute’s
reliability by consistent de-
monstrations. He had plenty
of time to design his para-
chute as he was serving a
prison sentence in Budapest
at the time. However he
never used it as an escape
attempt. His chute, made of
wood covered with a canvas
looked like a giant beach
umbrella but it would oscil-
late (swing back and forth)
quite a bit causing Garnerin
to get violently airsick and in
no shape to appreciate the
cheering crowd. A French
astronomer cut a whole in

the top allowing a stream of
air to escape thereby damp-
ening the oscillation. Now
virtually all parachutes have
a vent.

Military use of the para-
chute dates back to the
times of Napoleon. He once
considered invading Eng-
land by having his soldiers
jump from balloons. It was
in World War 1 however
that the value of the para-
chute as a weapon and a
device for saving lives was
fully realized. In October
1918 the U.S. Army Air
Service made plans to drop
troops with machine guns
behind enemy lines and
attack German _ positions
from behind. The war was
soon ended and the plan was
never put into effect.

In 1925 Steven Budreau, a
U.S. Army instructor, de-
monstrated that the perils of
a long freefall could be
eliminated if the jumper
stabilized himself. This pos-
ture, with the arched back
and arms and legs thrown

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outward became a funda-
mental principle of modern
skydiving.

The rapid development of
high performance aircraft in
World War II created new
problems in perfecting sur-
vival gear for pilots.

Whereas the Allied air
forces scoffed at the para-
chute’s safety calling it
‘flimsy cheesecloth’ the
German pilots wore it reli-

giously. As more German:

pilots saved their lives,
Allied pilots began wearing
parachutes. By the end of
hostilities many Allied
fighters. could count their
blessings on ‘cheesecloth’.

During peacetime para-
chute experiments were un-
derway trying to simplify
and get rid of some of the
bulkiness that made them
awkward and uncomfortable
for the pilots.

In 1919 the first manually
operated. parachute was
invented. The rip cord
quickly became standard

equipment on all chutes. In |

Reac

“Ifa man havea tent roof of calked li

high, he will be able to let himself fall fr