Articles

Dana Bowman Brings Hope

ALEDO - For 20 students in Stacie Ragle's fourth-grade class at Stuard Elementary School, helicopter pilot Dana Bowman's visit Friday was an exciting learning experience. For one student, 10-year-old Kylie Houx, the visit was a chance to prepare for the fact that on May 8 her feet will be amputated.
Bowman, a former Army Golden Knights parachutist who lost parts of his legs in a skydiving accident seven years ago, flew to the school in a Bell 206 Jetranger III to show Kylie and her classmates that losing an extremity does not necessarily mean losing ability.

"It's not about disabilities. It's about abilities," the retired Army sergeant said.

Kylie was born with a medical condition that retards bone growth in her lower legs. As she grows, her feet lean inward, causing her to walk increasingly on her instep.
The problem becomes more severe over time, and although surgeries and medical devices have given her some relief, the best option clearly is replacing her feet with prostheses, said her father, Frank Houx, a 45-year-old car salesman.
Bowman, who lives in Weatherford, was injured Feb. 6, 1994, as he practiced with fellow Golden Knights parachutist Jose Aguillon over Yuma, Ariz. The two collided at a combined speed of about 300 miles per hour while rehearsing a maneuver in free fall. An automatic device opened Bowman's parachute when they collided. Aguillon was killed.
Bowman's left leg was amputated below the knee, his right leg above the knee. Since the accident, he has jumped with the Golden Knights, has earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautics from the University of North Dakota, and has become a certified helicopter instructor. He also skis, on snow and water, and scuba dives.
Through the Dana Bowman Limb Bank Foundation, a nonprofit organization he heads, Bowman makes speaking appearances nationwide. He distributes information about himself and his foundation through a Web page, www.danabowman.com.
Bowman told the students that he overcame the mental and physical pain of his injuries and loss and lives a full life. He uses modern prostheses of steel and titanium. His brain has allowed him to pick himself up and to do anything he wants, he said.
"I've still got my mind, right?" he told the students.
Turning to Kylie, he encouraged her about the pending surgery.
"You are going to be able to do whatever you want to do," he said.
After the talk, Kylie and her parents went up for a few minutes in the helicopter.
Kylie, small, blond and shy, said she learned much from Bowman's speech but didn't quite feel like talking much about the day.
During the helicopter ride, she talked away, her father said.
"She was just rattling away on the headsets."
Joanie Houx, 47, said the visit helped her daughter.
"Kids get scared about this," she said. "When they see something like this, it makes everybody more comfortable."
For more info go to Dana's web site

By admin, in News, March 11, 2001

Popularity of skydiving soaring in Chicago area

When Todd Davis started skydiving, he had to scrape together every penny he could for the sport. "Once I did my first jump, I knew this is what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how I was going to do it," said Davis, 28, who started jumping 10 years ago. Now, he makes a living off skydiving as a co-owner of Chicagoland Skydiving in Hinckley.
He and friend Doug Smith, 27, bought the business in December.
Davis said he loves the sport and expects the business to grow. As an instructor and videographer at Chicagoland Skydiving for three years before taking over, he watched skydiving's popularity increase.
About 300,000 people skydived last year, for a total of 3.3 million jumps, said Chris Needles, executive director of the U.S. Parachute Association in Alexandria, Va.
Increasingly safer equipment and a wider acceptance of jumping out of airplanes for recreation have contributed to skydiving's steady growth, Davis said.
"The gear is so advanced now that anybody can skydive, anyone from you to your grandmother," Davis said.
In fact, one woman last year went skydiving on her 86th birthday. This year, a woman with Parkinson's disease jumped on Mother's Day.
Standard equipment for students at the jump site includes an automatic activation device that will open an emergency parachute if the main parachute is not deployed during a jump.
That and other equipment make skydiving costly.
A tandem jump in which a student is attached to an instructor while they share a parachute, costs $175.
Beginners jumping with their own parachute pay $275 for the required six hours of training. That compares with about 30 minutes of training for a tandem jump.
Two instructors jump with each student for the first solo jump.
For another $80, a videographer will jump too, recording still and moving images from the one-minute free fall and landing that takes place five or six minutes after the chute opens.
Lisa van Deursen, a manager, videographer and instructor at Chicagoland Skydiving, said she would like to see more people hire videographers, but they seem put off by the price.
"People can't understand why it's so expensive, but I have $3,000 worth of equipment on my head," she said, referring to helmet cameras.
Planes that can hold up to 20 skydivers cost $800,000 to $1.5 million, while parachutes and other gear for one person can cost $5,000 to $12,000.
Davis and Smith lease the planes as well as the land used for the business. They employ 25 independent contractors as instructors, pilots and parachute packers.
About 6,500 jumps took place last year at the Hinckley site; in 1999, there were 3,200 jumps, according to van Deursen.
The growth comes despite the presence of two regional competitors: Skydive Chicago near Ottawa and Skydive Illinois in Morris.
Nationally, skydiving has grown at a rate of 2 or 3 percent every year for the past 10 years, Needles said. "It's not perfectly linear at all times because we are affected by movies that come out about skydiving, so you get these great spikes sometimes," Needles said.
He said improved safety does seem to be a factor, and he noted that while there are still fatalities associated with the sport, there were only about 30 deaths in the U.S. last year out of about 3.3 million jumps.
The number of annual fatalities has remained steady for 10 years, despite jumps increasing each year, Needles said.
Davis said he thinks the sport will continue to grow because of the natural curiosity many people have about flight.
"It's the closest to flying outside of your dreams," he said.
For information or reservations, call 815-286-9200.
Chicago Tribune

