BCPA FRESHERS 10th to 11th November 2007
Lots of fun can always be had when the BCPA arrive at Target Skysports. Despite a lot of poor weather, large numbers of students from many universities arrived for a big gathering. Marc Fletcher kicked off the first event of the season and for him it was his second year of being the BCPA Chairman.

A 3-way FS competition was organised by Simon Brentford and a draw was provided to 15 teams. Teams were made up at random of 2 experienced jumpers with FS1 and one without. Tunnel time was also taken into account when deciding the teams and most competitors were able to make new friends from different universities. Sadly the bad weather on Saturday, combined with some serious partying on Saturday night resulted in some teams being unable to compete on the Sunday. The weather on Sunday started off bad in that it was windy and overcast, but then the blue skies appeared and lots of lifts were sent up in the Dornier G-92. 5 teams managed to complete their Round 1's and these scores have been collected by Marc Fletcher and will be announced shortly.

Saturday night's party filled the bar and the games room was cleared to make a dance floor. The BCPA now own a set of speakers, amplifiers, lights, lasers and smoke machines. Marc and Ed Morley were both on hand to DJ for the crowds. This combined with cheap alcohol from the bar, made for a great night.

In addition to the partying, FS competition and organised big-ways, there were lots of educational seminars going on. Simon Cathrine talked at length about big-way skills and formation skydiving in general. A whole host of people attended from those who have several hundred jumps to those still on Static-Line. Steve Murphy was conducting seminars on how to do a correct flight-line check and checking your own equipment. Its easy to forget a lot of your knowledge once you have done your A License. Steve finished off with a CH1 talk. Backing this up as part of the criteria for B-License, Noel Purcell covered lectures on Jump Master 1 and CH2. If you did not get a chance to take part in these and want to, let the dropzone know. They run regular B-License Progression Days.

Next weekend, we have a big-way weekend with Simon Brentford. These are designed to be groups of 8 to 10 people and will concentrate on discipline, approach and building the base.
 

MONEY MEET ACCURACY COMPETITION ANNOUNCED
You might think that the last event Target Skysports is planning on hosting is the BCPA Freshers this coming weekend. However we have decided to host an accuracy money meet for the weekend of the 8th & 9th December. This will coincide with the Christmas party at the dropzone.

The will be a £5 entry fee for the prize fund and 3 rounds of competition. You will be able to do your normal jumps as planned. There will be handicaps based on jump numbers and ability to even up your chances of winning. All the money collected in to the prize fund will be split as follows:

	1st Place: 70%
	2nd Place: 20%
	3rd Place: 10%

So if you plan to enter, let the dropzone know.
 

CAMERA SEMINAR
Back by popular demand, Dave Butterell will be running another Camera Flying Seminar on the evening of Saturday 17th November after jumping.  Dave has run this seminar before and it was a big hit with an excellent turn out.  If you are interested in attending this seminar (which is FREE!!!) please let us know so that we can prepare for expected numbers.

The seminar will cover:

	Overview of the course and introductory briefing to camera flying
	Official requirements but also recognised experience/skills required
	Introduction to the equipment
	Safety aspects of camera flying
	Introduction to the disciplines and the skills required for each - fun jumping/video logbook, FS filming, tandem filming, additional student filming and still photography

Dave is a very successful and talented camera flyer, a regular on the tandem pool at Hibaldstow, cameraman for Team Fusion over the past couple of years, cameraman for Connexions next season and an excellent big-way cameraman.  So he knows his stuff...

This seminar is sponsored by the BPA, which has provided funding for a series of seminars to be run at Hibaldstow on Saturday evenings over the next couple of months - watch out for more details.  Thank you very much to the BPA for the funding!
 

WEEKEND 3rd to 4th November 2007
2 static-line courses were run this weekend for the Hull and York university clubs. Taking the courses were our own trainee instructors, Trish McDonnagh and Jo Burns with Tony Keightley and Andrew Hilton supervising. We want to wish Trish and Jo good luck as their own instructional courses run this week. Hopefully the dropzone will have its first 2 female instructors by next weekend.

