Learning How to Skydive? Here Are 4 Things You Should Know

A baby bird gets her wings! A photo of me learning to skydive in 2011 at a drop-zone in rural North Carolina. Photo courtesy of Danielle Williams

Disclaimer: If you want to prepare for your very first tandem skydive, we’ve got you covered. Check out this link!

I signed up for skydiving lessons in 2011. The timing was magical. Adventurous wait-for-no-woman Danielle was ready to make her appearance and she finally had a proper budget to work with. Yep, living your best outdoor life is expensive.

Prior to that, I was living paycheck to paycheck which limited my leisure activities to weekly trivia nights at a local restaurant and drinking beer at my sister’s boyfriend’s house while his roommates blasted Lady Gaga and flipped the lights on and off to simulate a rave. Welcome to my So Called Life.

But anyways, the year was 2011. I was 25. I had just returned from a week in Puerto Rico where I befriended other solo women travelers, got stranded outside of a club at 4 a.m. and somehow ended up in Vieques swimming in a bioluminescent bay. Mischief managed.

Little did my new besties know, before leaving for Puerto Rico, I had signed up for solo skydiving lessons on a whim. Just kidding, I probably told everyone I met. All of my friends back home were getting motorcycles, having babies or closing on their first home and I wanted to try something new too!—as long as it didn’t require diapers or financing. So skydiving it was! A mixture of fear, excitement and anticipation ran through the back of my mind while I wandered through Old San Juan.

When I returned stateside, suntanned, exhausted and missing mofongo already, I found myself waking up at my sister's house and driving to a drop-zone in the middle of rural North Carolina. I had a little over one week to learn how to skydive before I had to report to a new job in Alabama.

Skydiving lessons began in a wood paneled classroom with two other students—both military-looking guys with high and tight haircuts. That day we learned the “do”s and “don’t”s of parachuting while our instructor waffled between teaching us what we needed to know to save our own lives and scaring the shit out of us. Definitely an interesting and terrifying approach.

There was no guarantee we would be able to jump that first day and as the hour grew late I even started to relax. That false sense of security disappeared the minute we found we’d be able to jump after all—and right before sunset.

By the time I slipped into a blue student jumpsuit and pulled a cracked skateboard helmet over my cornrows, my sister had parked her car in the gravel lot and was waiting for me on the patio outside. She was there to bear witness but she was not thrilled.

Meanwhile, an instructor helped me do up the straps on one of the student parachute rigs. That included threading a walkie-talkie in a cloth pouch through my chest strap. As I walked past my sister toward the loading area, I felt giddy with excitement and nervous laughter. Everything was suddenly hilarious. This wasn’t my first skydive, but it was going to be my first skydive without being strapped to a tandem instructor. At the end of the day, I would be responsible for deploying my own parachute and landing it safely. Laughter seemed the most appropriate response.

Practicing a poised exit prior to boarding the PAC750 for a student jump. Photo courtesy of Danielle Williams

I practiced my exit with two instructors at a mock-plane door near the loading area before boarding the aircraft, a low-wing, single prop PAC750 and taxiing to the runway. Take-off had an awful air of finality to it. No turning back now!

As we climbed through 10,000 ft, my instructors did a final gear check of my straps, handles, main and reserve parachute pins. Not long after, the plane banked onto jump run and the pilot reduced power. The rear jump door opened and we could finally breathe again (it was August in the Southeast United States). Everyone except me that is. I was terrified but I went through the motions as we had practiced on the ground. Before I knew it, I was in free-fall while my instructors helped me remain stable in a belly-to-earth position. At that point I didn’t have much to do other than check my altimeter and do a couple practice touches on my parachute handle. Eventually we reached 5,000 ft and it was time to pull.

It felt ethereal and quiet under canopy, far above the fields, longleaf pine forest and Walmart—wait, Walmart? I was going the wrong direction. The walkie talkie crackled to life and soon an instructor was guiding me turn-by-turn into a safe landing on the correct grassy field adjacent to the airstrip far below. No, I did not stand-up my landing. I slid in on my ass. I wore my grass stains as a badge of honor. I was not a natural canopy pilot and I didn’t land on my feet until my fifth landing, even though my school bus-sized 220-sq ft parachute flew so slowly it was practically going backwards. But I still felt amazing at the end of the day.

“How do you think your jump went?” said my instructor.

“I have no idea,” I answered truthfully. And I didn’t. The entire dive was a blur.

