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How Skydiving Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
0:13
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff you
0:16
Speaker 1: should Know, Good Old Fashion Explainer Edition. Yeah, it feels
0:22
Speaker 1: like a throwback. Yes it does. I can't cannot believe
0:26
Speaker 1: we did not do this already. I agree. And my
0:31
Speaker 1: stomach may have just been so loud that the microphone
0:34
Speaker 1: picked it up. I didn't hear it, but I want
0:36
Speaker 1: to hear it in the edit if it did. Oh geez, wow,
0:42
Speaker 1: my mouth. I know, no, I already eight. You know,
0:45
Speaker 1: sometimes when you have a really empty stomach and you
0:48
Speaker 1: put I made one of my my good hot bone broths,
0:52
Speaker 1: icy bone broths, and then for the next thirty minutes,
0:55
Speaker 1: your stomachs just like screaming like what is that? Or
0:59
Speaker 1: it's thank you? Yeah, maybe thank you. I wish I
1:03
Speaker 1: knew my whole life. I wish I knew what my
1:05
Speaker 1: stomach was saying to me. What is your sphincter saying?
1:10
Speaker 1: You can usually tell us what you can usually tell
1:12
Speaker 1: how your stomach is feeling based on your sphincter. Sphincter,
1:15
Speaker 1: don't lie, Oh man is that a truism or what, Yes,
1:20
Speaker 1: it is, sphincter's gonna spink yep it spinker's fine. That's
1:26
Speaker 1: then I think your stomach saying thank you. Okay, so
1:29
Speaker 1: we are moving on, Chuck, We're gonna move on. We're
1:31
Speaker 1: talking about skydiving today, and like I said, I'm surprised
1:34
Speaker 1: we hadn't done it already. Um. I met a guy
1:37
Speaker 1: who has I think he founded like one of the
1:40
Speaker 1: Navy's um skydiving clubs. And here's a very nice man
1:45
Speaker 1: and asked if we'd ever done skydiving before, and I
1:48
Speaker 1: said I don't know, and I looked and sure enough
1:51
Speaker 1: we didn't. So here we are doing skydiving, and I
1:54
Speaker 1: think it's pretty appropriate. Well, first, have you ever skydived?
1:59
Speaker 1: I can't remember. No, I have not. And it's the
2:03
Speaker 1: kind of thing that like, I'm totally game to do.
2:05
Speaker 1: But I don't see myself making that initiative. But if
2:10
Speaker 1: someone got something together, I'd be like, yeah, trurell, I'll
2:12
Speaker 1: jump out of a plane. I think that's how it
2:14
Speaker 1: typically happens. It's like a group and there's one like
2:16
Speaker 1: initiator and everybody's like or whatever. Yeah, but you you
2:20
Speaker 1: have not of course, no, I have I have Oh wait,
2:23
Speaker 1: I feel like we talked about this. What have you done?
2:25
Speaker 1: I went up to thirteen thousand feet and jumped out
2:27
Speaker 1: of a plane tandem. It was it was so so
2:31
Speaker 1: scary the way up. Everybody's laughing and joking and I
2:37
Speaker 1: was just quiet, and somebody looked over him. He's like, Josh,
2:40
Speaker 1: your knuckles are pretty white. And I was like, that's
2:42
Speaker 1: super funny, right, And I was like, I don't think
2:45
Speaker 1: I even responded to that. I was too nervous. And
2:48
Speaker 1: we got up to thirteen thousand feet and I had
2:51
Speaker 1: this giant dude strapped to my back. Yeah, that's what
2:54
Speaker 1: you want. And We're kneeling together at the opening of
2:58
Speaker 1: this plane and I'm like, I'm I'm not doing this
3:02
Speaker 1: and he's like, yes, you are. And we were out
3:05
Speaker 1: of the plane and I don't remember the first couple
3:07
Speaker 1: of seconds. I think I've talked about this before. The
3:09
Speaker 1: first couple of seconds or just my mind didn't form
3:11
Speaker 1: any memories. And then I kind of came to when
3:13
Speaker 1: we're plumbering toward the Earth and I was like, this
3:15
Speaker 1: is pretty great. Actually, that's amazing how it was just
3:19
Speaker 1: like twenty years ago or ten years ago, gosh, more
3:23
Speaker 1: than twenty years ago now they think, Yeah, I was
3:26
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, which is kind of the time
3:28
Speaker 1: you try it usually because you have very little to
3:30
Speaker 1: live for at that point. You know. Sometimes the you know, seniors,
3:35
Speaker 1: the aged Yeah, they like to like take a challenge
3:39
Speaker 1: box off, you know, and say like I'm gonna get
3:40
Speaker 1: skydiving at seventy or whatever. Yeah, I just saw I
3:43
Speaker 1: think like a mom and her son sons seventies and
3:46
Speaker 1: the mom's nineties they went sky diving. Not what I
3:50
Speaker 1: expected you to say. Yeah they went skydiving. Wow, look
3:53
Speaker 1: good for them. So we are talking skydiving, Chuck. I
3:57
Speaker 1: strongly recommend trying it at least once. One reason why
4:00
Speaker 1: is because it's gotten really really safe. Like I wouldn't
4:05
Speaker 1: just say, like go go base jump, Like I would
4:08
Speaker 1: never tell somebody to go base jump. That is not
4:10
Speaker 1: at all safe. But people have been skydiving and investing
4:14
Speaker 1: in like figuring out how to make it safe for
4:15
Speaker 1: so many years that it has gotten pretty safe. Yeah.
4:19
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea. I mean, Ed has
4:22
Speaker 1: it at the end. He helped us out with this.
4:23
Speaker 1: But we may as well not bury the lead and
4:26
Speaker 1: say that in twenty twenty one, I guess was the
4:29
Speaker 1: most recent year he could find something was ten fatalities
4:34
Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand jumps, which is point to eight
4:37
Speaker 1: deaths Now, I'm sorry, point two point two eight per
4:41
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand, not ten per one hundred thousand, right right,
4:45
Speaker 1: and already screwed it up. So less than a quarter
4:48
Speaker 1: of a person dies or just over a quarter of
4:50
Speaker 1: a person dies up for every hundred thousand jumps, which
4:53
Speaker 1: is not bad. So yeah, and it's actually the old days,
4:57
Speaker 1: it's really good. Yeah, the old days being two thous eleven.
5:01
Speaker 1: It was at point eight one, which seems high compared
5:05
Speaker 1: to point two eight, but it's actually pretty low. Like
5:07
Speaker 1: if you go back to the sixties, you're at like
5:10
Speaker 1: eleven and we're like under one here. Now we're at
5:13
Speaker 1: just over a quarter. So it's definitely gotten a lot,
5:16
Speaker 1: a lot safer. Yeah, And we'll talk about the multiple
5:20
Speaker 1: redundancies and backup shoots and all that stuff, and I'm
5:23
Speaker 1: sure we'll probably for the avid jumper, we'll probably get
5:27
Speaker 1: some of this slightly wrong, because we always do. But
5:30
Speaker 1: should we go back to the old days, Yes, let's
5:34
Speaker 1: because people have been like, I want to jump off
5:36
Speaker 1: a high thing, but I want to live, so how
5:39
Speaker 1: can I do that? And the parachute is kind of
5:41
Speaker 1: a I think, even even if you're taking into account
5:45
Speaker 1: like hindsight, it's a pretty obvious low hanging fruit invention.
5:50
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that they knocked it out of
5:53
Speaker 1: the park immediately. There was they didn't understand exactly how
5:57
Speaker 1: to do it, but the idea of what to do
5:59
Speaker 1: came to a lot of people over the years. Yeah,
6:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I think just even a kid jumping off
6:06
Speaker 1: of a wall with an umbrella, like, there's this weird
6:09
Speaker 1: human instinct of let me hold open a shoot like
6:13
Speaker 1: thing and jump off of something, and that seems to
6:16
Speaker 1: have certainly taken hold in France. France had a lot
6:19
Speaker 1: of early jumpers, And then we talked for sure in
6:22
Speaker 1: our Eiffel Tower episode about Franz Reichilt, who died in
6:30
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve while testing a parachute design from the Eiffel Tower.
