4th to 5th September 2010 - Back to Normal
And so the Nationals and bigway weekends came to pass, and the DZ slowly returns to normal. But the weekend was anything but quiet. A huge number of AFF students decended on the DZ, no doubt starved of progression be the Nationals. Thankfully there was lots of oppertunity to jump.

Liz Cass from Kaizen arrived expecting a quiet weekend of coaching, but found it to be quite to the contrary. Glorious weather Saturday meant regulars could really kick some jumps out. Stubert and Liz had to work super hard to make sure everyone got some great skydiving in. Over 20 coached jumps were made for FS alone over the weekend. Evan Grant, our recent AFF graduate got started on the road to FS1 and took to it like a natural...

Yana Efremova managed to complete her FS1 dive Sunday with great success, scoring 9 very clean points. Well done Yana! Kris Cavill completed his dive to pin and Darren Glover worked hard with Leah Peacon and was able to award her FF1. Not bad for a quiet weekend!

See you next one for Stubert's 'Fergie Presents' Organising and the return of DZ Family Fortunes.

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28th to 30th August 2010 - 45-ways and New Freefly Record
After all the big competitions that have been running over the past few weekends, it was great to see some larger groups working together at the dropzone.

Trials and coaching took place from Wednesday to Friday with the Bad Lieutenants as part of their attempt to break the 14-way UK Freefly record which was set at Skydive Hibaldstow last year. To qualify, all members of the record had to be BPA license holders. A series of trial 14, 13 and 12-way formations took to the skies. By the end of Friday, the individual flyers had been selected and a 24-way was chosen as the attempted record size.

(Many thanks to Olly Burgin and Weed Stoodley for the fantastic shots)

Running alongside them, was Simon Cathrine's 45-way 'complex and difficult' formation skydiving group. Simon has been advertising this over the past few months and had carefully selected a group of the most talented jumpers he could find. It was great to see the dropzone running a fleet of 2 SMG's and 2 Dorniers for both freefly and formation skydiving bigway groups.

Saturday morning was looking promising with beautiful blue skies, albeit significant winds. The first freefly 24-way were attempted, but struggled as there were problems with the super floaters seeing the exit keys. This meant that jumpers were leaving early or late and were not in their correct approach slots. Later in the day, the decision was made to reduce the size to a 22-way and this did the trick. Congratulations to all those who took part and to those who had the uneviable job of sitting on the bench hoping to lurk a slot.

Simon's group also did well building a 2 point 45-way on their first attempt! The jumps were not simple and designed to be a 'challenge'. 3 Jumps were made all in all before the winds became too much. Jump no 3 was a repeater for no 2 which did not complete and involved quite a few jumpers in outfacing slots. Sadly that was the end of that as regards weekend bigway jumping. A few of the braver freeflyers made some jumps on the Monday, but the rest of the dropzone had to make do with a rather raucous and naked evening in the bar!

This coming weekend, we have expert 4-way team Kaizen offering coaching at the dropzone and Stu Ferguson on load organising duties, so come on down.
 

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21st to 23rd August 2010 - 8-way, Artistics and Speed Skydiving Nationals
2010 is confirmed again as another superb year for skydiving competitions at Skydive Hibaldstow. In the 2nd weekend of national championships it was the turn of the 8-way formation skydiving, freefly, freestyle and speed skydiving events. Despite a poor forecast (like last weekend), a healthy 10 teams turned out for the 8-way alone. In the freefly, it was great to see so many new faces competing who had obviously taken part in the many freefly weekends at Hibaldstow and the Bad Lieutenants' wind tunnel sessions.

Starting with 8-way, team Micro Clim8 won by a clear 33 points and an impressive 12.2 average. And yes the team members were all part of Connexions and VNE! In silver medal position and taking an 8.9 average were team Brit Chicks who showed how hard they had worked this season. The bronze medal went to Magnificent 7 who also put a lot of effort in and who did all their training at Skydive Hibaldstow.

The 8-way Intermediate class was made up of only 3 teams and all of them were scratch teams. Despite the lack of training, they all put a good show in and Discombobul8 (made up for some members from 4-way team Eclipse) took the gold with a 4.5 average.