By admin, in News, May 31, 2001

Space Parachuting: Skydiving from the Edge

WASHINGTON -- Everybody knows it was Neil Armstrong that took that historic one small step. But now several parachutists are aiming to take giant leaps that could lead to a new form of extreme sport - spacediving. Technology and bravado are merging to create a new breed of high-altitude hopefuls - people ready to take the fall of a lifetime. The hope is to shatter a four decades old record by freefalling from the edge of space, break the speed of sound on the way down, and live to tell about it.
Vaulting into the void
In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force took on the issue of hazards faced by flight crews bailing out from high-flying aircraft. As part of the research, Project Excelsior used a gondola-toting balloon to carry a pilot high into the stratosphere. From the end of 1959 into mid-1960, Captain Joseph Kittinger took three leaps of faith. He counted on himself, medical experts, protective gear, and a newly devised parachute system to ensure a safe and controlled descent to the ground.
On August 16, 1960, Kittinger jumped his last Excelsior jump, doing so from an air-thin height of 102,800 feet (31,334 meters). From that nearly 20 miles altitude, his tumble toward terra firma took some 4 minutes and 36 seconds. Exceeding the speed of sound during the fall, Kittinger used a small stabilizing chute before a larger, main parachute opened in the denser atmosphere.

Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger, Jr. jumps from Excelsior III balloon gondola in 1960 test, freefalling toward Earth for over 4 minutes. CREDIT: U.S. AIR FORCE
He safely touched down in barren New Mexico desert, 13 minutes 45 seconds after he vaulted into the void.
The jump set records that still stand today, among them, the highest parachute jump, the longest freefall, and the fastest speed ever attained by a human through the atmosphere. Somewhat in contention is Kittinger's use of the small parachute for stabilization during his record-setting fall. Roger Eugene Andreyev, a Russian, is touted as holding the world's free fall record of 80,325 feet (24,483 meters), made on November 1, 1962.
Spring of our intent
Now take your own jump from the 1960s to 2001.
Several individuals are after the freefall record, on the prowl to raise millions of dollars in sponsorship funds to claim the milestone.
Rodd Millner, an Australian ex-commando is putting together the "Space Jump" project. Working with a film company, Millner's balloon ride and follow-on fall would be well documented. Taking two-and-a-half hours to balloon himself up to 130,000 feet (40,000 meters), and outfitted with the latest in survival gear, Millner would high step into the stratosphere.
Hot air balloon platforms, a team of skydivers, a Lear Jet, and other aircraft are to be airborne to record Milllner's dive into the record books.
"We have involved a special team of experts across a wide range of scientific and technological areas to ensure this project is successfully conducted with optimum safety and with spectacular visual effect," said Walt Missingham, project director of Space Jump, in a group press release from Sydney, Australia.
If all remains on track, Millner plans a liftoff in March 2002, ascending from just outside Alice Springs, in the center of Australia.
Realistic go-getter
Another freefaller is Michel Fournier, a retired French parachute regiment officer. He has made some 8,000 jumps, and is the French record holder for the longest fall, from an altitude of about 37,000 feet (12,000 meters).
"I love discovering and experimenting. I'm a realistic go-getter, a little stubborn at times, Fournier said.
Calling his effort the "Big Jump", Fournier has assembled a team of experts to assist in strategizing his stratospheric jump from 130,000 feet (40,000 meters). Within 30 seconds of departing his pressurized basket, Fournier hopes to break the sound barrier during his plummet. Equipped with a pressurized suit and special gloves, the diver expects to thwart frigid temperatures and ultraviolet radiation.