6:34
Speaker 1: But before that, the first documented jump period was way
6:39
Speaker 1: before that, in seventeen eighty three from an observatory in France,
6:44
Speaker 1: And it seems like the French were just always experimenting
6:47
Speaker 1: with you know, sort of the rigid like wooden framed
6:50
Speaker 1: shoots and then silk shoots, and we'll talk about silk later.
6:54
Speaker 1: It was a pretty good early choice for the fabric,
6:57
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until the early nineteen hundreds that we
7:00
Speaker 1: look at sort of the first modern parachute right right,
7:03
Speaker 1: And this kind of gives you an idea of what
7:06
Speaker 1: skydiving is like. The origin of skydiving came from a
7:09
Speaker 1: carnival act, yeah, where a guy named Charles Broadwick whose
7:15
Speaker 1: stage name was John Murray used to go up in
7:18
Speaker 1: a hot air balloon and jump out of it the
7:20
Speaker 1: way around was it? No, neither one of them are
7:24
Speaker 1: really that stage namy. Now that I look at it,
7:27
Speaker 1: I know exactly. It's just kind of two normal names.
7:30
Speaker 1: But I guess he did. He thought John Murray didn't
7:32
Speaker 1: have enough mustard to it or something. Yeah, So he
7:35
Speaker 1: would go up in a hot air balloon and jump
7:36
Speaker 1: out with a parachute of his own design, which apparently
7:40
Speaker 1: was good enough to keep him alive. And he was
7:43
Speaker 1: touring the US in the eighteen nineties early nineteen hundreds,
7:47
Speaker 1: and he had two different wives who were assistance with
7:51
Speaker 1: his act, but die in these parachuting accidents. Yeah, and
7:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if that drove him to it or
7:58
Speaker 1: if it was just I could see it driving driving
8:01
Speaker 1: him to it. He really spent a lot of time
8:04
Speaker 1: refining the parachute and the whole idea of a parachute
8:07
Speaker 1: coming out of a backpack on your back. That came
8:10
Speaker 1: from Charles Broadwick slash John Murray. Yeah. Yeah, he was like,
8:15
Speaker 1: let's stop this thing in there. I'm not sure what
8:17
Speaker 1: they were doing before. Were they just kind of holding it?
8:19
Speaker 1: I think so, yeah, kind of like base jumping. I
8:21
Speaker 1: think yeah, yeah, so they were a guess holding it.
8:24
Speaker 1: Then he put it into a backpack again. I wish
8:27
Speaker 1: I had a little more information about his wives dying,
8:29
Speaker 1: if it was like, hey, you try this, or if
8:32
Speaker 1: it was just genuine accidents. I think the first one
8:36
Speaker 1: later on people said that it was more likely suicide. Yeah,
8:40
Speaker 1: I think the first one in nineteen oh five. Okay,
8:43
Speaker 1: but anytime there's two spouses that die that, I don't know,
8:47
Speaker 1: that little suspicion is raised. It is definitely. But or
8:50
Speaker 1: also talking about people engaging in the earliest forms of
8:53
Speaker 1: sky diving, you know, so there's a lot of risk
8:57
Speaker 1: to it, for sure, But the Milly obviously is where
9:01
Speaker 1: a lot of the early parachuting went on. Obviously, in
9:04
Speaker 1: World War One, I believe they developed the rip chord
9:09
Speaker 1: by that point, right, yeah, where you pull like a
9:13
Speaker 1: little handle and the parachute goes whoop out of the backpack.
9:17
Speaker 1: They also came up with what's called the static line.
9:19
Speaker 1: Like if you ever see in like a warm movie,
9:22
Speaker 1: especially World War Two, those guys like clipping into a
9:25
Speaker 1: line with like a rope, that's a static line, and
9:28
Speaker 1: when that's just dropping guys right exactly, there's no this
9:32
Speaker 1: isn't for thrills. This is for getting you behind enemy lines, right,
9:36
Speaker 1: So they deploy their parachute immediately, and the static line
9:40
Speaker 1: does that when you jump out, that line stays attached
9:43
Speaker 1: to the plane for a second, and it's also attached
9:45
Speaker 1: to your shoot so it just pulls your shoot out
9:47
Speaker 1: immediately and then falls away and then you kind of
9:49
Speaker 1: float to safety, hopefully behind enemy lines. So the static
9:53
Speaker 1: line and the rip chord were both designed by the military,
9:57
Speaker 1: and I guess people, I'm guessing from the military. That's
10:02
Speaker 1: where people started getting like the idea of like we
10:04
Speaker 1: should just do this on weekends too. Yeah, I have
10:08
Speaker 1: a feeling that's what happened. I wouldn't be surprised if
10:11
Speaker 1: retired military were some of the first instructors privately yea,
10:15
Speaker 1: because they certainly jumped a lot, and that's the only
10:17
Speaker 1: way you could get the kind of experience back then.
10:19
Speaker 1: But I believe sites jumped down as the very first
10:23
Speaker 1: skydiving center opened in nineteen fifty nine in the United States,
10:27
Speaker 1: that it's still up and running today, which is pretty cool. Yeah.
10:29
Speaker 1: An Orange, mass Oh, an Orange. I don't know why
10:34
Speaker 1: Massachusetts has a town named Orange. Maybe it's just like
10:37
Speaker 1: wishful thinking for orange shoes. Not Florida. I looked it up. Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: because Florida is actually like kind of a huge state
10:46
Speaker 1: for skydiving over the history of the sport too. But no,
10:50
Speaker 1: Moorida's jump site is called Fall Foliage, Florida, right exactly,
10:56
Speaker 1: Red Maple Leaf, Florida. But the sixties is when it
11:01
Speaker 1: started to develop and then big time, And I'm glad
11:04
Speaker 1: you love it. Don't just get then in the seventies,
11:08
Speaker 1: you know, I remember, and I'm sure you do. Growing
11:10
Speaker 1: up in the seventies and eighties, skydiving just seemed like
11:14
Speaker 1: not like everybody was doing it, but it just seemed
11:16
Speaker 1: like a big, hot, thrill sport, and that's where it
11:19
Speaker 1: really kind of became refined, and people started pushing the
11:23
Speaker 1: envelope and going higher and faster and doing crazier things
11:27
Speaker 1: up there. And that's when like kind of modern skydiving
11:30
Speaker 1: really came into its own. And there were two things
11:33
Speaker 1: that happened that completely broke open skydiving from like an
11:37
Speaker 1: arcane adrenaline junkie ex military recreation to like anybody can
11:44
Speaker 1: come do this. One was they changed the design of
11:47
Speaker 1: the parachute from that round, you know example of a parachute,
11:51
Speaker 1: the old timey one where you couldn't control it, like
11:54
Speaker 1: it was keeping you from plummeting to the ground and
11:56
Speaker 1: you should be grateful for that. That was enough. But
11:59
Speaker 1: then a person from Canada in the sixties came up
12:03
Speaker 1: with the like the ram air parachute. Their name was
12:08
Speaker 1: Domina Galbert and they were a kite designer and they said, hey,
12:14
Speaker 1: these kites, actually you could turn them into a pretty
12:16
Speaker 1: cool parachute. And so those kind of wing like wide, rectangular,
12:21
Speaker 1: rounded parachutes that you see today that those are ram Air.
12:25
Speaker 1: We'll talk a little more about them. So that was
12:27
Speaker 1: a big one, because now you could control where you landed.
