Skydive Arizona

Even little kids can fly in the tunnel.

Here's one of the many aircraft door mock ups they have scattered around the DZ so you can practice your exits.

The Sky Venture vertical wind tunnel a.k.a "The World's Largest Crack Pipe"

I just spent five days at the world's largest skydiving center, a place called Skydive Arizona which is located out in the middle of nowhere near a town called Eloy, Arizona. Skydive Arizona has the best facilities of any DZ (drop zone) in the southwest including a brand new, state of the art vertical wind tunnel. I've never done any sky jumping before this week, but I've been developing a growing curiosity ever since I became a "one jump chump" by taking a "dog food" BASE jump in Twin Falls last summer.

Over the last five days I jumped from the Twin Otter airplane at 13,000 feet AGL 8 times. The first time was a tandem jump where I was strapped to the Instructor and we shared a single oversized chute. The next 7 jumps I had my own parachute and exited the aircraft with the Instructor holding on to the grips on my jumpsuit. Over the course of those seven jumps I failed to master even the most basic aspects of stability and control in free fall, but I did get a pretty good idea of what the sport of skydiving is like.

Skydiving is a much more compact flying experience than paragliding. The "flight" is short, but very intense, technical, and rewarding. Certain aspects of skydiving came pretty easily to me; like flying the canopy and basic 3-D awareness, but other parts were almost impossible for me to cope with, like relaxing in free fall. I wonder how many jumps it takes before falling straight down at 120 miles an hour feels relaxing.

Even jumping from 13,000 feet, you still only free fall for 50 to 60 seconds before you deploy the parachute at 5,000 feet. It takes a lot of jumps to get an hour of airtime in this sport. That's where the tunnel comes in. In the tunnel you fly 10 minutes at a time in a series of 2 minute rotations. Flying in the tunnel is pure fun; it's almost dreamlike. I logged an hour in the tunnel and got the hang of the most basic stuff like fall rate control, going forwards and backwards, 360s, and the all-important practice rip cord pulls. Even if you never try skydiving, you gotta try flying in one of these vertical tunnels. It's more fun than you can imagine, but be warned, it's expensive and addictive!