Skydiving Gift Certificates for Skydiving Lessons

Buying someone skydiving gift certificates is more than just buying them pieces of paper, it is buying them passports to adventure. I still remember my first skydiving jump like it was yesterday, even though it’s been more than a decade. It's really hard to put such an intense feeling into words, there's just no frame of reference on land to compare to the thrill of free fall.

Simply put, there's nothing like accelerating to terminal velocity after you exit from the aircraft. In case you are not familiar with the terminology, terminal velocity is the top speed the skydiver reaches after jumping out of an airplane. It has a lot to do with how much surface area you present to the air on the jump; but has been measured to be somewhere in the neighborhood a 50 to 90 meters per second. Depending upon body position, an experienced skydiver can go even faster. To put that into miles per hour, it is possible to free fall at over 200 miles per hour! As you can imagine, moving that fast equipped with only a parachute and a jumpsuit makes for intense experience.

Before buying someone sky diving gift certificates make sure it is something they would enjoy doing. The person you’re buying a skydiving gift certificates for should also be at least 18 years old. Someone as young as 16 years old can jump, provided that they have parental permission. This probably goes without saying, but they should be in good physical health. Hurtling towards the earth at 200 miles an hour is not everyone’s idea of a good time. But for hundreds of years there has been a certain type of person has enjoyed it.

Sky diving was not invented after the airplane as many people believe, but conceived about 900 years ago by the Chinese. Leonardo Da Vinci even had designs for a wooden framed to parachute. There’s some debate, however many people believe the first person to take the plunge was André-Jacques Garnerin, who dove not from a Cessna, but a hot air balloon in France in 1797. His self designed parachute was frameless and made of silk.

Over 200 years and many thousands of jumps later, modern equipment includes ram air parachutes with individually inflatable cells, rip stop nylon, and safety devices that are capable of opening the your parachute even if you’re unconscious. Modern skydivers use state of the art equipment to make the hobby as safe as possible. In addition to top quality equipment, the Federal Aviation Administration also has governing regulations that must be followed. The recipient of your skydiving gift certificates will need to complete some basic training regarding safe entry and exit of the aircraft as well as basic sky diving procedures. Depending upon the sky diving method of your jump school uses, ground school can be as short as 1 hour or as long as one full day.

You may also want to plan to have a video camera or at least a digital camera on the ground to record that first jump. Even if they never jump again, they certainly will want to remember that day. Skydiving gift certificates allow a once in a lifetime experience, or entry into a new and exciting hobby of parachuting.