12:31
Speaker 1: And then the second thing was some dudes in the seventies,
12:34
Speaker 1: actually a couple initially Peter Chase and Gloria Maybury, who
12:40
Speaker 1: were married, decided to try what's called tandem jumping, which
12:44
Speaker 1: is what I did, where a more experienced person is
12:47
Speaker 1: strapped to a novice and you jump out together, and
12:50
Speaker 1: the experienced person is the one who like pulls the
12:53
Speaker 1: rip cord and guides the whole thing. You're just basically
12:56
Speaker 1: along for the ride. And now, all of a sudden chuck,
13:00
Speaker 1: it went from having to have tons of experience, possibly
13:02
Speaker 1: a military background too, I'm going to show up, do
13:06
Speaker 1: an hour long course and jump out of a plane
13:09
Speaker 1: an hour later after I get there. And that's suddenly
13:13
Speaker 1: people who are just complete amateurs who are curious could
13:16
Speaker 1: show up in skydive. And that's really where the whole
13:19
Speaker 1: thing blew open. In the seventies. Yeah, and that's I mean,
13:24
Speaker 1: I have a feeling of skydiving. We're still at the
13:26
Speaker 1: point where even if you needed one day of training
13:30
Speaker 1: to come back the next day, the rate of people
13:33
Speaker 1: trying this out would just plummet plummet. Probably not the
13:37
Speaker 1: best words to use. But the fact that they made
13:40
Speaker 1: it to where you can go you don't have to
13:42
Speaker 1: know anything, and you can go out that same afternoon
13:45
Speaker 1: and jump out of a plane. That's what really kind
13:47
Speaker 1: of entice people, I think, to try it out. And then,
13:50
Speaker 1: of course, like you said, just the fact that you're
13:52
Speaker 1: you know, they show you how to use the gear,
13:54
Speaker 1: and they walk you through that quicklike lesson, which I
13:57
Speaker 1: imagine is just like let me handle anything. I'll walk
14:00
Speaker 1: you through it all. When we come to the ground.
14:03
Speaker 1: That's really the only other time where you need to
14:05
Speaker 1: worry about stuff, which is you know what, like pull
14:08
Speaker 1: up your feet so you don't break your legs, yes,
14:10
Speaker 1: and I'll land for you and you'll kind of sit
14:13
Speaker 1: on your butt, yeah, like you're strapped to the front
14:16
Speaker 1: of the instructor like a baby, but not facing them.
14:20
Speaker 1: They'd just be weird. You're both facing the same direction.
14:23
Speaker 1: That's the romantic style. But you know they're they'll they'll
14:28
Speaker 1: also going to be explaining kind of. It's not like
14:31
Speaker 1: they just say here's what you do and just shut up,
14:34
Speaker 1: like they're gonna say, listen, we're gonna be flying. It's
14:37
Speaker 1: you know, ten to fifteen thousand feet and we'll be
14:39
Speaker 1: going one hundred ish miles an hour when you jump out.
14:43
Speaker 1: So all this stuff is just to sort of give
14:46
Speaker 1: you the lay of the land, and it's I don't
14:49
Speaker 1: think it necessarily helps you with your jump, but it
14:51
Speaker 1: just you know, you know what's going on, you know
14:53
Speaker 1: how high you are, you now fast you're going. Did
14:56
Speaker 1: they even bring up terminal velocity? I don't know, but
14:59
Speaker 1: this is what I proposed, I say, I don't remember
15:01
Speaker 1: if they did or not, probably, but I say, we
15:04
Speaker 1: take a break and pretend that it's the night before
15:07
Speaker 1: your first jump, and then the sleep is the ad break,
15:11
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, it's like waking up
15:13
Speaker 1: and going to the airfield to participate in your first
15:16
Speaker 1: guy dive. Ever, how about that? That's super exciting. Okay,
15:47
Speaker 1: good morning, Chuck. It's time. It's time for your first
15:51
Speaker 1: sky dive. So what are we gonna do. Well, we're
15:56
Speaker 1: gonna do all the things we talked about in the
15:59
Speaker 1: first segment, and then I'm going to jump out of
16:02
Speaker 1: a plane, but your mind structure, so you're gonna be
16:04
Speaker 1: strapped in my back right and this plane, by the way,
16:07
Speaker 1: is going to be typically a prop plane. Yeah, you're not.
16:11
Speaker 1: We're not jumping out of a gin or we know
16:12
Speaker 1: it'd be such a bad idea. So you're jumping out
16:15
Speaker 1: of a prop plane for a couple of reasons. One,
16:17
Speaker 1: they're easy on the gas, and if you're flying people
16:21
Speaker 1: up to skydive, you want to be economical with your gas.
16:24
Speaker 1: And then they have a low stall speed, meaning they
16:27
Speaker 1: can go to really slow speeds without their engine stalling out,
16:31
Speaker 1: which is a problem. Although if you're ever going to
16:33
Speaker 1: be on a plane that goes down, that's the plane
16:36
Speaker 1: that you want to be on that's going down because
16:38
Speaker 1: you're strapped to somebody with a giant parachute on their back.
16:43
Speaker 1: But for the most part, when you're jumping out, you're
16:45
Speaker 1: jumping out about one hundred miles an hour out of
16:48
Speaker 1: probably a Beechcraft king Air with maybe fourteen other people,
16:52
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be up there between ten thousand to
16:55
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand feet. Like I said, I jumped out at
16:58
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand and it seemed perfecto. And when you jump out, Chuck,
17:04
Speaker 1: get ready to rumble. Yeah, you're you know, a terminal
17:09
Speaker 1: velocity is what I mentioned before the break, and that
17:11
Speaker 1: doesn't have anything to do with death. They picked a
17:13
Speaker 1: very terrible word there to name it. But one hundred
17:17
Speaker 1: and twenty miles an hour. And we'll talk more about
17:19
Speaker 1: terminal velocity kind of throughout, but that is, you know,
17:23
Speaker 1: regular human jumping out of a plane with their arms
17:27
Speaker 1: and legs out, belly down, just sort of standard skydiving.
17:32
Speaker 1: You can we've all seen James Bond movies and stuff
17:35
Speaker 1: where they and well, terminal velocity I think was the
17:39
Speaker 1: name of the movie with Charlie Sheen, right, I think
17:41
Speaker 1: I saw that in the theater. Yeah, And it's the
17:43
Speaker 1: coolest thing when you're a young kid and you see
17:45
Speaker 1: someone tuck their arms in and put their head down
17:48
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they're flying through the air
17:50
Speaker 1: faster than one hundred and twenty miles an hour. You
17:53
Speaker 1: can learn how to do that stuff with training, but
17:55
Speaker 1: typically one hundred and twenty is what you get up to.
17:57
Speaker 1: Although when you out of a plane, you're going one
18:02
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour horizontally, so there's a period of
18:06
Speaker 1: time where you're I guess following diagonally until you reach
18:11
Speaker 1: the point where you're just following vertically. Right. They should
18:14
Speaker 1: have a name for that. They do. It's called going
18:16
Speaker 1: over the hill. No, I mean like a name like
18:18
Speaker 1: terminal velocity, like, oh there something zone. I'm gonna call
18:23
Speaker 1: it the diagonal okay, the diagonal zone, but more follows
18:26
Speaker 1: an arc because when you jump out of the plane,
18:28
Speaker 1: remember the plane's going one hundred miles an hour. You
18:30
Speaker 1: were in the plane. Even though you just left the plane,
18:33
Speaker 1: you're still going roughly one hundred miles an hour in
18:35
Speaker 1: the same direction of the plane. But you slow down
18:37
Speaker 1: so quickly that it's not like you're keeping up with
18:40
Speaker 1: the plane even for a second. So you fall away,
18:42
Speaker 1: but you're still kind of you've got like that horizontal
18:45
Speaker 1: motion before you hit that arc and you start to
18:48
Speaker 1: fall downward. And the whole reason there's such a thing
18:50
Speaker 1: as terminal velocity is because of friction from the air.
18:54
Speaker 1: And if you and a bowling ball jumped out of
18:58
Speaker 1: the plane at the same time in a vacuum, you
19:00
Speaker 1: would fall to the earth at the same rate. But
19:04
Speaker 1: because of air friction, um you fall at different rates.
19:08
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's about one hundred and twenty
19:10
Speaker 1: miles an hour, and when you reach terminal velocity, you're
19:12
Speaker 1: still going really really fast, about one hundred and twenty
19:15
Speaker 1: miles an hour, but you're not speeding up any longer.
19:17
Speaker 1: That's that's the difference. You're not accelerating any longer. And
19:21
Speaker 1: that would be pretty cool. It would be pretty cool.