The Freefly A class was won by recent silver medal world championships winners, Volare who are sponsored by Skydive Spain. However, showing some real talent were Army Euphoria who have just come back from running the British Army Championships. Freefly B was a tight battle between RAFSPA Lightening and Hib team, Cougars. RAFSPA did a fantastic final compulsory round to win scoring 11 formations over Cougars score of 8.

Freestyle again was always going to be won by the recent world champions, Airkix Freestyle made up of Al and Pixie. They performed some excellent routines showing some difficult manoeuvres and seamless transitions.

Last but not least, the 10th speed skydiving competition took place. It seems a short time since Ian Chapman (Chappy) took the first gold medal. Many thanks goes to Peter Warren for organising the event. Last years' runner up, Mike Lovemore finally took the gold medal with an outstanding 264mph average over 3 rounds. Ex-UK champion, Mark Calland also came in for a visit on Sunday afternoon as the competition finished its final round. Will we see a return from retirement from Mark in 2011?

Many thanks goes to all the competitors who have shown that the UK have a really strong prescence in the competitive skydiving world in 2011. You can get a full scores and news update at the championships website.

This coming weekend is the turn of the UK headdown record attempts (trials starting Wed 25th Aug) and Simon Cathrine's 45-way load organised jumps. So come on down!

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18th August - Petter Warren Interview
Speed skydiving is not what you might think for an interesting subject for an interview. However, the Speed Skydiving nationals are just a few days away and this unusual sport is well worth a consideration. Peter Warren tells his story here.
 

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14th to 16th August 2010 - UK National Championships
Well done to all the skydiving teams who braved the bad weather forecast to come to Skydive Hibaldstow for the National Championships in 4-way and VFS this weekend just gone. A new British record of 54 4-way teams plus 3 VFS teams took part and were rewarded with an early completion around 14:00 on the Sunday.

4-way AAA

	Satori 207
	Bodyflight 188
	SonicNutz 165

4-way AA

	Unagi 90
	RAFSPA Firefly 86
	Sirius 73

4-way A

	Full Stop 123
	Eclipse 104
	Tetris 100

4-way Rookie

	Ch4os 111
	Raykipo 100
	High Altitude Heroes 97

VFS

	Bad Lieutenants 68
	Kix VFS 62
	Bad Council Tenants 4

Please visit our dedicated skydiving championships website for full scores, news and the blog. This weekend, we have the turn of the 8-way, freefly, freestyle, skysurfing and speed skydiving. It is not too late to take part!

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7th to 8th August 2010
The weekend before the Nationals had finally arrived and surprising, it was a quiet weekend. Most of the teams were taking a rest weekend off before the big show? There were however a few teams who arrived to team train, but the show stealers this weekend were Frazer's freefly group. They made some fantastic organised skydives.

Following the AFF week, there were lots of students around too, but sadly, the clouds were ever present meaning the going was slow for them. Those who persevered however hit some of the weather gaps and managed to progress very well indeed.

Elsewhere, Stubert worked hard to make sure the flatties got some good skydives in,  which includes jumps ranging from 2 to 10-way. Well done to Hib regular Ant Hill who did his 600th skydive and ended the jump in a head to head track-the-cat battle. All eyes however are now on the weekend coming... the UK's biggest event in 2010. With 30 teams preregistered already the 4-way and VFS nationals are looking huge! You can keep track of the news and scores at the national championships website.

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5th August 2010 - Congratulations to teams at World Championships
In case you were not aware, the World Championships have been taking place in Menzelinsk, Russia over the past week. Skydive Hibaldstow and Skydive Spain have sponsored a few teams over the lasy few seasons and they have delivered at the World Championships.

In the 4-way, there is team Satori (who run the Satori Academy). They came in at 8th place overall. You may not think thats much, but they broke both the UK points average with a fantastic 22 and a UK maximum score of 47 in time.

Freefly was represented by Volare who have been together for several years. The put out a consistent performance to win the Silver Medal in between USA 1 and 2. This is also their highest ever competition average.

