Skydiving and parachute jumping in Houston, Texas
Are you learning how to skydive, or do you want to? You’re in the right place at Skydive Spaceland’s Skydiver Training Program! Following are some tips to help you make your training more efficient and effective. As always, feel free to talk to our instructors or call us at 281-369-3337 with any questions.
Recently, one of our licensed jumpers took it upon himself to remind us all about keeping our rigs away from the edges of the aircraft door when rotating out to a floater exit. It’s a great reminder for all of us, because it’s far too easy to get too comfortable and complacent about safety aspects …
Let’s face it: Skydiving isn’t easy, especially when you’re just starting the sport. You may be a natural at freefall, but struggle with canopy patterns or landing, or vice versa. Or you may be nervous enough to have trouble getting out of the plane at all. The important thing to remember here is that many …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: What If You Have to Repeat a Dive?”
Are you one of those people who knocks standardized tests out of the park without half trying, or do you tend to need some quality study time to ace them? Regardless of your test performance proclivities, keep one thing in mind regarding your skydiving training tests: These are definitely tests you don’t want to fail, …
Are you a new skydiver with a shiny new A license? Or maybe you’re a skydiving student already thinking about the fun things you’ll do after you graduate? Congratulations on becoming a part of the global skydiving community! We’re glad you’re here. 🙂 Now let’s talk a little about the skydives you’ll do once you …
Ah, the feel of freefall on your face, your hair whipping in the wind… wait a minute! If you have long hair (past your shoulders), hair whipping around in freefall is actually a bad thing. Aside from the Gordian knot that often results from 120mph of wind whipping your hair around, hair that is very …
Continue reading “Long Hair? Avoid This Skydiving Malfunction”
When I was still in school, I was a serious last-minute crammer before tests. Study ahead of time? Not my strong suit. So there I would be at 1 a.m. before a big exam, studying my tail off. 5 minutes before the test, still reviewing. At least I studied, right?! When you are learning to …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: Practice Before You Leave”
For recent skydiving graduates, there is often a no-man’s-land between the A license and getting on good dives. Skydive Spaceland-Houston has been turning that no-man’s land into free coaching central with its monthly Transitions events. On or near the first weekend of each month, organizers and coaches collaborate to provide free small-group coaching tailored to …
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Skydiving often seems like one of the most dynamic, chaotic sports in existence. People are falling from the sky every which way, for cryin’ out loud! 🙂 In reality, the chaos is highly engineered to allow us all to enjoy our dynamic freefallin’ fun while staying safe, and that engineering starts with ensuring that each …
If you’ve ever played sports, chances are good that you’ve heard a coach tell you or someone on your team to visualize doing it right when they were struggling with something. Some call this practice mental rehearsal, and it’s a completely valid strategy to increase performance, because you’re training your brain to perform to the …
Hello student skydiver! As you progress to ever more awe-inspiring feats of skydiving skill in our Skydiver Training Program, do you ever wonder about the magic that happens before you strap your gear on for the next jump? I refer of course to the magic whereby the billowing parachute, hundreds of square feet of nylon, …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: When to Learn to Pack Your Parachute”
Ask any group of non-skydivers what they think would be the scariest part of skydiving, and at least a few will answer, “The landing.” Ask a group of skydiving students, or even experienced jumpers, and you’ll get the same answer from a few of them. We have the guts to throw ourselves out of airplanes in …
Plan the dive, dive the plan. You’ve been practicing this since your first student training jump. There are two reasons for a dive plan: SAFETY! Engineering the dive so you can get in maximum learning and/or performance from the jump. Once you have graduated from a skydiving training program, there are SO MANY things you …
We dirt dive the freefall portion of nearly all of our skydives, but do you dirt dive your landings? Do you check the wind speed and direction at all altitudes, which way the wind will shift as you descend, etc.? If the wind direction changes, how will that change your landing pattern? As we develop …
We don’t have a lot of bad words in skydiving (regardless of what you might hear after the beer light comes on! ;), but there is one we can all agree on: Complacency. com·pla·cen·cy n. — A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy. In skydiving, we say someone …
Skydivers come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life, but If one word could be used to describe nearly all of us it would probably be “passionate.” This is a sport we love dearly and deeply, and we love to share that passion with others. That passion, unfortunately, can cause problems …
One of the best things about skydiving today compared to some decades past is that we jump steerable parachutes. We have the ability to change our flight paths and land on target, which makes it a lot easier for us to land near the hangar and make lots of jumps in a day without quite …
Ah, the beer line–that line close to the hangar that causes all skydivers in sight distance to yell “BEER!!!!” with glee if you land on the hangar side of it. Did you know we now have one of these in the student/A-B license landing area at our Houston location in addition to our regular beer …
Scenario: You’re under a good canopy at 2000 feet. You are downwind of the drop zone and aren’t sure you can make it to the landing area. Between you and the drop zone are trees, brush, power lines, and likely all manner of unpleasant critters. Behind you is a wide open field. What do you …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: To Land Off or Not?”
