Indoor skydiving: the tech behind the scenes

[MUSIC] Skydiving is one of those once in a lifetime experience, that is unless you go indoor skydiving. I'm Lexy Savvides for CNET. Come with me as I show you the behind the scenes technology of all the fans and inverters at work. Let's go. At the iFly center in Sydney four 450 horsepower fans sit on the top of the building, pushing wind down the sides and up through the flight chamber. Directly above, is the primary diffuser that reduces the wind velocity before it goes back around. Fly or step into the 5 meter wide tunnel, with instructors having full control of wind intensity. We spoke to Matt about what it takes to be an instructor. The course usually goes from two and half to three weeks. Part of that course is driving these machines for up to eight hours to be signed off as an instructor. Eight hour is a lot of time. It usually pick it up be the end of that. This interface pretty much controls everything related to when people flying in the tunnel, from your speed by this dial to opening the doors. To the times, also to the photos we have a camera just here and a button just here. Everything within the tunnel, from when you step in to when you step out is all controlled by the person sitting in this chair. Wind speed is just up here it can go from 0 to 380 kilometers an hour. We also have not just for the flying but all behind things as well, such is like, alarms, everything to do with the motors as well. A lot of technologies is the varying of the frequency and the voltage, to the motors which control the fans. Here in the iFly technology, it means that we can vary the speed of the fans, and the speed of the wings, up and down, we can increase or decrease, or the suit, the height and the weight of the flyer that's flying. The products that, that are here at iFly are standard off the shelf products. So we use our our normal, every day factory automation communication systems in products to to achieve what we have here at iFly. So there is, there is nothing special. It's the standard off the shelf equipment. With flights lasting a minute, you get more free fall time than skydiving from 14,000 feet and you don't have to throw yourself out of a plane. For more information on the entire iFly system, check out CNET.com. [MUSIC]