The fall itself is to last 6 minutes and 25 seconds. It will be the first big aeronautical exploit of the third millennium, Fournier explains.
Fournier points to Jean-Francois Clervoy, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut, as "godfather of the project". The tragic Challenger accident in 1986 and ESA's work on its own space plane, the Hermes, are singled out by the skydiver as early motivation for his working on the Big Jump.
First plans called for the Big Jump taking place in September 2000. The French liftoff site was in the Plaine of Crau. A website about the effort explains that Michel could not jump in France because of administrative reasons. His team is now scouting for another launching site somewhere else in the world.
Skydiving skills
The StratoQuest mission features world champion skydiver, Cheryl Stearns. She too seeks to break the Kittinger record by dropping to Earth from 130,000 feet (40,000 meters).
Stearns is no newcomer to breaking new ground in the air. A commercial airline captain on Boeing 737's, at 13,050 skydives and climbing, she has made the most jumps of any woman in the world, with some 30 world records under her helmet.
Carried by balloon to above 99 percent of the Earth's atmosphere, Stearns will wear a customized pressurized space suit. Her freefall velocity may exceed the speed of sound, heading toward Mach 1.3. Maintaining a head down position will get her through transonic, and supersonic speed regimes. But as she begins to enter heavier atmosphere, a dangerous transonic phase comes again. At this point, her skydiving skills are to be tested in order to maintain stability until parachute deployment.
The jump is tentatively set for over New Mexico, perhaps in April 2002.
Pushing the envelope
Where is all this sky jumping headed?
First of all, high-altitude skydiving is on the cutting edge, said Mark Norman, an instructor with Freefall Adventures in Williamstown, New Jersey. "Certainly, they are challenging themselves, that's for sure. They are definitely pushing the envelope without any shadow of a doubt," he told SPACE.com.

Prior to "hitting the silk", spacediver uses balloon-like device to slow down and protect against forces during initial atmospheric entry. Credit: Canadian Arrow
At Freefall Adventures, typical skydiving starts at around 13,500 feet (4,115 meters), Norman said, with a jumper paying $16.00 dollars for the aircraft ride. As one of the busiest centers in the world, the group handles upwards of 15,000 people a year, he said, all hankering for a minute's worth of freefall
Norman said that high-altitude skydivers must think safety first, with regards to oxygen and pressurization issues. "So it lends itself to a lot of difficulties and a lot of impracticalities that we don't necessarily need to deal with in the commercial, mainstream skydiving industry," he said.
Building a business on people swooping down from the edge of space doesn't seem too practical at the moment, Norman said.
Drop zone: Earth
But Geoff Sheerin, team leader of the X Prize entry, the suborbital, passenger-carrying Canadian Arrow, believes what is taking place is an early form of spacediving.
"A rocket can take a spacediver to any altitude desired in just minutes, resulting in less time exposed to the dangers of vacuum and cold," Sheerin said. "I think this will ultimately lead to suborbital vehicles being the transport of choice for spacediving. Anyone using a rocket for spacediving can demolish any balloon record ever made," he said.
To the general public, spacediving might seem impossible, Sheerin said, as most think everything coming back from space burns up on reentry.
"If you look at the lower energies involved for suborbital flight, compared to orbital speeds, you realize that material and technology of today can turn spacediving from a suicide jump into a very survivable extreme sport," Sheerin said.