As skydivers, we like to do everything right so we can skydive again… and again… and… Lately we have been seeing a number of recent graduates, now unsupervised by instructors, neglecting their pin checks before exit. Perhaps it’s due to distraction when thinking about the upcoming jump, or perhaps you noticed an experienced jumper neglecting …
I once had an instructor who refused to wear a seat belt in a car. He had managed to defy all odds in two separate car accidents by not wearing seat belts; both accidents threw him out of a car that would have crushed him had he remained inside. Unlike with cars, however, the last …
Continue reading “Seat Belts in Jump Aircraft: Not Just for Show”
Welcome to the world of gear decisions, skydiver! You’ve been jumping an open-face helmet throughout the student program, but you’ve been seeing a bunch of the cool kids on the drop zone jumping full-face helmets of various styles. What’s right for you? Your preferences will, of course, drive your selection. Here are a few things …
Have you had the chance to open the jump door on one of our Super Otters or SuperVans yet? No? Are you nervous about it? Fear not, we have the scoop! Whether you’ve operated the door yet or not, chances are great that you’ll learn a valuable tip or few from our latest YouTube video …
Continue reading “How to Open/Close a Super Otter/Supervan Skydiving Door”
“Congratulations, you’ve just earned your skydiving A license!” “WooHOO! … “…now what?” When a skydiver graduates from our Skydiver Training Program, some hit the air flying hard and never look back. Often, however, a graduate will wonder a little bit about what to do next. Your skydives up until this point have been tightly structured, …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: Taking the Next Step”
Getting ready to board an aircraft for skydiving is more than a little different than boarding a plane for commercial travel or getting in a car for a drive. There are concerns for personal safety, the safety of others in the plane (and the plane itself), and efficiency. Stay safe and efficient with these loading tips! …
We may be in southern Texas, but the weather is definitely cooling down! Skydiving in wintertime brings a few challenges we don’t have in summer, namely how do we stay warm while staying safe? The heavy winter clothes you need to avoid frostbite can bite you in other ways, especially those big, bulky hoodies we …
“What’s the weather like today? Is it good for students? What about experienced jumpers?” If we had a dollar for every time we got that phone call, text, or Facebook message, we’d all be retired. 🙂 And as you know, the answer is usually a variety of “You can’t jump if you’re not here.” In …
It’s one of the most common questions we get about the Skydiver Training Program (other than price): How many training jumps can I do in a day? How many SHOULD I do in a day? While the ideal number of jumps in a day will of course vary with the student’s fitness, goals, and budget, …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Program Tip: How Many Dives in a Day?”
When you’re about to graduate from our Skydiver Training Program, it’s time to start thinking about getting your own gear, and the accessories (helmet, goggles, altimeter) are the best place to start. We provide everything you need during the program, but afterwards you will need to rent our gear or buy your own. It’s a …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: Your First Skydiving Gear Purchase”
No one likes to wait for anything—doctors, prescriptions, someone to get the right size of shoes out of the stockroom, or even the 60 seconds you’re supposed to wait before spitting out your mouthwash. While they say all good things come to those who wait, some good things can come without waiting, especially if you …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: Call Ahead to Reduce Your Wait”
Are you ready to skydive? If you show up for a Skydiver Training Program jump without having completing your paperwork (dive flow quiz) for each jump you intend to make that day, the answer, sadly, is “not yet.” Why is this quiz important? It tells us that you have studied your student manual and that …
Continue reading “Skydiver Training Tip: Paperwork is Homework”