Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?
I don't know, can't answer in a coherent logical way. My life has been interspersed with moments of freedom; Going to school for the first time alone aged 10, My first proper road bicycle, Sailing solo, Passing my car and then my motorcycle driving tests, Being able to want to get to the top of a hill and somehow getting there, Skiing and then Snowboarding freely, Freefall!.
Skydiving to me is ultimate freedom - I still get an adrenaline rush - I definitely still find myself laughing at my friends and me, for doing such a stupid (not insane) thing, while sitting in a plane at 10,000 feet AGL.
When the sport is bad, it's the worst - people die (No friends yet, Thank God!). However when it's good - You have a beautiful day where you are holding on to the outside of one plane watching another in formation, less than 50 feet away, waiting for them to exit their plane. They leave and you feel the power of your body controlled by your mind as you move with controlled speed through the air to match a varying vertical speed accurately in order to build a specific formation.
My Background in the Sport
I started to jump in 1996 on the Easter bank holiday weekend doing an AFF (accelerated freefall) course at RAF Weston-on-the-Green. With a few close shaves I got to complete the course in the minimum 10 jumps. That was the start and I haven't looked back since. I've got 1150 odd jumps up until the beginning of August 2003. The number of jumps I do per year has dropped considerably in the last couple of years, mainly due to work and a weariness of unpredictable British weather.
Below are a number of internal and external links. I've included a history of my interaction formation skydiving teams. There are the uptodate IPC dive pool for 4 and 8-way. The is a picture and video gallery of skydive related pictures and videos. Enjoy!
| Skydive Links | Drop Zones | |||
| Skydive WWW | Main skydiving Web site. | Skydive Sebastian | Near Orlando, Fl | |
| Brit100 | The first British 100-way | |||
| Skyfry | Great skydive site | |||
| Skydive UK! | Main skydiving web page for the UK. | |||
| SSK Industries | Makers of the CYPRES | |||
| Sangiro's Synergy | Skydiving pics | |||
| SKY-WEB-SURF the WWW | List of DZ web pages | |||
| Omniskore Web Page | Skydiving scoring system |