I always arrive early for my flights with my instructor. Usually we fly out of Long Island MacArthur airport but because of some construction there, we have been flying out of Brookhaven airport, a smaller "uncontrolled" field about 12 miles east of MacArthur. There is a very busy skydiving operation there and what is strange sometimes is that when we are flying around the airport "traffic pattern" we are at 1,100 feet in altitude, the skydivers are floating down from about 8,000 where they left the "jump plane," which you can see here, where someone has just left the aircraft. A little white drogue chute is visible as are the jumpers, a small black dot. I happened to have one of my cameras with me (always!) with an equivalent 400mm lens. I was listening to my portable aircraft radio and heard the pilot of the jump plane say they were overhead the airport would be dropping jumpers in 4 minutes, so I grabbed the camera and lens and walked over to where I could see the landing zone, and then looked up with my long lens and found the jump aircraft as it passed over, dropping the skydivers. Even with the 400mm lens, I still cropped in close to show you the jump airplane, a single engine turboprop which can really climb with six jumpers and their 6 passengers aboard.
So this is called tandem jumping. A seasoned skydiver connects himself to the person who wants to experience skydiving with a harness, and they both jump out of the aircraft together. Here are two skydivers in the same frame, the larger chute is below the smaller one in altitude.
As they get closer to the ground you can see the jumpers in more detail. And there are two sets of jumpers in the same photograph.
As they got closer to the ground I was able to get a close up of the pair. I cropped into the telephoto show so you can see them in more detail. I was stunned that I could come up with a photograph this close to the jumpers!
And here are a pair of jumpers a second before they touch down. Most jumping pairs land standing up, believe it or not! Also notice the runway in the background with a Cessna just taking off. The skydivers land on the grass and not very far from the runway. But the divers are really good and always land within a few feet from their target on the grass! What a cool thing to get to watch, just before I went flying Wednesday!
4 comments:
Thanks for taking us on this skydiving journey. Wonderful and colorful photos. It looks a little scary to see a small plane on the runway so close to these jumpers.
Joan
Great photos of this skydiving event. I like the series of them as they are falling, and I am surprised at the clarity of their faces as they are coming down. The photos are as close to skydiving as I will get. Not for the faint of heart. Trace
Great to view so many photos of this skydiving adventure. I cannot imagine how scary and exhilarating this would be. So smart to have jumpers diving in tandem. Betsey
The beauty of the tandem jumping is that someone can go to this place, and listen to a short safety lecture, I am guessing and then get in the plane and, in tandem, parachute to the ground. Years ago the only way to do that was to take an entire day's training, with landing and rolling exercises, and then you were allowed to jump out of a plane by yourself at a relatively low altitude, and your parachute was released by a static line attached to the plane. So it was a much longer training practice. But here you are jumping with a seasoned jump instructor and you only have to know a small amount.
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