How many MPH skydiving?

Answer 1

The speed at which you fall varies depending on your body position in freefall, your size, your weight and what type of clothing you are wearing.

For instance, the biggest discipline is formation skydiving. This averages around 120mph in a belly to earth body position. Generally, slick nylon type jumpsuits are worn which reduce the drag. In the discipline of freefly, skydivers freefall in a head-up or head-down position. This means they have less drag and therefore fall faster, typically around the 150mph mark.

What stops you continuing to freefall faster and faster is the drag of the air against your body. The higher you jump from, the faster you will fall, but this is not particularly noticable from an average skydiving height of 13,000ft. If you were to triple the altitude, you could expect to noice a dramatic increase in your terminal velocity.

At Skydive Hibaldstow where I jump, it hosts another discipline, speed skydiving. The idea is get the fastest average over a measured vertical kilometer. Winning speeds at the UK Nationals 2010 were around 265mph average.