Finally, congratulations to the charismatic Bad Lieutenants, who upped their average to 12.88. This gave them a solid and secure bronze Medal right behind the Frenchies and team USA. Nice work there.

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3rd August 2010 - Sara Otter
For the first interview of August, we have local jumper Sara Otter being interviewed about her skydiving career and having to give it up, at least in part.

Sarah Otter interview.

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26th July to 1st August 2010 - Skysaver Week

The last of our series of Skysaver weeks has been and gone. Local teams Kaizen and SonicNutz were on DZ to train as much as they possibly could. Though the weather hit is hard, teams still managed to jump to their limits, some doing 80 jumps before leaving. And lets not think midweek was quiet... in amongst the scrabble there was the usual cross dressing!

The weekend brought clouds, cricket and a huge game of football, but still some nicely jumpable weather. Unagi arrived for their last camp of the season to join Kaizen and Nutz. Stu, Sally and Dave worked hard to coach, doing a lot of FS1 jumps with students! Congratulations to Charlie Pearce who not only got his FS1 but forgot his helmet and left his restraint on too - Beeeeeer!

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24th to 25th July 2010 - Hib Summer Ball Weekend

Another glorious weekend at Hibaldstow - The weather had threatened all week but the fronts subsided and again it was a fantastic day time to be on DZ. And as always we took full advantage get teams and fun jumpers skydiving. Teams Kaizen, Old Skool and Kinetic 4 kicked out some training jumps and the BLTs hammered the VRW. A somewhat unexpected highlight of the weekend however was Mick's 200th where Stu and Dave quite litterally threw him out of the aircraft and proceeded to make a speed star.

Having had only 4 weeks to prepare for the Summer Ball weekend the DZ was very pleased to see such a huge effort made from both our regulars and visitors to come down, dressed to impress and get involved in raising funds for the Alzheimer's Society.

A Ceildh band played out in the marquee for people to dance and a DJ later indoors after the big raffle draw and live auction. In total we raised over £4000 and had a great time to boot. Thanks once again to all who participated in the night.

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17th to 18th July 2010 - Mega Coaching Weekend and 8-Way Meet
The weather arrived swiftly and brutally with some colliding weather fronts. Sadly the whole week was washed out for skydivers trying to get some jumping in. Fortunately, the weekend was fairing up to be little better. Thankfully, although the conditions were less than optimal, a lot of groups were able to achieve a lot.

Coaching began early and continued through most of the day between the occasional weather breaks. Frazer, Jo and Helen all spent lots of time with FS and FF students, which will hopefully pay off for them in the future.

The unofficial 8-way meet brought in 5 teams, all wanting to get some much needed competition experience before the Nationals begins in just a few weeks time. The teams managed to good start Saturday, each completing 3 rounds of the 6 round draw before settling into the bar. There was certainly great skills on show, but as the aircraft were put to bed, the Britchicks were in the lead by a few points.

The evenings entertainments were late starting because of the late finish, but somehow people managed to hold on until 11pm for the grand night of custard wrestling. Already fully of free jelly shots and jelly beans, the crowd moved into the marquee to witness what was surely the most sureal night so far.

After several bouts and several goo-ings the DZ returned to the bar for a classic game of met roulette, which this time paid off - Sunday rolled in, but sadly, with it more poor weather. The competition was called at lunch time, and winners given the cup - Britchicks took gold, but it was more like yellow as they won a cup of cold custard!

See you next weekend for the first Hibaldstow Summer Ball in aid of Alzheimer's.

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14th July - An interview with Sarah Neale
Who is Sarah Neale you may ask? Well she is a rarity indeed, a female camera woman. She is also a part of recent winning UKSL team, Raykipo. Sarah is one of those skydivers, who has been to Skydive Hibaldstow many times over the years. You will recognise her face, but may not have chatted to her that much.

Read her story here - Sarah Neale Interview.

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10th to 11 July 2010 - UKSL Meet
Hibaldstow had a weekend as the 4-way UKSL came to the dropzone with a whopping 27 teams. Is this a record for a regional grand prix? It was not so long ago, that you could expect to have a similar number of teams entering the whole National Championships.