By admin, in News, June 8, 2001

Solo Parachutist Arrested After Stunt at NATO HQ

By admin, in News, June 14, 2001

Iran's first Skydive Centre

By labyrinth, in News, May 18, 2007

Case Study: How to Make A Really Good Life In Skydiving

How NZ Aerosports General Manager Attila Csizmadia Found His Niche
When I talk to Attila Csizmadia, he’s out of breath. He has just finished shaking down his four-year-old son for a set of puckishly “stolen” car keys, and it was a hell of a hunt.
“Sorry,” he says, “I was running around the house like crazy looking for them.”
Hidden keys are certainly not the only thing Attila runs after during the course of any given day. Since 2005, he has been the General Manager of NZ Aerosports--the central hub of operations for one of the sport’s most innovative, prolific and beloved parachute manufacturers. This is a dream job for a lot of skydivers, naturally, but it didn’t come easily. Indeed, one can’t help but think that running an office staffed with 30 to 40 staff is excellent preparation for the rigors of parenthood. The four-year-old is one of Attila’s two; the other is 13 years old--not far off from the age Attila was when he first started skydiving.
“I am not sure if [my sons] will skydive or not,” he muses. “If they want to and they ask me for it, then I’m going to make it happen. It’s up to them.”
It’s worth mentioning that if Attila’s boys start jumping, they’ll be a third-generation legacy. His own father was a skydiver and, though he stopped jumping when Attila was born, he’s much of the reason that Attila dove into the parachuting industry.
“He was jumping in Hungary, where we’re from,” Attila explains. “He was old-school, a military guy. As I was growing up, he was in keeping contact with his friends that were still jumping, and they were always talking about skydiving, even when I was a little kid. Then, when I was about 14 years old, I was talking to one of his friends who was still jumping; listening to his skydiving stories. I remember saying--and meaning it--that I could never skydive. But then a friend of mine brought it up. He’d just watched a record attempt or something on TV. He begged me to try it with him, and I agreed. He stopped after five jumps; it changed my life.”
“For me as a 16-year-old, getting into that group of people was just perfect,” Atilla remembers. “I was in school. It was all boys. I didn’t enjoy it. But then I went out to the dropzone and there was this friendly, crazy bunch. I was like, this is totally me. It felt like coming home.”
It was 1988. At the time, Hungary was still Communist country. Everyone skydiver in the country jumped really old, really dodgy military gear that was “15 years behind the rest of the world,” and every skydiver in the country knew every other skydiver in the country.
In 1991, the World Championships were held in what was then Czechoslovakia. They brought out some helicopters for the event, and the German, French and Italian 4-way team all came to Hungary to train.
“They were jumping these square parachutes that we’d never seen in real life before,” Attila laughs. “These guys were swooping, and we were just, like: what is happening here?! It was like watching spaceships land. We didn’t know what was possible. When these guys came here in these jumpsuits and small gear and like awesome canopy work, we were blown away. And I was inspired to start doing 4-way and competing.”
A few years of hard work later, Hungary had a young team.
“Because it was a new sport in Hungary,” he grins, “We won the Nationals pretty easily. Then we were the national team for a long time--almost 10 years. I was burning to get out there and travel and to jump everywhere I could overseas and to get a better rig and just do more.” He split his time between the US and Hungary for about five years, studiously avoiding European winters; he switched his seasonal pattern to Australia when he went to the World Championships there in 1999. To date, in fact, he has competed in no less than seven world championships.
“The last time I tried it, I couldn’t extend my visa,” he explains. “So there I was, facing returning to the middle of a European winter. I just couldn’t do it; there was nothing for me there.”
His solution: Hop the channel to New Zealand. He got a work visa and picked up a job at a dropzone throwing drogues and teaching AFF. He soon joined the NZ 4-way team. Everything was going well--but then the tone changed.
“My boss at the DZ was becoming a real a**hole,” he explains, “And I just desperately wanted to leave, but no one was hiring. Everybody had their staff. I needed to keep that work visa or I was going to be thrown right back to Hungary.”
As a last-ditch effort, he asked a couple of friends who worked for NZ Aerosports and if they were hiring. They were. It was 2005. Attila went right to work making line sets and cutting canopies.
“When I started working here, I thought I knew a lot about parachutes because I had been flying them a lot,” he says, wryly. “But when I got into the manufacturing side of it, I realized how little I actually knew. I found it really interesting and wanted to learn more and more.”
He found a peerless mentor in NZ Aerosports’ legendary founder/mad scientist/gear innovator/party animal, Paul ‘Jyro’ Martin.