19:23
Speaker 1: And you can actually do that when you become a
19:25
Speaker 1: skilled skydiver. You can hit terminal velocity and then like
19:29
Speaker 1: go from say belly to like you said, a forty
19:31
Speaker 1: five degree angle and start free falling again. Like you can.
19:35
Speaker 1: You can stop and start your freefall just by moving
19:38
Speaker 1: your body and changing the amount of friction that you're
19:42
Speaker 1: providing the air that you're plummeting through. Yeah, when you
19:46
Speaker 1: get down there, and this is something I kind of
19:48
Speaker 1: never knew the exact numbers on, but you know that
19:52
Speaker 1: when that shoot opens, it looks like a pretty violent
19:54
Speaker 1: reaction when it jerks you up. Um, it's gonna slow
19:58
Speaker 1: you down very very quickly. Yes, to the point where
20:02
Speaker 1: you're going to be feeling about two point seven five
20:05
Speaker 1: g's of your body. I think ED said you're decelerating
20:08
Speaker 1: by about thirty meters per second per secondly, Yeah, that's
20:12
Speaker 1: what I said. No, I think it's per second per second, oh,
20:15
Speaker 1: per second per second. Yeah. Prosecco, prosecco, what is per
20:20
Speaker 1: second per second even mean, that's what I'm saying, Like,
20:22
Speaker 1: I don't know what it means either, but when you
20:24
Speaker 1: say it like that, it's like, wow, that must be
20:26
Speaker 1: really fast. They had to say per second twice. They're like,
20:28
Speaker 1: we couldn't even come up with a better term for that,
20:30
Speaker 1: so we're just doubling up on it. Slap another per
20:34
Speaker 1: second on it. So that is that is a really
20:38
Speaker 1: quick slowdown, and eventually you'll get down to about I mean,
20:41
Speaker 1: when you're landing, you're in the like the fifteen to
20:43
Speaker 1: eighteen mile an hour zone. Not bad at all. I mean,
20:46
Speaker 1: especially going from one hundred and twenty miles an hour
20:48
Speaker 1: about two hundred miles an hour if you're tandem to seventeen.
20:52
Speaker 1: That's pretty gentle comparatively speaking. And like you said, when
20:56
Speaker 1: that shoot opens, you stop, you stop accelerating downward or
21:00
Speaker 1: even hitting terminal velocity, and now you're accelerating upward even
21:04
Speaker 1: though your body's still falling downward. So that's negative acceleration,
21:08
Speaker 1: and that's what you're doing as you kind of start
21:10
Speaker 1: to slow down and hit that seventeen mile an hour
21:12
Speaker 1: thing and then land and Chuck, I know that we've
21:14
Speaker 1: completely abandoned the whole story. But congratulations on your first skydive.
21:19
Speaker 1: You did really well. Oh boy, that was a lot
21:22
Speaker 1: easier I thought I thought it was going to be.
21:24
Speaker 1: And technically, now I think about it, you've done skydiving,
21:27
Speaker 1: it's just been indoor skydiving and you did great. Yeah,
21:30
Speaker 1: I mean we have to mention that. I think we
21:32
Speaker 1: have no way around it. We did a parachute emergency
21:35
Speaker 1: short stuff and I know for a fact we mentioned
21:37
Speaker 1: it in that. Yeah, but if anyone's curious, Josh and
21:40
Speaker 1: I did a Toyota commercial years ago, back when people
21:43
Speaker 1: cared about us representing their brand and we used to
21:47
Speaker 1: get those calls occasionally. Yeah, and we were put in.
21:51
Speaker 1: They flew us out to LA and we shot a
21:54
Speaker 1: mile neighborhood. It was super cool and one of the
21:56
Speaker 1: things we did was go to a wind tunnel one
21:58
Speaker 1: of those indoor jump facilities and you know, sort of
22:02
Speaker 1: explain something while we were doing that, and it's online
22:05
Speaker 1: and it was super fun and you get to see
22:06
Speaker 1: Josh take a little indoor spill, which is still makes
22:09
Speaker 1: me laugh every time I see. I was thinking about
22:11
Speaker 1: how much they had to cut out of that commercial
22:14
Speaker 1: to preserve that spill of mine and just how badly
22:18
Speaker 1: the director and producer wanted to make sure that stayed
22:21
Speaker 1: and that was a lot of work. I'm sure to
22:22
Speaker 1: keep that in. So it was it was hard to do.
22:25
Speaker 1: It was harder than I thought it was going to do,
22:27
Speaker 1: just to stay stable, definitely, And as evidence by what
22:31
Speaker 1: happened to you, you just you got a little caddywompus
22:34
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you just got funking to
22:35
Speaker 1: a wall. Yeah. I don't remember anything after that. Yeah,
22:39
Speaker 1: because I guess the commercial ends, oh, you're a good sport,
22:42
Speaker 1: and of course they use that in the commercial. So
22:44
Speaker 1: let's say, Chuck that you're like, I want to do
22:47
Speaker 1: that every day of my life, for the rest of
22:49
Speaker 1: my life. You can do that. You can take on
22:52
Speaker 1: skydiving as a hobby, not making Toyota commercial skydiving as
22:55
Speaker 1: a hobby, right, that'd be great. And there's a couple
22:59
Speaker 1: of ways you can go. One's actually really hard to find.
23:02
Speaker 1: The other one is you can find it at any
23:04
Speaker 1: place you go skydiving. There are two different types of
23:08
Speaker 1: training that are going to get you to the same place.
23:10
Speaker 1: Which is a Class A license from the United States
23:14
Speaker 1: Parachuting association. Yeah, and I a D is one instructor
23:19
Speaker 1: assisted deployment, and then AFF seems like the way more
23:22
Speaker 1: common one, which is accelerated freefall. Accelerate freefalls when an
23:28
Speaker 1: instructor jumps out with you, but not tandem style. They're
23:31
Speaker 1: not attached to you, but they're with you kind of
23:34
Speaker 1: making sure everything goes great, but you're you're in control
23:38
Speaker 1: of everything. I still don't quite get what I a
23:41
Speaker 1: D is. Are they Is that a static line thing? Yes,
23:46
Speaker 1: So the instructor acts as the static line. They have
23:49
Speaker 1: your parachute and they are staying on the plane and
23:52
Speaker 1: when you jump out, they pull your shoote so immediately.
23:56
Speaker 1: So your first several it isn't fun. It's very deliberate.
24:00
Speaker 1: They want to teach you like landing essentially U first,
24:04
Speaker 1: So your first jump is at like thirty five hundred
24:06
Speaker 1: feet which is really low, and then you just move
24:09
Speaker 1: yourself up and up and up, and then I think
24:11
Speaker 1: with both courses, after about six jumps, you finally make
24:14
Speaker 1: your first solo freefall jump. Okay, And that's the goal
24:19
Speaker 1: for most people if they want to really get into it, yeah,
24:21
Speaker 1: is to just be able to go to a place
24:24
Speaker 1: I imagine you have to pay them a little something, right,
24:26
Speaker 1: you have to sign over your first born. Well, you
24:30
Speaker 1: have to pay for the plane and stuff. But even
24:32
Speaker 1: if you have all your own gear, they're still fees involved. Yes, Um,
24:37
Speaker 1: I think I calculated about thirty five hundred bucks, which
24:40
Speaker 1: from what I saw it looks pretty right to me. Um,
24:42
Speaker 1: unless they get your light fully licensed uff right, Yes,
24:45
Speaker 1: the course is about eighteen hundred, say two thousand, and
24:48
Speaker 1: then to get all the way to your license, with
24:51
Speaker 1: all the exams and all that stuff, it's about thirty
24:53
Speaker 1: five hundred the thing. No, and equipment is expensive, as
24:58
Speaker 1: you might assume. We're talking about equipment that keeps you alive.
25:02
Speaker 1: So like your parachute might be a couple grand, three grand,
25:07
Speaker 1: helmets can get pretty expensive. An altimeter is four hundred dollars,
25:12
Speaker 1: so it starts to add up really really quickly. You
25:15
Speaker 1: can pick up a used altimeter on that crazy. I
25:17
Speaker 1: would sure, I would like if you if you get
25:21
Speaker 1: into this, A word of advice for me, do not
25:24
Speaker 1: cheep out on your equipment, in particular your altimeter. Yeah,
25:28
Speaker 1: I would imagine. So, Um, you can go through this
25:31
Speaker 1: whole thing, and I don't know how long it takes.