Most of the static line students from last weekend and this weekend managed to do 2 jumps each over the weekend with great sunny low winds weather.

Eammon Hensall, president of York university completed his FS1 qualifying skydive with coach Simon Cathrine. George Impey has been a regular skydiver at Target Skysports for several years and has slowly been clocking up the jumps. On Sunday she celebrated her 500th with a nice 9-way organised by Simon. Leanne James may have her FS1 qualification, but she has also been receiving coaching to work on her skills. In addition to that there was also another hoop jump at the end-of-day. For those of you who do not know what a hoop jump is, its a common hula-hoop held vertically in the air. Skydivers take it in turn to track through them and its an exciting way to test your skills in all 3 dimensions.

We want to congratulate, Sarah Humpage on getting her A License. She has been one of the most persistent skydivers at the dropzone this summer, coming almost every weekend. Congrats also go to  Stu Ferguson from UKSkydiver.co.uk who was signed off for his C License.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Pickering visited the dropzone with  Macca from Birdman to do a tandem for Children in Need. He raised £1800 by doing a jump dressed as Borat! Lastly, a new 4-way AAA class team has already begun their training. They are called Phoenix and they are made up of Liz Matthews, Katie Woods, Julia Foxwell, Aaron Faith and Ian Ridpath. They are already doing a good average and training hard.
 

HALLOWEEN 10-WAY SPEED COMPETITION & PARTY - Click here for photos.
The best party of the year at Hibaldstow is over the weekend of the 27th and 28th October. Everything started off on the Friday and what might ordinarily have been a quiet evening at the dropzone bar, turned out to be a packed bar with lots of hopeful jumpers ready to go.

Sadly on the Saturday the weather was extremely cloudy and as a result only 4 of the 7 teams registered managed to complete their Round 1 skydives. So there is no name to go on the trophy for this year, and as much as the dropzone tried, we could not get Round 1 completed. It was great to see the level of expertise being displayed amongst some of the teams with low jump numbers. In fact one team, Give Me 1 Minute managed to get together to build a 10-way Speed Star with average jump numbers of around 160!

The clock went back 1 hour on Saturday night giving everyone at the party an extra hour to stay on the dancefloor with. Paul Cooper was DJ'ing for night and played a mixture of Electro House, Old Skool and Trance. The were a wide range of costumes and this was just a small list of them:

	Psychotic killer clowns
	The fashion police
	Zombies
	Little Bo Peep killed all her sheep (Georgina Impey)
	Witches, zombies, devils, angels and vampires
	Ugly Betty (Lucy Herret)
	Murdering doctors
	Harry Potter (Calvin Blacker)
	Witches in lingerie (Lee Pugh)
	White elf and cool dragon (Jane Henderson and Rob Simpson)
	Serial killer (Lynne Murray)
	Furry monster (Rachel Duncan)

Congratulations must go to Adam Penchant who completed his 200th jump in style on Sunday afternoon when the weather finally cleared. The quote of the weekend goes to Stumpy who when asked about jumping on the Sunday said "the spirit is willing but the flesh is still on the dance floor"!

Click here for all the Halloween 10-way speed photos.
 

20th to 21st October 2007
Whilst there were no formal events on at Target Skysports this weekend, we did have an abundance of good weather and lots of jumping going on. Our resident freefly coach, Darren Glover was jumping with Ben Cornick and Pete Brooks. In addition, there was lots of progression with our AFF students. Claire Lloyd got her AFF lvl 4, Justin Leary & Sarah Humpage are now on their consoles, Mike Thornley passed his lvl1, Eamon Henshall & Sara Otter received their B Licenses and Clint Bacon achieved his FAI A License.

Chris Brooks who only started jumping this year, successfully completed his 100th jump. In addition, he is part of a 10-way Speed team planned for this coming weekend. The Universities are back in town and they made the most of the sunshine with everyone doing 2 RAPS jumps each. Finally our resident Australian packer Matt Cryer completed his FS1 qualification.