 

The forecasted weather on Saturday was always going to be the best, so the dropzone made the most of it and pulled in 2 extra Finist SMG-92 aircraft in addition to the Dornier. This unfamiliar aircraft gave some teams a surprise as they had mostly trained out of the Dornier, however to their credit, there were few funnels. Chatting to Penny Wiggins, the judge, she said: "It was a great competition. Hibaldstow DZ staff have been fantastic and the teams contributed to a great vibe on the dropzone".

All bar the Rookie teams were able to complete their 6 rounds of competition on the Saturday. A late start on the Sunday was scheduled, so that all the teams could party with DJ Adrian Bond on Saturday night.

The wind decided to be super strong very early on Sunday morning, so no lifts were able to take off until mid-afternoon. The majority of the Rookie teams decided to hold on as medal positions could easily be made or lost on the last round.

So on to the final scores:

	AAA - Sonic Nutz 94, Kaizen 71, TLD 64
	AA - Unagi 69, Sirius 60, Old Skool 57
	A - Gr4vity 86, Tetris 77, Eclipse 73
	Rookie - Raykipo - 56, High Altitude Heroes - 53, Information Overload - 48

What is particularly noticeable is the number of teams which took medals and continued on from last year. They numbered 8 out of the 12 positions in fact. There was also a high showing of scratch and low commitment teams. They were helped out by experienced formation skydiving BPA coaches Sparky and Richard Head who were on hand during the dirt dives and mock up training.

A lot more information can be found on our dedicated skydiving competition website, skydivingchampionships.com. Simply click on the UKSL link to find a blog and the winners photos.

In addition to the UKSL meet, we also have some achievements:

	Holly Heathfield completed her FS1 with a fantastic 10 points. She jumped with Julia Foxwell, Jo Burns and Stubert.
	Tamzin Jackman from team Information Overload just completed her 200th jump. In the same team, cameraman Martin Heywood Wakeman made 800 jumps.
	Lastly, congratulations to Peter Mather on his 700th jump.

Next weekend we have an unofficial 8-way competition at Hibaldstow. Many of the trained teams have decided to coordinate by showing up together and running a friendly 'competition experience' weekend. We are looking to put together an additional 8-way scratch team. Are you interested? You do not need to have any experience of 8-way, just have your FS1 and the will to have some fun. Send the dropzone an email if you are interested?

There is also some fantastic coaching and organising with AAA class teams Kaizen and Sonicnutz for formation skydiving. Freefliers are being catered for also with Frazier Smith, so all in all, its looking like a busy weekend ahead.

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Registration for UKSL Grand Prix this Weekend
This weekend sees the 4-way FS regional competition come to Skydive Hibaldstow. Teams in Rookie, A, AA and AAA classes will compete against each other over 6 rounds.

The entry forms can be found here:

Form 131 - All teams to complete

Form 131a - Only Rookie, A and AA classes to complete

Rules A - Please read all the rules carefully, there are some new ones entered this year.

if you have not jumped at Hibaldstow this year, you will need to present a BPA membership card, an up-to-date logbook, medical and fill out our club membership form. You may also think 'I don't have a team'. Do not worry, if you still want to take part in the fun, we can help you form a scratch team. Telephone the office to let them know you want to come (01652 648837).

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3rd to 4th July 2010 - BCPA, Freefly Bigways and Tandems
Glorious midweek weather brought some great skydives midweek which ranged from basic FS coaching, to team training and funky freefly skydives. Huge amounts of progression was made by the AFF jumpers who managed to get plenty of jumps in the sunshine.

Evening entertainment was as usual provided by Stu Ferguson and on Saturday night he ran the hugely successful 'Stu’s Deal or No Deal' again. The big draw this week however was the fact that the BCPA Northerns and the BLT’s head down organising coincided with the same dates and the weekend was just about to begin…

 

(Photos by Olly Burgin)

Some 50 students arrived on the centre by Saturday morning. The BLT boys also began their head down organising early along with the Scrambles and accuracy competition, so the DZ was in full swing by 8.30am and did not stop all day. Running the Finist and the Dornier concurrently for experienced jumpers allowed the DZ to flex its tiny piston muscles once more by bringing out the Cherokee 5  for static line and accuracy jumping – much to the enjoyment of those that had the chance to jump it.