25:34
Speaker 1: I actually didn't get a sense of that. But when
25:37
Speaker 1: you get your license, you're like, what do you mean license?
25:40
Speaker 1: Is the government going to come a recipe? No, But
25:42
Speaker 1: if you show up to a skydiving place you say
25:47
Speaker 1: I want to jump, they'll say, well, we need to
25:48
Speaker 1: see your license, and if you have your a license
25:51
Speaker 1: on you, they'll say, hop aboard and you can pack
25:54
Speaker 1: your own parachute. You can do jumps. I think you
25:56
Speaker 1: can do water jumps, which seems like I don't know.
26:00
Speaker 1: I guess water jumps are probably really difficult because you
26:04
Speaker 1: can get wrapped up and sink if you're not careful. Yeah, right,
26:09
Speaker 1: what was the um? There was some action movie where
26:13
Speaker 1: dude dejects from a plane and lands and water and
26:17
Speaker 1: like has to like it's lost consciousness and has to
26:20
Speaker 1: come to and get out of the parachute UM rigging.
26:25
Speaker 1: So I think the first top gun. I mean that's
26:28
Speaker 1: how Goose died. Right, Yes, this person survives. I keep
26:31
Speaker 1: seeing Bruce Willis, but I don't think it was Bruce Willis.
26:34
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you were you were saying, you
26:36
Speaker 1: don't know how long you can get this class eight,
26:38
Speaker 1: how long it takes you need twenty five freefall jumps,
26:42
Speaker 1: five group dump group jumps, and some other training. So
26:48
Speaker 1: I would imagine even if you're really eager and cooking
26:52
Speaker 1: like this takes a matter of months. Yeah, that seems
26:56
Speaker 1: to get all those in. Yeah, for sure. I guess
26:59
Speaker 1: you go every day if you were really like I
27:01
Speaker 1: had to learn fast. Yeah, which I mean, that's what
27:05
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I wonder what's the rush? Absolutely right, exactly,
27:08
Speaker 1: Well you want that rush, that's the rush. Oh that's true. Uh,
27:12
Speaker 1: the b license sounds interesting because you can do night jumps.
27:16
Speaker 1: Which it's funny ED put this together person. I think
27:19
Speaker 1: he said the night jumps was the only thing he
27:20
Speaker 1: said that interested him, right, he says it's the only
27:22
Speaker 1: thing that that um makes him kind to want to
27:25
Speaker 1: do this, right, is a night jump. But you have
27:28
Speaker 1: to do you have to invest a lot before you
27:30
Speaker 1: get into night jumps because that's your class. Is really
27:33
Speaker 1: scary to me, it is super super scary. Um. One
27:36
Speaker 1: thing I thought was pretty cool is the USPA has
27:40
Speaker 1: um training uh and like kind of differently structured courses
27:45
Speaker 1: to help people with disabilities get their licenses too, which
27:50
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty great. Totally. So, um, you
27:54
Speaker 1: mentioned night diving, which sounds really cool, Like you're just
27:58
Speaker 1: you're jumping out at night, and like, you know what
28:00
Speaker 1: cities look like from an airplane. Imagine if there's nothing
28:03
Speaker 1: between you and the city but air, that must be
28:06
Speaker 1: pretty awesome, right, That's one of many things you can do.
28:10
Speaker 1: So once people started getting into skydiving in the seventies,
28:12
Speaker 1: they're like, how can this be more dangerous? How can
28:14
Speaker 1: this be more thrilling? And they came up with a
28:16
Speaker 1: lot of different interesting things. Yeah, they're like, hey, you
28:19
Speaker 1: want to be on the evening news, why don't Why
28:21
Speaker 1: don't thirty of us get together on the first day
28:25
Speaker 1: of spraying and make big flowers in the air by
28:28
Speaker 1: doing something called formation flying. Yeah, or just let's sit
28:32
Speaker 1: around until we hit our nineties and take our seven
28:34
Speaker 1: year old sons with us. Yeah, exactly. Formation flying or
28:38
Speaker 1: relative work or belly flying a couple of other names.
28:41
Speaker 1: That is when again, usually you see it on the
28:44
Speaker 1: evening news when people go up and they all get
28:47
Speaker 1: together to set a record or just join hands and
28:51
Speaker 1: legs into funt shapes up in the air on their
28:53
Speaker 1: way down. Imagine, it's a great group activity for the
28:56
Speaker 1: enthusiast of skydiving. Yeah, you're looking up and say, oh,
28:59
Speaker 1: it's a flower. Yeah, we do flowers last time. Gary
29:04
Speaker 1: always wants to do flowers. When can we make the
29:07
Speaker 1: amper sin right, I'd like to see that. So the
29:10
Speaker 1: thing about floormation flying that's belly down right, you said,
29:14
Speaker 1: there's another one called free flying, where it's vertically oriented,
29:17
Speaker 1: not belly oriented, which is horizontal, and they do all
29:22
Speaker 1: crazy looking Yes, they'll also sometimes. One of the reasons
29:26
Speaker 1: they call it free flying is because they'll there won't
29:28
Speaker 1: be like a plan. A group of them will kind
29:30
Speaker 1: of hang out and just figure out together, kind of
29:33
Speaker 1: like breakdancing but midair, except you're doing a tea party exactly. Yeah.
29:38
Speaker 1: Or they do surfing, um, like you'll surf on somebody's back,
29:41
Speaker 1: all sorts of really cool stuff, and you can also
29:45
Speaker 1: get some crazy speed as we'll see. Um. There actually
29:48
Speaker 1: is something called skysurfing where you don't use your friends back.
29:52
Speaker 1: You actually use like a snowboard. Yeah, and you connectly
29:56
Speaker 1: because it's a snowboard. You're suddenly putting out, like you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: form resistance to the air, um, and that friction can
30:04
Speaker 1: allow you to do some pretty sweet tricks. Once you
30:06
Speaker 1: get good at skysurfing, yeah, like standing on that thing
30:10
Speaker 1: and spinning around, yeah, or doing loop to loops in
30:16
Speaker 1: the air. I don't know why that always cracks me up,
30:19
Speaker 1: but skysurfing always that was kind of fun. And it
30:23
Speaker 1: sounds like I'm making fun of it. I'm not. It's
30:25
Speaker 1: it is cool, but I'm just trying to think of
30:27
Speaker 1: you know, the first guy that was like, they're always
30:30
Speaker 1: trying to combine their loves of the extreme things that
30:32
Speaker 1: they love, you know, like let me put a wingsuit
30:36
Speaker 1: on a motorcycle or whatever like all that. The other
30:39
Speaker 1: people on the plane were like, why do you have
30:40
Speaker 1: your surfboard? And he just watch. There's another one called
30:46
Speaker 1: tracking that I thought was pretty delightful. Now, is this
30:51
Speaker 1: just the James Bond thing. Yes, it's it's just moving
30:55
Speaker 1: away from where you jumped out, moving away from the plane.
31:02
Speaker 1: But that happens innately, right you move, Yes, the plane
31:06
Speaker 1: moves away from you. This is you purposely, purposely moving
31:11
Speaker 1: away from the plane yourself by by positioning your body
31:14
Speaker 1: at different angles. So you're suddenly like shooting off to
31:17
Speaker 1: the west or shooting off to the northeast. And this
31:21
Speaker 1: is like a this is a practical skill that you
31:24
Speaker 1: need to have just as a basic skydiver, but people
31:27
Speaker 1: have turned it into new feats of amazingness, like how
31:32
Speaker 1: far can you go? How fast can you get there?