Next weekend we have the biggest part of the year at the 10-way Speed Halloween party. Are you coming? So far we have 8 registered teams taking part not including those that we know nothing about.
 

11th October 2007
On Thursday a large group of the Military Police decided to visit the dropzone for a spot of mid-week tandem jumping.

 

WEEKEND 6th to 7th October
With no events booked in the calendar you would think there would not be too much going on at Hibaldstow. In fact a large group of FS jumpers turned up to do some big-ways organised by Simon Brentford. Even though some of the jumpers had low jump numbers almost all of the 6 big-ways completed 4 or 5 points. Jumps were organised to give opportunities for people to try new slots. There were quite a few blocks and these were all successful. On Saturday the weather was mostly nil winds however it was very cloudy. This left only 1 big-way. There were lots of hop and pops for jumpers to practice their swooping / canopy control.

Sunday was much better with beautiful clear blue skies and nil winds again. It was great to see the likes of Lee Pugh and Darren Glover swooping long distances on their Katana's. 6 Big-ways were completed along with a few other achievements:

	Scott McKenzie - 300jumps
	Rory McCullagh - A Licence
	Leanne James - first 4 point 9-way

Next Friday, we have 1 space left on the Pro Packing course run by Richie Rich. The cost is £20 for the full day. If you want to take part let the dropzone know by email, rigger_rich@yahoo.co.uk or direct on 07706 017183.

Are you part of a 10-way Speed team? If not, then let the dropzone know. We are recruiting hard for the event which will take place on the weekend 27th to 28th October. So far we have a definite 8 teams confirmed.
 

WEEKEND 29th to 30th SEPTEMBER
In the second of our Scrambles competitions this year, we had 7 teams enter. The idea behind scrambles is to bring lots of skydivers together of mixed ability so that at the start of round 1, it is unknown who will win. On Saturday 2 rounds of competition were completed. Flash Ahhhhh and 4-Skin took an early lead with all the rest of the teams within a few points of each other. The teams registered were as follows:

	R1	R2	R3	R4	Total	Team Captain
Flash Ahhhhhh	6	11	4*	14	35  1st	George Impey
4-Skin	7	10	5	6	28  2nd	Nick Lord
You've Got Issues	3	2	5	1	11  5th	Henry Chow
I Like, You Like	1	5	4	5	15  4th	Tom Hibberd
JoJo's Bouffant	1	3.5	2*	3	9.5  6th	Dave Head
3 Teas + 1 Coffee	2	6*	4	8	20  3rd	Aillie Hardman
4-Ling Apart	1	3	1	2	7    7th	Jo Bolton

After the second days jumping on Sunday, the team Flash Aaaaaah (spelt correctly?) won with a fantastic round 4 scoring 14 points. Not far behind them was the well named team 4-Skin lead by Nationals Junior 4-way team 4-Play!

Many thanks go out to Susan Farquhar and Derrick Kent for helping to organise the Scrambles event. The next big FS event we have at Target Skysports is the Halloween Frostbite Friendly competition. Its a 10-way Speed competition and everyone dresses up for the Saturday night party.
 

CF NATIONALS AND 8-WAY SPEED
Despite a lot of extreme weather over the weekend the vast majority of disciplines were able to complete some rounds. In the CF events Outcast were able to take a commanding win in both the 4-way Speed and Rotations. 3 Rounds of each were completed. In the Rotations, the highest person in the 4-way stack builds on the lowest and then the next highest repeats the process in a cycle. 4-way Speed is also done on the same jump with times being given from exit to the 4-way stack being built. So, Outcast won with 23 points and not that far behind them were CFUK with 20 points and Lost Boys in third place with 19. Similar standings with the Speed saw Outcast have an overall lowest time of 102.32, CFUK 106.67 seconds and Lost Boys with 137.46.

