Photo by Laszlo Andacs | D-22468

Zach Vasnick demonstrates that with great sport accuracy comes great responsibility (as well as the intermediate gold medal) at the USPA National Collegiate Parachuting Championships at Skydive Lake Wales in Florida.

Currently with more than 18,000 jumps and 300 hours of freefall time, Carolyn “the Queen” Clay, D-3347, from Williamsburg, Virginia, doesn’t show any signs of slowing down after 47 years of continual skydiving.

Photo by Juan Mayer | D-26130

The U.S. Army Golden Knights 8-way formation skydiving team makes a practice jump for the World Air Games at Skydive Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where the team took the gold medal and set a single-round world record of 33 points.

Fear does not stop death; it stops life. Learning to skydive has taught me this lesson and helped shape the person I am today. I was never one of those people who had always wanted to skydive. No bucket list, dare or any amount of peer pressure was going to get me to jump out of a plane. In fact, I had never even considered skydiving until my husband made his first tandem. He was hooked immediately and got his license that same year.

Photo by Martin Lemay | D-33608

Team Super Serious exits a Twin Otter for a round of vertical formation skydiving at the USPA National Skydiving Championships.

Photo by Rick Winkler | D-32647

Team Wicked Wingsuits - on its way to winning gold in the first USPA National Championships of Acrobatic Wingsuit Flying.

I was born with a heart condition. I've always known that I would have to get surgery to replace a heart valve, but the prognosis was that this would not be necessary until I was around 60 years old.

When I started skydiving, it was the first thing I had actually done just for me. In 1997, I made one tandem for my 30th birthday. I fell in love with skydiving, but I was a single mother of two children and my most important goal was to raise them.

Photo by Raymond Adams | D-30158

Jeff Kauffman (top) and David Hanley of team Skyscrapers take a stand above Skydive Dallas. 

Have you ever wished your school had a skydiving club? Stop wishing and get it started! Founding a college skydiving club is a unique and memorable item on a resume—it’s a great way to stand out from the crowd during school and after graduation while supporting your favorite sport. And you’ll have a ton of fun skydiving with your friends and introducing others to skydiving, guaranteed!

Photo by Gustavo Cabana | USPA #80952

During Summerfest at Skydive Chicago, 164 skydivers set the World Record for Largest Head-Down Formation Skydive.

An international group of formation skydivers has set a new Fédération Aéronautique Internationale sequential formation skydiving world record (pending ratification) with a two-point 202-way. The group completed the jump Tuesday, September 29, at Skydive Perris in California. Dieter Kirsch, Milko Hodgkinson and Patrick Passe organized the event, which they called the Sequential Games. For the past five years, a number of attempts at this record have come close, but none has succeeded—until now.

Photo by Juan Mayer | D-26130

Latifa Al-Maktoum, D-34327, deploys her canopy after a wingsuit flight at Skydive Dubai. 

An international team of skydivers from 23 nations built a 164-way head-down formation on Friday, July 31, at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, Illinois, eclipsing the 138-Way World Record for Largest Head-Down Formation set at the same location in 2012. It took 13 attempts to build the formation, which resembled a giant flower. International formation skydiving judges Randy Connell, Marylou Laughlin and Jami Pillasch certified the performance, which will now go to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale for ratification.

Photo by Norman Kent | D-8369

Jumpers pour out of a Twin Otter for a head-down jump during the Big Wayze 2015 event at Skydive Spaceland in Houston, Texas. 

Photo by Luciano Bacque | #140185

Jumpers complete a challenging formation at the P3 Spring Fling event at Skydive Perris in California. 

Photo by Max Haim | D-23779

While wearing L.E.D. lights, Abdulbari Qubaisi swoops the pond at Skydive Dubai. 

Olav Zipser spearheaded the freefly revolution of the early 1990s. He, along with a group of jumpers known as the Freefly Clowns, pioneered head-down skydiving and freeflying as we know it today. Zipser founded the Space Games freefly competition and has earned numerous championships and records, as well as an Emmy award for his work on ESPN’s “X-Games.” He has traveled extensively for decades teaching jumpers all over the world his art of freeflying, and his students say he has a Zen-like presence in the sky.

Photo by Norman Kent | D-8369

Caroline Layne goes for a magic carpet ride on wingsuit flyer Jeff Provenzano at the Pachangon Beach Boogie in Mexico.

Photo by Craig O'Brien | D-19294

Jumpers at Skydive Perris in California build a "human planet" formation, bringing to life Paul Bond's painting that appeared on the February 1980 cover of Parachutist portraying a then-imaginary 3-D skydive.