In article , Teacherjh wrote:

"Preparing to jump from about 3500 feet?" Although I'm not
an avid sky diver, I didn't think anyone jumped from an airplane at much
less than 9000' AGL.


I've jumped. It's not uncommon to jump from less than 9000 feet. In
fact 3500 feet doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

My first free-fall (after doing static line jumps from 3000' AGL) was
also done at 3000'. Granted, it was only a 3 second free fall
(launching immediately into the drill to deploy the pilot chute). I
recall a safety lecture that said if we are above 1500' and the plane
runs into problems, we all jump out deploying the reserve pilot chute as
we leave the plane - diving out with our thumb's pulling on the rip
chord by our chest.