Latest first flights, May 2010

Congratulations to Wingin' It's latest student, Mike McNulty, who made the most of clear blue skies and £16 jump tickets at Hibaldstow to do his first couple of Prodigy jumps. Ryan Brown and Derrick Kent have also now done their training ready to take to the skies sometime soon...

Skydive Spain

Beautiful clear blue skies for most of the boogie saw about a dozen people do their first flights with me. See the First Flights page for names but a special mention goes to Rhino for being the most enthusiastic of them all!

The Top Gun boys were also out here doing some quality flocking, along with BMI Lee Saunders taking his girlfriend Jade on her first flight. Aaron and Anna demoed some suits and did some 2ways and the Norwegians provided plenty of entertainment! The Irish guys were generally broken but managed a few wingsuit jumps (with Paddy's cold it was the only way to descend slowly enough to not hurt his sinuses!). Ivan made great progress with his new Phantom having done his first flight at Nethers earlier this year, and Craig Poxon managed to tear himself away from the big-way FS for long enough to do some flocking too.

A new section has been created, if you want to buy or sell a suit then see the new Suits for sale section.

BPA Council elections - use your vote!

Each year nominations are invited for the 15 slots on the BPA Council. This year I was very nearly one of them, but eventually decided against it for now. There are 21 people standing though, so there will be a vote with the top 15 people getting on. Please please please use your vote as these are the people who work on your behalf as a BPA member.

Of the 21 candidates, there are 13 who I am very keen to have on Council. They are: Paul Applegate, Adrian Bond, John Horne, Ian Marshall, Paul Moore, Geordie Page, Craig Poxon, Grant Richards, Andy Scott, John Smyth, Martin Soulsby, Weed Stoodley and Alex Wilson.

Of the remaining 8 candidates, 3 are people who I specifically DON'T want on Council, and the other 5 are people who I don't know well enough or who haven't done enough to get my vote. So I've just used 13 of my possible 15 votes.

This is a subject close to my heart, so if you have any questions about voting, or about why I think highly of the people I've chosen, then please feel free to ask. I voted online this year, it took all of about three minutes.

UPDATE... the 13 people I wanted on Council were the top 13 people elected. The three I didn't want on failed to get on. Result! Now shall I stand next year or not...?

Wingin' It at Skydive Spain

I'll be heading out to Seville from 16th December to 9th Jan and the whole school will be coming with me (well not quite the whole school, I'm leaving Mike and Jack behind unfortunately). But all 8 suits will be coming with me.

Send an email to liz@wingin-it.co.uk to pre-register your interest in doing your first flight course, organised flocking or just hiring a suit and carrying on on your own.

I have to fit into how Skydive Spain likes to run their wingsuit stuff, which isn't too far different from how things happen back home. FFCs are slightly more expensive at 135 euros (including the brief, suit hire, the jump and my slot) and suit hire is comparable at 10 euros per jump.

17th October

Well done to Hans for his first flight in clear blue skies this morning!

Wingin' It International

Isn't t'internet great? Since launching the website at the start of 2007, over 1700 unique visitors have visited it from the following fifty (!) countries around the world, with each month bringing around 2000 visits to the site (courtesy of Google Analytics):

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Falkland Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Serbia & Montenegro, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

Wow!

If you're visiting a country that's not yet on the list then please do click on my website from abroad and help me in my quest for world domination, mwa ha ha ha...

13-14 October

Steve got his first and second wingsuit jumps done, and Jamie had another go at it too. I did a couple of AFF jumps then jumped Wes's Velocity 79 on a cutaway rig - very cool!

5-6 October

Jamie Garton and Steve Lewis had their first flight briefs from Jack, and Jamie got to fly from the Skyvan before the cloud stopped Steve from going too.

And Smudge and Al were doing some cool stuff with Velocities and cutaway rigs... watch this space for a possible added wingsuit twist to it all...

BirdMan Tour comes to Netheravon, 21-23 September

Thanks to Rolf Brombach and Meike Buchholz who have been on the road since February, visiting dropzones all over Europe and finishing at Netheravon last weekend.

First flight courses were done by Dain Thorne, Allan Weston, Phill Elston and Mick McPhee, and several flocks went up. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t suitable for an attempt on the big-way record but Rolf ran a seminar instead where we learnt about formation flocking. He gave us an insight into how to plan flocks, who should go where on exit and in the formation, flying your slot with discipline and breaking off safely.

Netheravon Advanced Course, 12th September

The military side of Netheravon is all about running Monday to Friday courses and they train something like 45 static line students every 2 weeks. However twice a year they run an Advanced Course for experienced military jumpers, where they bring in coaches that have included Solly Williams, Shannon Pilcher, Luigi Cani and many other famous names.

So I was chuffed to be asked to bring wingsuiting to last week’s course. Kenny Craig and Alex Cartwright both did their first flights, and Hans Donner and Rob Millin have been briefed up but are yet to fly...

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