31:35
Speaker 1: Seeking through the air? Sure, like their landing spot is
31:38
Speaker 1: a really far away, and so they try and go
31:40
Speaker 1: as horizontally as far as they can go, yes, to
31:43
Speaker 1: hit a certain spot. And also if you're doing formation
31:45
Speaker 1: flying or free flying, you need to be good at
31:48
Speaker 1: tracking because you have to get away from one another
31:51
Speaker 1: before you deploy your shoots or else you're gonna end
31:53
Speaker 1: up on earth sandwich together. Yeah. And speaking of speeds,
31:58
Speaker 1: I believe the currents bead record now we said terminal
32:02
Speaker 1: was one twenty three twenty nine miles per hour. Yeah,
32:08
Speaker 1: is the current record for someone shooting through the air
32:11
Speaker 1: with a straight James Bond like body. Yeah, and kilometers
32:15
Speaker 1: per hour. That's a mind boggling number two. I'm sure
32:19
Speaker 1: I don't quite get what cupping is. Is that just
32:21
Speaker 1: what we did? And the wentz on a like, yes,
32:23
Speaker 1: regular trying to resist the air. Yeah, you're you're well,
32:27
Speaker 1: you're making like an arch out of your body and
32:29
Speaker 1: when you do that, you kind of make yourself into
32:32
Speaker 1: a parachute and you go up right. So let's say
32:35
Speaker 1: you've got four other people and you just finished making
32:38
Speaker 1: a flower to Gary's dismay, and you all need to
32:42
Speaker 1: get away from one another. There's different ways to get away.
32:45
Speaker 1: So Gary shoots off to the northeast. He's all mad,
32:48
Speaker 1: you shoot off to the west able your biblical friend
32:54
Speaker 1: and cups. So he goes upward all of a sudden
32:56
Speaker 1: to put some vertical distance between you two. And then
32:59
Speaker 1: Kane Abel's brother ironically right makes himself into like a
33:04
Speaker 1: missile and shoots downwards. So now there's even more vertical
33:08
Speaker 1: distance between all of you, vertical and horizontal distance. All
33:11
Speaker 1: of that is considered tracking. That's so cane. Yeah, Cane's
33:15
Speaker 1: like here I go. I mentioned the wingsuit. That is,
33:20
Speaker 1: when you've seen the people who look like flying squirrels
33:23
Speaker 1: in the air, it is it's a wingsuit. It's a
33:26
Speaker 1: suit that has a webbing between the arm pits and
33:31
Speaker 1: between your legs, and that just creates more wind resistance,
33:35
Speaker 1: but it also creates something called a burbal in the biz,
33:39
Speaker 1: and that is the dead air behind you, sort of
33:42
Speaker 1: like when a race car has that dead or not
33:45
Speaker 1: even a race car. You know, a big semi truck
33:47
Speaker 1: on the highway, Yeah, has as an area of dead
33:51
Speaker 1: air behind it where a car can draft for either
33:56
Speaker 1: more speed or to use less fuel or both. But
33:59
Speaker 1: that is a burbal in the parlance of skydiving, right,
34:02
Speaker 1: and apparently in the verbal like wingsuiting is is a
34:06
Speaker 1: pretty tricky thing. Obviously, it takes tons I think two
34:09
Speaker 1: hundred dies before you're allowed to put on that squirrel suit.
34:12
Speaker 1: But the verbal makes it hard to or just a
34:15
Speaker 1: little trickier to get the shoot out properly in the
34:19
Speaker 1: verbal yes, so yeah, I wingsuits sound pretty awesome, but
34:24
Speaker 1: that's not that's well beyond my limit, I think. No, well,
34:28
Speaker 1: you just don't wanted Scott have two hundred times to
34:30
Speaker 1: get there? No, probably not, Probably, it's a lot. So
34:34
Speaker 1: remember I said, tracking is like a basic thing that
34:36
Speaker 1: people have turned into, you know, feats of amazingness. They've
34:40
Speaker 1: they've done the same thing with the actual parachuting part
34:43
Speaker 1: called canopy flying. There's swoopers, there's gliders, there's people who
34:48
Speaker 1: um go on like an obstacle course over water, and
34:53
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Apparently, when you swoop correctly, you make
34:56
Speaker 1: a sound when you come in for your landing, okay,
35:00
Speaker 1: And I've seen video of people that you can pick
35:02
Speaker 1: up some real speed if you angle your canopy your
35:06
Speaker 1: parachute the right way, and they'll go from like really
35:09
Speaker 1: really fast ten feet above the ground to like almost
35:13
Speaker 1: still with the softest landing you've ever seen, you know,
35:17
Speaker 1: a second or two later. It's really neat. Yeah, that
35:20
Speaker 1: is cool, and that's where a lot of the accuracy
35:23
Speaker 1: skydive when we talked about, happens when you're a canopy
35:26
Speaker 1: flying and you really want to nail that bull's eye.
35:29
Speaker 1: One other thing they do that's awesome is that your
35:32
Speaker 1: canopy has straps on the top, and sometimes a bunch
35:35
Speaker 1: of people will coordinate so that each one's strapped in
35:38
Speaker 1: by their feet to the canopy below them. So it's
35:41
Speaker 1: a big chain of people skydiving, which sounds so dangerous,
35:46
Speaker 1: but yeah, I'm sure so cool. Now the kind eye
35:50
Speaker 1: would be interested in more so than an airplane even is.
35:54
Speaker 1: And you need a B license for this, so there's
35:57
Speaker 1: no getting around doing the series of steps to get there.
36:00
Speaker 1: But the hot air balloon jump. And at first I
36:05
Speaker 1: was like, well, who cares, what's a big deal, But
36:07
Speaker 1: as we mentioned When you go out of that plane
36:09
Speaker 1: in a hundred miles an hour, you've done it. I'm
36:12
Speaker 1: and you blacked out for the first few seconds. I
36:15
Speaker 1: imagine it's like just a big sort of violent rush
36:19
Speaker 1: of air and sound and you don't really quite know
36:21
Speaker 1: what's going on at first. But you jump out of
36:24
Speaker 1: that hot air balloon, it's dead silent. You actually experience
36:28
Speaker 1: a true freefall from the jump. Yeah, like you know,
36:33
Speaker 1: you would on an amusement park ride, right, And the
36:37
Speaker 1: silence of it and the stillness of it really is
36:39
Speaker 1: appealing to me. Yeah, it's not until you start to
36:42
Speaker 1: really pick up speed that like the air makes a
36:45
Speaker 1: sound running past you. That's pretty cool. It does sound
36:49
Speaker 1: pretty cool for sure. So that's called no airplane skydiving
36:51
Speaker 1: or hot air balloon skydiving, which is pretty cool. There's
36:56
Speaker 1: another one that's like that, but it's up way higher.
36:58
Speaker 1: It's called space dive. And if you watch the Felix
37:02
Speaker 1: bomb Gardener two thousand and twelve jump that I was
37:06
Speaker 1: looking back at that. So we're talking. You know, if
37:09
Speaker 1: you go up in your skydiving and it's uh, like
37:12
Speaker 1: like what I did, I did thirteen thousand feet, which
37:16
Speaker 1: is really high. You're up there so long you're freefall.
37:19
Speaker 1: So you're following about one hundred and seventy six feet
37:22
Speaker 1: per second, which means that you're in free fall from
37:24
Speaker 1: the time you jump out of the plane till the
37:26
Speaker 1: time that you you pull your rip cord or the
37:29
Speaker 1: guy strapped to your back does m forty five to
37:32
Speaker 1: sixty seconds of that. That sounds about right. That's at
37:36
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand feet and then pulling it about five thousand.
37:39
Speaker 1: So m Felix bomb Gardner jumped out at one hundred
37:42
Speaker 1: and twenty seven thousand feet. What was his freefall? How
37:46
Speaker 1: long was that? I think it was several minutes actually,
37:49
Speaker 1: And remember he famously got into like this horrible tailspin
37:53
Speaker 1: that they're like, well this guy might be a goner.
37:56
Speaker 1: But even more impressive than that, he entered he hit
37:59
Speaker 1: mock one point two five, which means he broke the
38:02
Speaker 1: sound barrier. He was the first person to do it
38:03
Speaker 1: without a plane, and he which is about eight hundred
38:07
Speaker 1: and forty three miles per hour. All right, I just
38:10
Speaker 1: looked it up real quick. What you don't usually do?
