VIDEO: This Is What Helicopter Skydiving Looks Like Up Close

Jumping from a helicopter might seem interesting to everyone, but from actually thinking about it all the way to jumping there’s a huge gap.

Some will never attempt it, fearing for their life, while those that love a good adrenaline boost would do it every single day if they could.

Things get a lot more interesting when you jump from a helicopter with a Go Pro camera on your head, because this way the people that will never have the courage to actually do it get a little bit of more information and can feel like they have seen all they had to.

According to parachutistonline.com, most skydivers—even if they’ve never had a flying lesson—generally have quite a good understanding of airplanes.

After several hundred (or thousand) takeoffs and rides to altitude, jumpers tend to pick up a fair amount of knowledge as if through osmosis.

However, helicopters are fairly uncommon around drop zones. Even fixed-wing pilots who are skydivers don’t fully understand how they work, and the average skydiver understands them even less.

Since only a handful of skydivers also pilot helicopters and since only a few helicopter pilots have experience flying jumpers, educational resources are scarce and misconceptions are abundant.

Along with making sure to get a thorough pilot briefing before jumping from an unfamiliar helicopter, jumpers should review the following few tips to help make helicopter jumps safer for everyone:

First, never walk behind a helicopter. When the pilot briefs you to approach from the front when loading, it is not just so that he can see you; he wants to keep you away from the tail rotor.

The tail rotor is small, spins about twice as quickly as the main rotor and is pretty much invisible when running.

If someone comes into contact with a tail rotor, he won’t come away from it with just an injury… it’s invariably fatal.

Interestingly, engine failure is less of a concern with helicopters than with planes. Yes, when the engine of any aircraft stops making noise, it gets the immediate attention of its pilot (and passengers!).

But while a plane needs a large, flat area in which to land, a helicopter can autorotate and glide down without engine power.

Given some speed or 400 to 500 feet of altitude, a helicopter pilot can put his craft down in an area the size of a few tennis courts as long as it’s within his 45-degree viewing angle–and it doesn’t really require “Air Wolf” pilot skills to do so.

The loss of the tail rotor in flight is much more serious than engine failure. The side a standard tail rotor is mounted on depends on which direction the main rotor turns.

However, you can forget this short physics lesson and simply remember that you need to be most cautious on the side of the helicopter that has the tail rotor.

You’ll be flying doors-off on heli jumps, and loose cameras, clipboards and headsets have taken helicopters out of the sky when they hit the tail rotor.

So take great heed when your helicopter pilot tells you to not hang anything outside of the helicopter during flight.

This is also the reason why most pilots prefer that jumpers don’t stand on the landing skid on the tail-rotor side before exit.Helicopters rarely come to a stationary hover when jumpers exit.