Unfortunately, the air was so turbulent and strong that the sequential could not even be started. The Intermediate 2-way sequential had 2 teams enter Los Perros and Los Gattos. At Nationals it is common to see many scratch teams form just for the fun of it, but this year both these teams could be seen at the Grand Prix's. Los Perros ran away with a victory over 4 completed rounds scoring 18. Well done to them. In second place, Los Gattos scored 2. The were problems in scoring the senior 2-way Sequential event and with 5 teams entering and selection for next years World Championships a lot was riding on this. At the time of writing, a judges decision on who has won has yet to be made. It is interesting that if things remain as they are, this will be the first time a team (Heat) flying Velocities will have won.

The 8-way Speed is by definition a formation skydiving event, but the discipline is run from 9000ft and cumulatively scored as the fastest build times. 5 Rounds were completed with some teams making their 6th round. 4 teams entered and were evenly matched between 2 skilled teams and 2 junior teams. It was interesting to see how the teams were improving from round to round. Village Green Preservation Society won the event with an overall cumulative time of 93.67 seconds. 9 seconds behind them were better 8 Than Never. This discipline was also backup unofficially with a crate of beer going to the team which with their 2nd point made the judges laugh. A horny gorilla from the winning team saw to that.

So this weekend, we have the Scrambles competition running. The idea is mixed teams, an educational experience and no idea who will win! We have lots of prizes already lined up from gear manufacturers and many competitors registered. Come on down by yourself and take part over 4 rounds of competition.
 

NEXT PROGRESSION DAY ANNOUNCED
H has announced the next Progression Day where you can learn the skills needed to get your FAI B License. The date is Wednesday 26th September. If you want to take part, please call the dropzone on 01132 505600 or send an email to H.
 

WEEKEND 8th to 9th September
This weekend was a weekend of achievements. Even though there were lots of tandems booked in, a lot of the regular skydivers were achieving things. Jo Jo has been working for the dropzone for over a year now and his jobs at the dropzone are wide and varied. For those of you who are not sure what he looks like, he has a big blond curly afro haircut. Jo Jo just completed his level 8 AFF jump. In addition to this, there 2 other achievements. Matt Brown who began his AFF with us at the end of June finally completed his level 8 AFF in addition to most of his consolidation jumps. Andy Dinnage another student of ours completed his level 7 AFF jump, the hardest level which combines the knowledge of all the previous jumps.

Lastly, congratulations goes out to Darren Buse who got his A License.

In two weekends time, we have the 8-way Speed National Championships taking place at Skydive Hibaldstow. Are you interested in taking part? If so, call the dropzone on 01652 648837 to let them know you are coming. We can help you put together teams.

WEEKEND 1st to 2nd September - 50-way and Freefly big way photos.
Originally pitched as the reserve Nationals weekend, 50-way and freefly bigways, this weekend was always going to be a big one. The National championships did completed last weekend, so we had 3 Dorniers dedicated to the big ways.

The 50-way weekend started off early on Saturday morning with the intention to do as many jumps as possible. The weather was glorious and the first jumps went off with 3 Dorniers and a Skyvan. Simon Cathrine lead the formations from the lead aircraft which was the Skyvan. Each jump built on the last and included in its dirt dive, 2 planed formations. On the 4th attempt, a new Target Skysports record was completed of a 50-way! Unfortunately the weather decided to close in just before the attempt on the 5th jump and that was it for the Sunday also.

Equal success was to be had by the invitational UK freefly group aiming to do large formations. Each member of the group (10 flyers plus 2 video) was given a homework exercise to complete before they arrived at the dropzone. So with each skydive, a different flyer got to do their dirt dive. This gave some great variety in the formations and a good learning experience with the different styles of coaching. Some formations did not just include head-down, but also included head-up and tracking positions. Speaking to Mikey Carpenter he said that there was definite scope to increase the formation size successfully and there were plans to meet up in November in Skydive Spain.

On Saturday night, we had a fantastic 80's party with outfits ranging from Miami Vice to roller-skating girls (fortunately without the skates!). Not everyone enjoys the 80's music scene, but with a successful day's skydiving and some good outfits, the beer flowed and everyone had a great party.

Next weekend, we have Rolf Brombach flying in to offer a Birdman weekend. There will be lots of suits to hire and lots of flocking to be had. Please let the dropzone know if you are interested in taking part. The minimum requirements are 250 jumps in the last 18 months for a coached jump or 500 jumps to do a solo.
 