The head down organising ran late into the evening, and once the scrambles had finished groups were put together for some great FS fun jumps. The DZ jumped until 9pm when most stopped and munched the DZ’s barbeque (thanks Noel) and spent the night in the bar for some drinking games and associated BCPA carnage and DJs Marc Fletcher and Ed Morley on the wheels of steel.

Though most tried to be ready for Sunday, unfortunately the weather was just too windy, and so cut the weekend short for skydiving. But all was not wasted – Mike took a packing course, and people took some time out to recover from the night before. Not a bad weekend considering the forecast was terminal at one point!

See you next weekend for the Hibaldstow 4way UKSL. Its not too late to enter a team!
 

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1st July 2010 - Interview with Dave Butterell
This is the 3rd interview of the month and its another first, a cameraman. David offers a wealth of information related to camera flying. Even though he is know for his formation skydiving camera work, he offers some great advice for flying in all disciplines. Read his interview online now.
 

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26th to 28th June 2010 - 28-way Sequential Competition
What an incredibly busy weekend the dropzone had. It began early Friday morning with an unexpected number of visitors taking advantage of the great forecasts to do some skydiving. More jumpers arrived as the day moved on, many, grabbing a few jumps before Saturday's fun began.

Three teams entered the annual 28way sequential competition this year, fielded by local organiser Simon Cathrine; Langar’s Dave Lewis and Skydive Choreography’s Caroline Hughes. Some jumpers even flew in from Ireland to take part.
 

(Photos by Brian Knight for the 28-way.)
 

 

 

Views from the aircraft were stunning, with 3 aircraft formations, and fantastic proximity flying. It was evident that all 3 teams had improved as their build time to fist point was very efficient. Teams scored highly on the initial warm up round, which was drawn from the easiest class from the pool of 28-way formations. In fact there are 3 classes in the pool and in the hardest there are formations called Possible / Impossible, does this give you a clue to the difficulty?

This then settled into the competition for more and more challenging dives. Caroline’s team, Chasing Tails eventually took first place, followed by Simon’s Hibnosis, who just piped Dave’s Herding Cats to second. Chasing Tails have to be congratulated on a Hib 28-way record (is this a world record also?) on scoring 12 points!

 

	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	Total
Hibnosis	9	1	1	0	1	12
Chasing Tails	12	4	1	2	0	19
Herding Cats	9	1	0	0	0	10

 

The 80’s party was well received, with DJ Del dishing out some funky tunes, and some great costumes. With a little coaxing, Henry Chow was convinced to sing AHA’s classic, Take On Me, live, and Kev Sargent provided a fantastic rendition of MC Hammers ‘Cant Touch this’ dancing, expertly backed by Shell Meakins and Stubert. Ally Armstrong won the crowd over for best costume and the night continued to the likes of Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Finishing early Sunday, many stayed on to do some fun jumping and 8-way team training in the 30 degree sun and really made the most of their weekend. Thanks to all that came!

Next weekend the BCPA return to Hibaldstow, so come on down for more partying and summer skydiving.

 

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23rd June 2010 - Scott and Holly Heathfield get interviewed
Last time we had instructor extraordinaire, Jo Burns. This time, we have our first joint interview from newcomers Scott and Holly. What's great about them, is their dedication and enthusiasm in the sport.

They also have the support and positive encouragement of their parents!

Read the full interview.

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19th to 20th June 2010
It had been quite a week for weather for the AFF. Guri and newcomer Pete both attained AFF level 7 and began their consols and with the aircraft flying for AFF, there was a huge influx of FS students too, taking advantage of coaches available midweek.

However, this weekend was where the action was, with SonicNutz' Dave, Helen and Simon coaching. Simon's army of Rookie teams took no heed of the forecast and took full advantage of the day, which included an epic creeper competition where skydivers were made to run from and exit in the mockup to the creepers to complete their dive!