Somehow, by the end of the week I was a certified skydiver with seven jumps under my belt, thanks to cooperative weather and attentive instructors. Meanwhile I was falling in love with the sport. I loved how different it was from my daily life which was bound by routine, structure and order. Skydiving also had its rules, and it was important to follow them to stay alive and prevent injury, but people brought their own style and personality into the sport—from the pilot who flew in flip flops, board shorts and a t-shirt, to the beer bottles which clinked on the patio at the end of every day. I was equally amazed by the incredibly serious, hyper-focused skydiving teams from all around the world which trained at the rural drop zone.

At the time, I was in the U.S. Army. Learning to skydive taught me that there was a world outside of the strict confines of military life that judged people harshly. Even though skydiving in North Carolina was practically a military-adjacent sport (popular with mostly Special Operations soldiers) it still felt like a fine crack had appeared in my life. Being strong or fast did not inherently make a person a better skydiver. And the culture had its own code. These were small things but I felt them quietly challenging my preconceived notions of right and wrong, strong and weak, good and bad, etc. But that’s a story for another day. This story is for anyone who is curious about what it’s like to learn how to solo skydive.

Here are four things you should know:

The first time I jumped out of an airplane was during Army jump school in 2006 after my sophomore year of college. It was not by choice! I later learned to skydive in 2011. The main difference between static line parachuting and skydiving is free-fall! The girls who get it, get it. Photo courtesy of Danielle Williams

1. It’s okay to be afraid

Fear is a natural part of the process and it doesn’t go away for a long time. I was scared on my first solo jump and every jump after that for at least 100-150 skydives. Even now, over a decade later, while I can skydive barefoot and relax in the open door of a jump plane, there are still parts of each jump where my heart rate increases, my vision narrows and I breathe more shallowly.

Fear is a good thing. When people lose that fear, they start taking more and more risks to get it back; or they walk away from the sport entirely in search of something else. Most people wouldn’t admit this but fear is a part—big or small—of why we jump. We like being scared. Even if the fear shifts from ‘will I survive?’ to ‘will I be able to successfully dock on a two-plane, thirty-person head down formation?’ it doesn’t go away completely. And whether you ride roller coasters or search for the perfect atmospheric horror film to watch on your day off, chances are you enjoy being scared too! Or you know someone like this.

When I was first starting out, my fear had a name. I was terrified of the aircraft rear jump door. The farther away I was from the door the safer I felt—in my mind, at least. On each skydive, I watched as it swallowed skydivers whole; starting with the experienced jumpers who sat in the tail of the aircraft and working its way up to students, like myself, who sat closest to the pilot. Each time I watched others vanish into thin air until I found myself crossing the same threshold from safety into the unknown.

As I gained more experience, my fear didn’t disappear entirely, it just changed. I began to feel anxious during take-offs and relaxed when the door opened around 2,500 ft. After all, I was wearing a parachute! An open door meant safety in the event of an in-flight emergency. It didn’t help that reading about (extremely rare) skydiving plane crashes unlocked new flying fears. Meanwhile, the more jumps I accumulated, the more I began to trust my own skills, my gear and the relative safety of open air.

Even now, with hundreds of jumps and over a decade in the sport, I have a healthy appreciation of fear–it can be a reminder of what’s at stake. In skydiving, that’s your life or the lives of other people around you. So I stay fearful and I also try to have a good time. The times when I’ve gotten bored or lost my fear completely I can count on one hand. Those are also times when I’ve found myself pulling in the basement (deploying my parachute lower than recommended) or making poor decisions. So I like my fear, thank you very much. So should you!

Spotted: a gangly skydiver just off student status in rented gear, a cracked Protec skateboard helmet and a borrowed altimeter. Photo courtesy of Danielle Williams

2. Make sure your gear fits

I am a 6’1” woman who weighs 150 lbs. I fly a custom parachute rig that was tailored for my body size and shape. So this isn’t a problem for me at the moment but it used to be. When I started skydiving, I weighed a lot less, which meant the gear I rented never quite fit. The shoulder straps constantly slipped off my shoulder (and often the flaps wouldn’t stay closed due to age and wear and tear).

Women and smaller-sized people of all genders often find themselves in this predicament of renting gear that isn’t designed with their bodies in mind. A lot of skydiving gear is made for broad shouldered men with large quads. If you have smaller shoulders or, I don’t know, breasts!—this can be a problem.

