Archive for August, 2006

How Far Can People Swoop?

August 25th, 2006, Posted in Skydiving

Swooping is a spectacular sport to watch, and there are a few parts of it that make it much more fun to watch than regular sky diving. For one thing, the majority of the sport actually happens near the ground. This makes it much easier for a normal audience to experience a swooping competition – you don’t have to jump out of the plane with the swoopers to see what they are doing in order to win the competition.

There are several different types of swooping competitions, and one of the biggest events involves distance. While there are several ways to determine the length of a swoop, most competitions find it easier to do this event over a lake or pond of some sort. As a result, the swooping distance is measured from the point where the swooper’s feet first hit the lake until the moment when they finally land.

Like any distance sport, more and more swoopers will end up breaking the distance record. This is especially likely in a sport like swooping when the equipment can have such a large effect on whether or not it is possible to swoop for long distances.

The upper limit on distances for swooping now is the record that was set by Shannon Pilcher. He managed to swoop an entire 418 feet, or about 125 meters. When you consider that a football field is 300 ft, that’s a long way!

In order to swoop that far, swoopers have to be going pretty fast before they hit the ground – at least a little bit faster than they would be if they were just sky diving normally. Swoopers usually pick up speed again near the ground by making a few turns near the ground. Going long distances is pretty difficult, since these last turns are the hardest part of sky diving.

It might be possible that there is a limit as to how far people can swoop. However, until that limit is reached, swoopers will continue to swoop farther and farther. As it is, however, the distance you can count on somebody being able to swoop depends a lot on their experience and the type of equipment that they’re using.

About the Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.swooping.net. Visit his website for the latest on this new and extreme way to skydive.

Written By: Jakob Jelling

The History Of Swooping

August 6th, 2006, Posted in Skydiving

Swooping is a very new form of skydiving, so the history of this sport has to date back to skydiving, itself. Skydiving has roots back to the very first ideas that humanity had regarding flying. It was thought that with a balloon or parachute it might be possible to fly. Now, however, it’s known that parachutes are mostly good for slowing a fall, this is where the sport started.

Between World War I and World War II, parachuting started to become more and more popular among people who were not soldiers. These people at first started out just using old ex-military equipment. This was good enough at first, but it was discovered that there were several changes that could be made to the equipment in order to improve the steering of the parachute.

Eventually it was also discovered that it is much easier to skydive safely if you jump out of the plane in certain positions. Skydiving, while it was still only a sport for the brave, gradually became more and more popular over the years. In 1950, it was considered to be an aeronautical sport, and now there are hundreds of competitions and skydiving schools all over the world.

Of course, after a while even the most exciting sport gets a little bit boring. Swooping is just another way for people to make skydiving more interesting – it’s more of an evolution in skydiving techniques than it is its own sport. Even so, there are a lot of people for whom swooping is the sport of choice.

It is not really known when swooping first started, though it definitely began during the past 20 years. It was a mixture of people looking for a new type of skydiving, as well as the result of new, high performance parachutes. These parachutes allow so much control that a lot of people are able to make sudden turns right before they land. Once it was discovered that this was possible, a new sport began. Swooping is currently gaining in popularity, and there is now a large and growing following for this sport all over the world.

About the Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.swooping.net. Visit his website for the latest on this new and extreme way to skydive.

Written By: Jakob Jelling