Saturday night's festivities were some of the more complex and rewarding of the year so far with Stu's Race Night bringing in many a punter to place bets on a sets of pre-recorded and live races ranging from who could throw the chocolate bar furthest to a full on cracker eating race. Congratulations to Mhari who not only picked up a free skydive for being the best gambler but a rack of beer for the best costume hat too.

Met Roulette had however failed many and the skies were a perfect azure at 8am and indeed all day. The teams kicked out their jumps, Charlie took full advantage of Dave and Helen's coaching and Stu organised some fun ways.

See you next weekend for 28-way, 80's disco and maybe a new bar game!

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12th to 13th June 2010
Sadly the Skysaver week which was held at the dropzone from the 7th to 11th suffered from poor weather, thus all eyes were on the weekend for some hot weather and slick skydiving.

Having done the AFF ground school midweek, York university members Richard and Guri finally got their chance to take to the sky, both successfully completing their AFF level 1 in style. Numerous students also descended upon the DZ for FS coaching and Stubert really was run off his feet.

Some great progression was made, including an FS1 sticker for Scott Heathfield with a fantastic 11 points scored on his FS1 dive. The BPA / dropzone requirement is for a minimum 6 point skydive, so well Scott.

The show stealer of the weekend was the successful intermediate event ran by Billy Payne and Brian Cumming of Skydive Choreography. Visitors from around the country took part in the FS organising which ranged from complex 14-ways up to multi-aircraft formation loads and they really had fun doing so.

See you next week where Sonic Nutz return to coach and organise, and we host race night in celebration of Ascot - more than just horse racing!

 

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11th June 2010 - Jo Burns interview
This is the first interview of the month of June and Jo Burns talks about what its like to be an AFF instructor. Week in, week out, Jo can be found teaching the ropes to all our new skydivers. In a matter of 6 years, Jo has accumulated well over 1000 jumps, 30 hours tunnel and a shiny teaching badge.
 

Read her story here - Jo Burns Interview.
 

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Nationals Registration online open
Last year we promised online registration for the National Championships. It has finally arrived. As an added bonus, the length of the form has also been reduced drastically. Simply download the online PDF, fill in the fields electronically and email back to us!

Take a look at our sister website, skydivingchampionships.com for more information.

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29th May to 6th June 2010
Yet another weekend of mixed weather, but Hibaldstow pulled out all the stops to be sure that skydivers could make the most of the weekend. Hibaldstow 4-way teams Unagi and Eclipse joined us for a week long training and were well looked after both weekend and midweek.

Resident events organiser Stu Ferguson organised a fantastic evening of entertainment by hosting a cheese rolling festival to replace the one cancelled in Gloucester this year. Lincolnshire is not known for its steep hills, so Stubert had constructed an enormous hill for the visitors to roll their chosen cheeses.

With rounds such as distance and zone accuracy, there was definitely a lot of laughs. But the cheese didn't stop there - the Eurovison sing along made sure of that!

Mid week, the teams continued to train. Unagi managed to average 12 jumps a day - quite impressive for midweek in the UK! Eclipse peaked to with a highest score of 26 in time!

(photos by Adam Pencharz)

Even with some bad weather days, Unagi managed to do some 55 jumps and Eclipse did 40 jumps (with only 1 rig each). Team Satori members Julia Foxwell and Katie Woods were on hand not only to coach them, but to offer coaching support to the DZ. Team Storm4Cast took them up on that offer! We wish them success, competing in the coming months.

Thursday to Saturday proved particularly stunning, with hot weather all day. Numerous fun jumpers arrived. Just as well Kaizen's Rai Ahmed and Liz Cass were at hand to help out with the coaching and organising. All were pleased with the progress made, from 4way to bigway this weekend.

Mike's bar tape finished to the sound of a thunder storm. Even with the thunder storm, the DZ never sleeps as local team Innuendo were found creeping in the rain Sunday morning to take advantage of Kaizen!

This week, we have Skysavers runnning from the 7th to 11th June, which means super cheap £16 jump altitude tickets. Is this has to be the cheapest civilian jumping in the UK? At the weekend, we also have Skydive Choreography presenting an exciting bigway weekend.

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Progression Days