Jump #11
Wow, this is kind of sad… the novelty is starting to wear off… normally on the drive to the dropzone i’d get butterflies in my stomach… but not so much anymore. It’s definitely something that I love to do, just not with the same anxiety as before. Today I was hoping to get a few jumps in, but the weather turned for the worse, so I only got one. Actually, I could.ve had one more, but after the first, I was done for the day.
This will be a quick post here… nothing real exciting about this jump, just my first coaching jump, and i had to practice ‘tracking’. Tracking is basically forward movement in set direction… you try to maximize your forward speed horizontally vs vertically. Anyhow, when the load before got done (about five minutes before we’d go up) they said they noticed it just started raining at altitude, my coach, Brian, said he’d still go if I wanted to, and I was like “yeah, why wouldn’t I?” and all he’d say is don’t be surprised if I saw him on is back and I was just like okay, whatever..
So anyway, long story short, rain falls at about 15 mph… Standing on the ground, rain hitting you at 15mph doesn’t hurt… but do the math, if you’re falling at 120 mph out of an airplane, and hitting raindrops that are going a slow 15, the effect is being hitting by raindrops at 105 mph. Lets see.. This isn’t as bad as a paintball or BB gun… but close… imagine a raindrop sized paintball… lots of them… all over your face and hands… according to local myth, it’s hurts because you’re falling on them from the top.. aka, the pointy side.. ;)
Also, do to the fact that I was doing a tracking jump, I couldn’t block my face at all (to track effectively, your legs are straight out behind you, and your arms are swept back to your sides) so I was literally diving face first into the rain. My coach, like he said he would, took the easy route and just flipped onto his back and watched my dive from there.
Once we got down, I could’ve taken the next load… but i thought i could just as well wait for next weekend. Oh well, just wasn’t worth the rain to get in two today. Better luck next time.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. When you jump from a plane you have horizontal speed and zero vertical speed. According to physics, you would drop 10m/s just as rain drops would fall at the same speed. In the end you would be freefalling with the rain as if the rain was standing still, but then air friction comes into play and because our bodies have much larger surface area we would be slower than the rain but still a cool effect.
Well, what you’re thinking of is the acceleration. 9.8m per s^2 – That is all objects are accelerated by the force of gravity at that constant, 9.8 meters per second per second. However, objects of different sizes, shapes, weights, and densities all are affected by air resistance differently. An object will continue to accelerate at the gravitational constant (9.8m per s^2) until the the gravitation force approaches and meets the air resistance force. This speed would be known as the terminal velocity.
The terminal velocity of an average human being in freefall in our atmosphere is (for “flat” belly-to-earth flying) between 110-130 mph. However, due the different shape/weight of a rain drop, their terminal velocity is much lower – approximately 15 mph (I’ve been told – I have no reference for that quoted speed.
I can tell you though, with quite certainly, if you skydive with the rain – it hurts! You are going faster than that rain drops and you will collide with them. Maybe not as much as being shot with a bb gun.. but close!