« Put $$ → Mouth | Main | eye phone jaw bone »

Tunnel Redux

Along with 9 other folks from Skydive Dallas (well, and one quasi-skydiving dood known as The "Duke of the Death Spiral" from Skydive Spaceland), Your Plummeting Pillar of Pulchritude is heading to Denver, Colorado for the weekend. This will be the third time this year the PseudoLatino has braved the elements and the jubilant taunts and peer-jeers that are part and parcel of honing one's flying skills in a wind tunnel.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Thus far, my tunnel of choice has been Skyventure Colorado . . . where I've accumulated about 3.5 hours of flight time. I'll be adding another 2 hours on this trip, which is the same amount of freefall time as 120 skydives.

That's a lot, but it is also very misleading.

Despite the simple numerical equivalence, one gets a great deal MORE experience than the numbers would suggest. Because of the 2-minute tunnelflight times (as opposed to 60-70" on a typical skydive), the coach giving real-time feedback, the video debriefs, and the tunnel walls (which give an inflexible and inarguable point of reference to help correct problems with fall-rate and horizontal drift), the amount of learning per minute is far greater than it is in the sky.

Not as fun, of course (although it IS great fun), but profoundly more conducive to rapid improvement. And that's the main reason why we keep going back for more.

I'll see you all again on Monday, so please . . . PLEASE . . . try not to cry yourselves to sleep over the weekend.

Your Bon Vivant,
---the PseudoLatino

Posted by earwicker at November 30, 2007 12:00 PM