Ken,How does the persons weight (with heavy equipment), alter the time it takes to reach terminal velocity? Perhaps there is a new form of gravity I'm not aware of.
Dearest O-P,
Cross sectional density is the primary driver of an object's terminal velocity. Putting heavy equipment on a human body makes the human body more dense which "alters the time it takes to reach terminal velocity". Reducing the cross section (like going straight head down vs spread eagled) also "alters the time it takes to reach terminal velocity." If gravity alone were at work as you suggest (like perhaps on the moon) you would be correct that neither mass nor density would have such an effect. But then there would be no terminal velocity at all and the max velocity from a free fall would be the escape velocity.