ISLAMIC RELIEF GO LARGE
Last Wednesday 29th August, we had a large group of tandem customers from Islamic Relief come to skydive with us at the dropzone.

 

 

 

TEAM ELAN WILL COACHING AT THE SCRAMBLES
Hot news just in is that Team Elan members Amanda Kemp and Tarn Hollis will be assisting and coaching during the Scrambles 29/30 Sept at Hibaldstow. If you want the chance to learn from the best and from Target Skysports / Skydive Spain sponsored team, then this is your opportunity.

They will there to give you advice from everything to basic body position, to exiting and block technique. If you want to take part, send the dropzone and email on info@skydiving.co.uk or give us an phone on 01652 648837.
 

NATIONALS PHOTOS OF MEDAL WINNERS
If you wondered what happened at Nationals this year, who won and what the scores are, you can find them all at our Nationals mini-site.

This weekend, we have the 50-way FS dives planned at the dropzone with 3 Dornier G92's. Watch this space for a news report and photos.
 

TEAM PROFILES

New to the Nationals mini-site this year are Team Profiles. They are interviews with 4-way teams specifically.

Below we have an example of Team Sonic V who are hot favourites for the A class. More can be found on the Nationals mini-site.

How did the team come about? Tell us a bit about your history..

Dave, Helen and Rob (on camera) were all part of Rookie Team 100% that formed in 2005 where we competed with 2 other friends. Year 1 saw us enjoy the Rookie competition to the full combining fun and beer and no general idea! However we scored an average of about 5 after entering the local GP and Nationals. We continued in earnest in 2006 realising a coach would help significantly! We enjoyed a productive and fun season seeing our average more than double by the Nationals.

Peter and Ana competed in Single A with a casual team at the 2006 Nationals.
At the beginning 2007 after Team 100% decided to retire we decided to get together along with our existing cameraman Rob Frost and in March 07 we went to Seville for our first team training weekend.

What are your goals for this year?
Our main goals as a team in our first year is to build a good foundation through training hard and then to progress onto a second year

Where and how often do you train?
All training this year has been at Hib, with 2 trips to Skydive Spain and visits to the tunnel.

How do you think the season is going so far?
We are enjoying our progress so far and have been pleased with our competitive results.

What is it about 4-way that makes you compete?
Logistically it's easier to get 4 people together than 8!! We enjoy the 4-way community on the dz's.

What do you think of the NSL concept of teams all doing the same global draw?
We think it's a great idea to be able to compare standards internationally and also it brings the skydiving world much closer together

As a team, how do find the 4-way scene in the UK? Is FS still as popular as it has been recently?
We find the 4 way scene popular, fun and competitive. Now that there are 4 categories it enables teams to learn at a comfortable pace. It's been great to see other teams progress and improve also.

What do you think the future holds for your team?
Whilst we are still having fun and learning new skills we would like to continue to a second year. A lottery win wouldn't go a miss though!!

Any words of advice for 4-way teams starting out or junior to yourselves?
As a team of 5 people working together we've found being in a team really rewarding. It's been a good experience on many levels, learning to communicate, understand and support team mates has been as much a learning curve as the skydiving skills themselves. Our advice would be to have fun firstly, set your team goals and be realistic in terms of commitment and finance also. Utilise the wealth of experience the drop zones to help you or use a coach to direct you - don't be afraid to ask, everyone is keen to help you.

Ensure your coach is focused and sensible

Finally, tell us something not many people know about your team!
We are all men! Ha Ha.
 

WEEKEND 11th to 12th August 2007
This was the penultimate weekend to the National Championships. Formation skydiving teams Raw, Elan, Storm, Sonic V, Baccanalia, Havoc, Slightly Odd and Aardvark Zulu were all training. It was interesting to see who is in Aardvark Zulu. They are a group of team mates made up of ex-National champions in 4-way and 8-way and ex-women's World Champions. They have been training hard and their combined experience should see them do well at Nationals. Chatting to Tarn Hollis from Team Elan, she said they were having a light weekend of training "if you don't know it by now, its too late". So their training is all but complete and the dropzone is starting to set up the extra infrastructure needed for the competition.