When drop zones purchase parachute rigs from manufacturers to rent to their students, those are often designed for average sized men. Average sized women and smaller guys find themselves paying the same amount of money for gear that doesn’t fit. Or they end up flying high performance canopies (150-sq ft or smaller) as brand new skydivers due to their petite size. People (guys) love to talk shit about women being poor canopy pilots but you try landing something where you have to double wrap the steering lines around your hands in order to flare it properly. Women and people of all genders deserve properly fitting gear. This is a safety issue.

If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Ask questions and steer clear of instructors or drop-zones that take offense. As a skydiving student, you have a right to gear that fits!

3. Speak up

When I began skydiving I found myself assimilating into skydiving culture. At the time it was very common to hear unsolicited comments about women’s bodies in general from instructors and male skydivers. Women skydivers were ranked by level of attractiveness. They were disparaged for having multiple sexual partners, for having one sexual partner, for having no sexual partners or for refusing to hookup with a certain person—not to mention who was sleeping with whom was never reliable information. This sort of casual misogyny was normalized and people rarely spoke up. In fact, I can’t think of a single person around me as a new jumper who spoke up against sexist, or racist talk at the drop zone. I can definitely remember people who made questionable remarks and others who stayed silent. There were a lot of sly glances in my direction before and after people made racist comments within earshot but that was about it.

Here’s the thing, it’s already difficult to learn something new when no one else looks like you. That’s not up for debate. I don’t care how accustomed you are to being ‘the only one’. This is a peer-reviewed scientific fact. That difficulty level increases exponentially when your learning environment normalizes queerphobic, fatphobic, racist and sexist talk; or when you’re expected to co-sign hate speech or risk your status as ‘one of the guys.’ How can you concentrate on learning the very technical skills that are supposed to save your life when you’re also dealing with discrimination and walking the very fine line between speaking up and being the person nobody likes?

I’m not saying you should be a hero. I am saying be careful of the environments you subject yourself to. I get it that sometimes you don’t have a choice, but sometimes it is worth the time and the extra gas money to drive to a drop-zone that makes an effort to respect all of their students and customers regardless of their race, gender, disability, body-size—you get the picture. Be safe out there, besties.

Geeking the camera after a safe landing during a student jump in 2011. Photo courtesy of Danielle Williams

4. Don’t make it your entire personality

Yeah, we know you skydive but what else do you like to do? Beware of people who make skydiving their entire personality, their Tinder pic, their raison d'etre. Skydiving is super intoxicating. There’s a reason why people toss around the term “adrenaline junkie” to describe those who enjoy adventure sports like skydiving. It’s because extreme risk-taking triggers the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine—hormones and neurotransmitters that are vital to the body’s “fight-or-flight” response. Long story short, jumping out of airplanes can be addictive—chemically addictive.

When I first began skydiving, it was all I could think about. Even though I felt terrified driving to the drop zone each weekend with the same lucky mixtape on blast; even though my stomach filled with dread every time I pulled my little hatchback into the gravel parking lot, I could barely think of anything else. During the week, I watched skydiving YouTube videos on my laptop during lunch breaks. And I proselytized nonstop. I tried to convince everyone in my life to try a tandem skydive.

Here’s the hard truth. Most people in your life don’t want to do a tandem skydive. Leave them alone. Let them enjoy brunch or camping or Migos or whatever it is they care about without you pressuring them to jump out of an airplane. Nobody signed up for that when they agreed to be your friend or parent or sibling. Don’t turn into the person in the friend group who won’t shut up about CrossFit.

Here’s the catch: it is pretty important to be at the dropzone most weekends when you’re first starting out. You’ll retain information and new skills more easily that way—skills you need to keep yourself safe, to save your own life and to move on to the next level in your Accelerated Freefall Course or to check off required skills for your A license. You’ll also save money and avoid having to repeat levels. And even after you're licensed, showing up regularly will make you a safer and more confident skydiver; it will help you make friends, find other newer people to jump with and skill-progress.

But at some point, once you’ve safely made it past the black hole which swallows up new jumpers with fewer than 200 skydives, it’s time to take weekends off from jumping to spend time with your non-skydiving friends who you abandoned not so long ago. They miss you. They want you back. Don’t give all of yourself to this sport. It will never give all of itself to you—plus, it’s too easy to burn out.

Make sure you take time for non-skydiving weekends, to travel or hike or ‘sip and paint’ with your friends without mentioning skydiving once. They will thank you for it. Go visit your Lola. Catch up with your favorite characters on Euphoria. Find a new vegan recipe. Or go for a run. The sky isn’t going anywhere. Neither is skydiving. It will welcome you back when you’re ready.