38:12
Speaker 1: He he was in prefall for four minutes in nineteen
38:15
Speaker 1: second man, that was crazy and then his record was
38:17
Speaker 1: broken by a guy named Alan Eustace to two years later.
38:22
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't know, Yeah, I don't either.
38:24
Speaker 1: Felix bomb Gunner definitely got the press for that. Pretty cool. Yeah,
38:31
Speaker 1: he did it first. I'm sure that guys like oh man,
38:33
Speaker 1: no one, he've been batter t to my jump. Well, actually,
38:35
Speaker 1: another guy, Colonel Joe Kittinger did it first in the sixties.
38:39
Speaker 1: It was just like a gas balloon. Yeah, he does
38:42
Speaker 1: space jump, which is I mean again, remember there was
38:46
Speaker 1: like eleven deaths per hundred thousand jumps for a regular
38:50
Speaker 1: skydiving and this guy's up and at a gas balloon
38:53
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand feet above the Earth doing it. So
38:56
Speaker 1: hats off to all those people who've ever jumped out
38:58
Speaker 1: of a balloon in space. All Right, I guess we
39:01
Speaker 1: can take a late second break here and talk about
39:06
Speaker 1: this equipment we've been harping on. Yeah, all right, we
39:37
Speaker 1: mentioned the equipment money that you can spend and the
39:41
Speaker 1: rabbit hole to get the coolest helmets and goggles. The
39:44
Speaker 1: first thing that you want as a parachute. If you're
39:47
Speaker 1: a beginner, you're canopy. It's gonna be a little bit larger,
39:51
Speaker 1: make you go a little bit slower. Yeah, back in
39:53
Speaker 1: the day, we said they were silk because silk has
39:57
Speaker 1: a very high strength to weight ratio. And it's also
40:00
Speaker 1: and here's sort of the key, it's a very tight weave.
40:02
Speaker 1: Because you know, you can't jump out with a gauze parachute,
40:06
Speaker 1: it's not going to do much to slow you down.
40:08
Speaker 1: So that tight weave of the silk really helped. And
40:11
Speaker 1: then they eventually moved to nylon, of course, and that
40:16
Speaker 1: nylon even usually has a coating on it to make
40:18
Speaker 1: it even more nonporous. And we mentioned the big round
40:22
Speaker 1: early parachute compared to the shape they have today today
40:25
Speaker 1: they have and it's not only for flying cool and
40:29
Speaker 1: doing you know, having more maneuverability, but they are formed
40:32
Speaker 1: into different cells, as you will see if you look
40:35
Speaker 1: at a parachute jump in. Those cells are sort of
40:39
Speaker 1: a redundancy in themselves because if like one thing goes
40:41
Speaker 1: wrong in a part of the parachute, you still got
40:43
Speaker 1: plenty of parachute left. Yeah. What I didn't know I
40:46
Speaker 1: ran across some research is the sides in the back
40:48
Speaker 1: of the ram air parachute are sewn up, but the
40:52
Speaker 1: front is open, so that air enters those cells and
40:55
Speaker 1: puffs them up and creates a bit of buoyancy from
40:57
Speaker 1: what I can tell, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's
41:00
Speaker 1: pretty cool. So that again, that just completely changed everything
41:03
Speaker 1: when they came up with UM that type of parachute.
41:07
Speaker 1: Another parachute that really comes in handy is your reserve parachute.
41:13
Speaker 1: So there's there's UM they've kind of updated the technology
41:17
Speaker 1: on this. Before I don't know, you probably had to
41:19
Speaker 1: be carrying a Rambo knife in your teeth when you
41:21
Speaker 1: jump so that you could cut your shoote to release
41:24
Speaker 1: your your shoot from you so you could release your
41:26
Speaker 1: reserve canopy. Now there's like just a little pull chord
41:30
Speaker 1: and the like all of your shoot that's failed falls
41:33
Speaker 1: away your initial canopy and then you can pull your
41:36
Speaker 1: reserve shoot pretty easily from there. Some of them even
41:38
Speaker 1: have a thing where when you pull that chord and
41:41
Speaker 1: your main canopy goes away, it actually pulls your reserve
41:45
Speaker 1: shoot out like it's a static line basically, which is
41:48
Speaker 1: probably good because I'm sure you're a little bit panicked
41:52
Speaker 1: maybe when your shoot UM doesn't doesn't work when it fails,
41:55
Speaker 1: even though you know you have a reserve shoot that's
41:58
Speaker 1: got to be. You know, you're down one, You're down
42:00
Speaker 1: to your last one. Now this is your back up. Yeah, absolutely, Um,
42:06
Speaker 1: the harness and the container is what it's. The little
42:08
Speaker 1: backpack is called that everything is packed in. Yeah, and
42:12
Speaker 1: of course you want to have someone that knows what
42:13
Speaker 1: they're doing doing that. I'm sure there are many many
42:17
Speaker 1: instructional lessons involved for you to get to the point
42:19
Speaker 1: where you can pack your own. And they say, even
42:22
Speaker 1: when you're packing your own, it's not the kind of
42:24
Speaker 1: thing where you should pack it and just like leave
42:26
Speaker 1: it in your closet for a few years and jump again. Like,
42:29
Speaker 1: you should probably repack that thing just to make sure
42:32
Speaker 1: everything is as it should be. Yeah, your reserves SHO
42:34
Speaker 1: has to be packed by a licensed instructor and they
42:38
Speaker 1: have you have to unpack it and repack it every
42:40
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty days to make sure that it's
42:42
Speaker 1: in good condition. So, yeah, you don't want that thing
42:45
Speaker 1: getting that's hung up. No, that's no joke. The altimeter,
42:48
Speaker 1: I told you, that's the thing that tells you what, um,
42:51
Speaker 1: where you're at above sea level, So you know when
42:54
Speaker 1: polar ripcord usually it's three thy thirty feet and the louder.
43:00
Speaker 1: Some of them will will make a sound in your ear,
43:03
Speaker 1: in your helmet. Some of them have really big numbers.
43:06
Speaker 1: Just kind of wear like a watch on your wrist. Again,
43:09
Speaker 1: do not cheap out on your altimeter. Okay. Also, do
43:13
Speaker 1: not go to Craigslist to pick up your AAD. That's
43:16
Speaker 1: your automatic activation device. That is the redundancy on the
43:20
Speaker 1: redundancy if you're doing if Gary flies over in mid
43:26
Speaker 1: stem formation, kicks you in the head by accident, and
43:30
Speaker 1: you're passed out up there and Gary can't get back
43:33
Speaker 1: to you, you have a device that is set to
43:36
Speaker 1: automatically pop your shoot out at a preprogrammed altitude based
43:41
Speaker 1: on how fast you're going. You really want that thing
43:44
Speaker 1: to be set up correctly. You know. Some people say
43:47
Speaker 1: Garry didn't even really try to get back to you. Yeah,
43:50
Speaker 1: that's what I saw, and it's all on my GoPro
43:52
Speaker 1: one thing. I saw. This what the AAD is. If
43:55
Speaker 1: you go up an airplane and for some reason you
43:57
Speaker 1: don't jump out, you better remember to turn if you're
44:00
Speaker 1: a d because when the airplane hits like seven hundred feet,
44:03
Speaker 1: it's going to activate your pairs in the airplane. Yeah,
44:09
Speaker 1: that's that's no good. And then you got your jumpsuit
44:11
Speaker 1: which protects your skin, and then you've got your helmet
44:14
Speaker 1: and goggles, which are absolutely essential. Yeah, and you put
44:18
Speaker 1: all those things together, you're ready to go skydiving. Yeah,
44:21
Speaker 1: what's the little uh? It doesn't a little mini parachute
44:25
Speaker 1: come out at first, and that pulls the main shoot. Now, Yeah,
44:28
Speaker 1: so the pilot shoote just kind of pilot shoot. Yeah,
44:32
Speaker 1: it catches enough air that it can pull your shoot
44:34
Speaker 1: out of your container, out of your deployment bag, your
44:37
Speaker 1: d bag they call it, Yeah, they do. And then
44:41
Speaker 1: one thing that that can happen if your shoot just
44:44
Speaker 1: opened from like nothing to open like in a second,
44:48
Speaker 1: it's going to pull you up and possibly break your shoulders,
44:53
Speaker 1: do all sorts of terrible stuff to your growing, and
44:56
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that. So they've actually created
44:58
Speaker 1: something called a slider which holds the chords together and
45:02
Speaker 1: then as the shoot opens up, it kind of slides
45:04
Speaker 1: further and further down, so it controls the opening of
45:07
Speaker 1: your shoot to make it a much more pleasant experience.