On the other side of the coin, newcomers Team Pandemonium are made up of jumpers in the Junior class averaging less than 150 jumps each and having only done one weekend's training as a group of 4. They have little team experience and are there to have fun and get some consistency in their jumping. Watch this space for further interviews during Nationals.

In addition to the FS, there were also quite a few Artistics teams training for their competition in 2 weekends time. Bubble & Squeak are made up of Jo Malone and Ruth Covell in the Freestyle B class. Competing against them are Spandex Ballex made up of Will Walls on video and Lizzie Compton as the performer. Their training really focused hard on the team aspect. It doesn't matter how perfect the moves are with the performer if the video is too far away. Synchronisation makes the video work flawless despite rapidly shifting fall rates and moving centre points.
 

BRIAN HARDCASTLE

We regret to inform you that Brian has sadly died after an accident on Tuesday 7th August. This was not a skydiving accident but Brian was well known in his time as a skydiver and will be sadly missed by his friends. Anyone who knew Brian and wishes to attend his funeral, are welcome.

The funeral is at 13.30 on Monday 13th August at Huddersfield Crematorium, Fixsby. There will then be drinks in the Spotted Cow pub, Salendine, Huddersfield afterwards.
 

OUTBREAK FREEFLY WINS SILVER AT THE WORLD MEET

Target Skysports & Skydive Spain sponsored team Outbreak Freefly have just taken 2nd place at the World Meet in Stupino Russia. This is an amazing achievement and no other freefly team has achieved such a position before. Congratulations go out them all.

In addition we want to say well done to all those other teams who train at the dropzone who have competed in Russia. They are Fusion, Inferno and SoundsGrrr8. You will be able to meet up with all these teams at Nationals starting weekend after next.
 

WEEKEND 4th to 5th August 2007 - Click here for photos

To say its been a busy week at Target Skysports is an understatement. The dropzone has done over 200 Dornier lifts in the past week. Here is just a summary of the teams training over the last week and weekend:

	Team Elan (Sponsored by Target Skysports & Skydive Spain)
	Cuidado
	Boogie Pimps
	Sonic V
	Raw
	Fend 4 Yourself
	Qi
	Murphy's Law
	4 Play
	Burble Diarrhoea
	Wingnutz
	Bacchanalia
	Synergy
	Enigma
	Pandemonium

Team Wingnuts who compete in the AA class are hot favourites at a chance of the Gold medal this year. They have been doing steady camps here and in the USA. Over the last week they have made over 70 team training jumps (with 2 days still to go!) and they had their coach Mark Kirby from Arizona Airspeed come over. For those of you who can't remember, he was the UK jumper who decided he wanted to be world champion and made it happen twice with now over 19,000 skydives to his name. This proves that you can take your coach over or use UK coaching and train very hard without having to cross the Atlantic.

The good weather we have had recently has allowed many other groups to get together and practice. It was possible to see 2 other scratch teams forming over the weekend for a bit of fun over the forthcoming Nationals. Are you interested in forming a team just in time for Nationals? Well phone us on 01652 648837 and we will take down your details.

It was also great to see 2 regular jumpers at Hibaldstow finally get their FS1's. Leanne James and Rachel Duncan. Thanks to Derrick Kent and Steve Murphy for helping to organise their dives. Who knows where they will be in the next few years? In addition to the girls getting their FS1 qualifications, we also had lots of AFF going on during the week. Many had taken time out to come mid-week to progress. This was really useful for them considering some of the inclement weather seen in the UK recently. Target Skysports is having its busiest year yet for AFF.

This week, we have more teams training for Nationals and the weather is blue skies at the time of writing.

NEW VIDEO SECTION

Would you like to see all the latest videos that our talented skydiving videographers make. A new video movies section has just been released.

Jan 2007 - July 2007

Progression Days