Posts Tagged ‘first time’

A friend of mine who happens to be a Francophone skydiver from Quebec only took up the sport a few years ago. She’s someone who impresses me. She has her motorcycle license, she has her skydiving license and she’s just an overall “bad ass” woman. She gave me permission to post an article that she wrote up for Canpara (Canadian version of Parachutist) This is the article: Skydiving in your early 50s? Written by Normande Cournoyer Translaled by Gaëlle Vercollier Yes, it is possible. ln 2004, around the end of the summer, I was looking for a special project to… » Read more…

So I just got back from Varadero Cuba… Absolutely had to pop into the local DZ to check it out and hopefully to do a few jumps with the locals… Turned out it’s a tandem factory, but they’re fairly welcoming to other skydivers. Weather didn’t permit us to jump on the day of my visit, so we played dominoes together… (I snapped some photos, but haven’t developed them yet) The DZ is actually owned by the government there, they fly a 20 seat soviet chopper (didn’t get to snap any photos of it though) Depending on wind conditions, you either… » Read more…

So it’s nearly the end of the season in Quebec and in most places actually… Although there’s still a couple of weeks left to the season, it’s over for me at this point. I ended it with a bang though, got my first helicopter jump done (4000 feet). And yes, I bought beer… And rum actually haha. To give some of you a quick description of what it’s like to do a heli jump as opposed to a normal skydive from a plane, when you jump from the chopper, you’re getting off out of a vehicle that’s barely moving, so… » Read more…

Hey everyone! I had a very eventful day last Saturday, it started off with my celebration jump for my B license. We did a 7 way that went to hell, was someone’s 100th jump and the idea was that we would do a hybrid (some belly fliers, some free fliers). The plan was that we’d have a 4 person base (I was in the base). With 2 people hanging onto us and one stinger (He was on camera filming and would randomly hook on and off in freefly) Our exit was fairly unstable and I ended up separated from everyone,… » Read more…

So I finally got the chance to jump the full face helmet I had to wait nearly 2 months to get… It was worth the wait. I’ve gotten 57 jumps done with an open face helmet wearing goggles… After having done 2 jumps with a full face, I don’t know how I managed… I see the ground so much more clearly, it’s not silent, but it’s so much quieter on the way down, I barely hear the annoying flapping of the slider in the wind… And all the stuff I heard about peoples’ full faces fogging up has now been… » Read more…

So in the end, we didn’t do a jump at 20 000 feet, the DZ wasn’t able to get the permits. So we jumped from 18000. Everyone on the plane had oxygen masks, we were 4 loads of 8-9 people. On my load, a buddy who’s birthday it was who they added to our load to accommodate (He wasn’t supposed to be jumping today, they originally limited the day at 30 jumpers) Most of the load were friends of mine I had met while skydiving, 3 of which were jumping with me. At 12 000 feet, we were told to… » Read more…