45:10
Speaker 1: And that's the one that you use for just a
45:13
Speaker 1: solo a skydiving. There's another one called a drogue shoot
45:16
Speaker 1: they use for tandem, right, and that is it's sort
45:20
Speaker 1: of like a pilot shoot, but is bigger than a
45:21
Speaker 1: pilot shoot. Right. Yes, it's in between pilot SHOOTE and canopy. Yeah,
45:26
Speaker 1: and that is deployed, I mean kind of right afterward,
45:30
Speaker 1: right right after you job. I don't know when the
45:32
Speaker 1: drogue is deployed or not, because they could be because
45:36
Speaker 1: the rip chord is pulled by the instructor. It's not
45:40
Speaker 1: like the drogue pulls the main canopy out right. But
45:43
Speaker 1: the reason the drogue is bigger is because even though
45:46
Speaker 1: a bowling ball and a person would fall together at
45:48
Speaker 1: the same speed to Earth in a vacuum, mass does
45:54
Speaker 1: count when you add air friction. And when you're tandem,
45:58
Speaker 1: you're presenting the same amount of surface area to the
46:01
Speaker 1: to the resistance to the air as you are if
46:03
Speaker 1: you're solo, because the person's on your back, but you've
46:07
Speaker 1: got about double or more the weight. So you do
46:10
Speaker 1: hit that terminal velocity at a higher speed of about
46:12
Speaker 1: two hundred miles an hour, and you need a bigger
46:15
Speaker 1: canopy and a larger drogue shoot to um to make
46:19
Speaker 1: it again a pleasant experience when the canopy opens. Yeah,
46:23
Speaker 1: and you also, you know, I think people what they
46:25
Speaker 1: want is at freefall time. Yes, and I'm sure they're
46:29
Speaker 1: maybe not guaranteed, but I'm sure they're sort of promised
46:32
Speaker 1: five to a minute. Yeah, yeah, And I mean, like
46:36
Speaker 1: it's that's not to say that the floating from a
46:39
Speaker 1: parachute is. It's just a totally different experience, and you
46:42
Speaker 1: go from one to another in like almost the blink
46:45
Speaker 1: of an eye. It really does happen really fast, and
46:48
Speaker 1: you're hollomating toward Earth. It's really really surprisingly cold up there.
46:53
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, you know, your shoot
46:55
Speaker 1: opens and you stop falling, and you're you're no longer
46:58
Speaker 1: belly down, your your feet are angling, and you're just
47:01
Speaker 1: kind of gliding along, floating on air. It's gotten quiet.
47:05
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, you actually feel the temperatures start
47:07
Speaker 1: to get warmer as you get closer and closer to
47:09
Speaker 1: the earth, and you just get set down. It's it's
47:13
Speaker 1: just an amazing experience. There's nothing else like it that
47:17
Speaker 1: sounds great. I gotta try it out. I hope you do, man,
47:19
Speaker 1: let me know. If you do, I'll watch you. We
47:22
Speaker 1: would do it again, though, if I did it right.
47:24
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Youmi would let me at this point. Really,
47:27
Speaker 1: She's just like, why bother? You've done it? Yeah, she
47:30
Speaker 1: did it once too. We actually kind of are like,
47:32
Speaker 1: we did it once, we don't need to do it again.
47:34
Speaker 1: This has made me want to do it again, but again,
47:37
Speaker 1: I probably will just stay on the ground and watch you. Okay, Well,
47:41
Speaker 1: I certainly love knowing what a life experience feels like,
47:45
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll do it. Okay, Well, while we wait
47:49
Speaker 1: for Chuck to do it, how about we do a
47:51
Speaker 1: listener mail. Let's do it quick correction by the way,
47:58
Speaker 1: And this is something that embarrassed that we forgot. But
48:02
Speaker 1: in the cave episode where what was his name that
48:06
Speaker 1: was trapped in the cave, Floyd Collins. Yeah, I could
48:10
Speaker 1: think of a Felix bomb gardener, and we kept talking
48:13
Speaker 1: about how cold it was like for fourteen degrees or whatever.
48:16
Speaker 1: Obviously the temperature in the cave is because it's underground,
48:20
Speaker 1: is a pretty static, steady number. That is not what
48:23
Speaker 1: it's like on top of the ground. So I don't
48:26
Speaker 1: understand that because there was ice mixed in with the
48:31
Speaker 1: mud and the rock in sand cave, I don't know
48:35
Speaker 1: what to tell you, my friends, it's possible sand cave
48:38
Speaker 1: was a little more open to the surface. I don't know.
48:41
Speaker 1: Maybe I saw it in multiple places that there was
48:43
Speaker 1: plenty of ice to contend with, all right, but I
48:47
Speaker 1: get you with you. I saw people groaned or shouted
48:50
Speaker 1: at their their phone or whatever. It's like that that
48:54
Speaker 1: was the one thing that was it That the cave
48:57
Speaker 1: supposedly has a steady temperature and we don't even know
49:00
Speaker 1: that that's true. Everybody, that's true, all right. So this
49:04
Speaker 1: is the email, and it's about another correction that boy
49:07
Speaker 1: you certainly heard from the bitters lovers of the world. Yeah,
49:11
Speaker 1: when you said nobody wouldever just drink bitters, apparently a
49:16
Speaker 1: lot of people drink bitters, and a lot of people
49:18
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin drink bitters. Hey, guys, well, listening to the
49:21
Speaker 1: most recent episode on tomorrow, amused by your exchange about
49:24
Speaker 1: bitters being alcoholic. Chuck was amazed at bitters contained alcohol
49:27
Speaker 1: at all and was confused while I was in grocery
49:30
Speaker 1: stores and Josh explained that nobody would drink a bottle
49:32
Speaker 1: of bitters. You said and said you put money on it. Yeah, well, Josh,
49:36
Speaker 1: it sounds like you need to do a tour of
49:37
Speaker 1: the wonderful state of Wisconsin. I could summarize this article
49:40
Speaker 1: about the longest operating tavern in Wisconsin and number one
49:43
Speaker 1: consumer of bitters in the world, but it's incredibly well written.
49:47
Speaker 1: Read this while I take an ad break. And this
49:50
Speaker 1: was from Kevin Pep Rocky and it was from Atlas Obscura,
49:55
Speaker 1: Washington Island, Wisconsin bitters shots. What's the name of this thing?
49:59
Speaker 1: How a tiny Wisconsin island became the world's biggest consumer
50:03
Speaker 1: of bitters? Amazing? Ellis obscure rocks. They're great. And we
50:07
Speaker 1: heard from plenty of people who said that not only
50:10
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin but other places, like a shot of bitters
50:13
Speaker 1: was a thing. Yeah, not only that, there's cocktails based
50:17
Speaker 1: on angostura as the main ingredient, like an idea and
50:21
Speaker 1: a half of bitters, which is crazy. Yeah, it's not
50:23
Speaker 1: like I'm new to this whole thing either. I just
50:25
Speaker 1: had not heard that at all. I'm not going to
50:28
Speaker 1: try it or anything like that, but I'm impressed. I
50:31
Speaker 1: hadn't heard this stuff either, So you know, we're learning
50:33
Speaker 1: to I love that, Chuck, I love it. Well, if
50:37
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, like Kevin
50:41
Speaker 1: Pep Rocky, Kevin Pep Rocky, and all the people who
50:44
Speaker 1: wrote in erroneously about the cave temperature for Floyd Collins.
50:47
Speaker 1: You can send us an email send it off to
50:50
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
50:57
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast It's my
51:00
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
51:04
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.