getting your skydiving certification
Getting Your Skydiving Certification If you are a think that the sport of skydiving sounds exciting, and you want to become certified, there are a few steps that you will have to take before you reach your goal. When you take these steps, you will be able to get your certification. 1. The first thing you are going to want to do is to do a tamdem skydive so that you can try skydiving. Skydiving is an expensive sport and you want to make sure that you are going to enjoy doing it before you invest a lot of time and money. With a tamdem skydive, you are attached to your instructor with a harness. Do some research and find a dropzone that is near you and affiliated with the USPA. 2. One of the first things you will have to do in order to become certified in skydiving is to complete the Accelerated FreeFall, or AFF, course. The requirements for the course can vary depending on the dropzone, but usually there are seven levels. There are maneuvers that you will need to do for each level. 3. Before you do your first AFF jump, you have to go through and finish a First Jump Course, where you learn about gear, hand signals, emergency procedures, and malfunctions. These and other things will help you stay safe during your jump. 4. In levels 1 through 3 of the AFF course, you wear your own parachute when you exit the airplane, but exit with two instructors that will hold on to you. They will give you hand signals to tell you directions and if you need to correct the position of your body. They are making sure that you know how to do things. The two instructors stay with you until you pull the parachute. If your parachute isn�t pulled by the time you get to a certain altitude, they do it for you. They break away from you after your parachute deploys, but there will be one that is on the ground that gives you directions so that you land safely. 5. During the last levels of the AFF course, you will be exiting with one instructor. They won�t be holding to you unless there is a problem, and you�ll need to do maneuvers that are harder than the first three levels. 6. Once you complete your course, you are ready to go out on your own. It�s not a bad idea to work with a coach for a bit before you go out with your friends. You can join the USPA member and get your license.