| 1 | 32 seconds | Dan Knights | On Sunday, May 4th, 2003, I jumped tandem (with an instructor) from 12,000 feet. This gave me only 40-45 seconds of freefall before we had to open the chute, which would be plenty of time in my living room, but it's a different story when you're hurtling toward the earth at 130 miles per hour (209 Km per hour)! I drilled a hole in one of the corner pieces, and tied the cube to my wrist in case I couldn't hold on to it. I trained a few times by leaning out of a car at 80 MPH on the highway. This was actually my first time jumping, but I actually wasn't nervous at all about the skydiving part. I was only worried about whether or not I could do the cube! Yeeeehaaaa! VH1 paid for me to jump, and they had a second camera-man diving next to us filming the whole thing. In the end, it took me about 32 seconds using the Fridrich method, no skipped steps, 8-turn orientation, 13-turn permutation. I had the diving instructor scramble it on the plane, which was also captured on video by a VH1 camera-man. It should be airing on a new VH1 show sometime in June, 2003 (not sure yet what the show will be called). | 20030504 |