“Jyro enjoyed that I was really interested in this stuff, and he just gave me so much information,” Attila says. “Then the guy who was managing the company at that time left. Jyro asked me if I wanted to do it. Of course I said yes.” It had been just six months since Attila had first accepted the job.
At the time, NZ Aerosports was a much smaller company. They only made six canopies at that time, and they had two sewing machinists. When Attila started managing, he was still the one cutting all the canopies. As he did so, he’d always have the office phone on him, taking orders; he’d be sorting out emails and charging credit cards with one hand and shipping out the canopies with the other. The work was, to put it mildly, intense. “One of my main tasks,” he laughs, “Was making sure the beer fridge was always full.”
“At the beginning it was really hard,” he relates. “I didn’t have any background in the business and hardly knew anything about it. English is a second language for me, so that made it a little bit harder too. I had to pretty much figure out everything for myself. At a certain point, I almost gave up because it was so stressful and things were not going really well. But then we pulled ourselves together with the manufacturing and started developing some new canopies. First, we released the JFX. We hired some new people, which brought in a nice newenergy. Then we met Julien [Peelman, Aerodynamics Engineer], and we started working on some of the really new canopies. There was no way I was leaving after that.”
Now, the NZ Aerosports office buzzes with the work (and play) of about forty people, all of whom report to Attila.
“It was a big learning curve, figuring out how to manage such a large number of people and deal with personal issues so that they still enjoy working together with all their differences-- the cultural gaps, the religious gaps and the age gaps between them. We have a big range. The youngest [staffers] are fresh out of school, and then we have some 60-something-year-old people working right next to them. We have people from Fiji...Canada...from all around the world, really. It’s like a dropzone.”
If you talk to anybody at NZ Aerosports, they’ll tell you that much of that vibrant energy came from Jyro’s influence--and, in March of 2017, we lost him. The loss of “the soul of the company” took a massive toll on the community that had formed at his feet, and Attila had to work even harder through his mourning. However, the spirit that Jyro instilled--in Attila, in his team at large and in the business--kept it from coming unglued.
“It is good to make some money, sure, but Jyro made sure it has never been our number-one motivation,” Attila explains. “You can see that the team is here all day, every day, working hard, and we always wanted to create a really nice environment for them that they truly enjoy working in. Because of that, people don’t really leave here. We’ve hardly changed any staff since I got here in 2005, and I think it’s because this is just a really good place to be. We all really pulled together when we lost Jyro. I think that’s what saved us--the people here, and our customers’ faith.”
Attila insists that that faith--the passionate support of the NZ Aerosports fan base--is the phenomenon that really drives the machine.
“I think that people respond to the fact that we are always trying new stuff; that we’re always improving,” he says. “That’s the part that’s interesting for us. We aren’t just developing new products. We actually want to make better products, and so we’re always searching for improvements on the designs. We have like 20 skydivers working here, so it is not just about driving revenue. I think that’s why people relate to it so strongly. This has always been more of a lifestyle than a business.”
If NZ Aerosports is indeed about lifestyle, Attila is great evidence that they’ve nailed the art.
“I think I found what I was trying to find in my personal life--a balance between family, the hobby and the business--in NZA,” he smiles. “I think that was always my goal, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Right now I feel that I’m in a really good place, and I’m ready for whatever comes next.”

By admin, in News, November 10, 2017

Omri Galili - Israel's Fly Baby

"Skydive Eilat" is one of only two skydiving clubs in Israel. Roy Ritter, the Chief Instructor is very proud of his 800 members but especially of the 16 year old Omri Galili who at the age of 10 announced: "I want to be a Skydiver." When he was 8, Omri Galili arrived along with his family for a vacation in Eilat. Like any other kid who comes to town he swam in the red sea and the pool, and also visited the different attractions, among them - the Airodium (Vertical Wind Tunnel).

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But unlike any other kid that visit changed his life. Omri fell in love with "flying". During the next visits of his family in Eilat, he kept going to the Airodium and turned the visit into a "week of flying", says Roy Ritter who's family owns the Airodium.
"Already at the age of 10 he told me he is going to take the skydiving course", says Ritter about his young trainee. But Omri had to be patient. The skydiving course can only be taken after the age of 18. So in the meantime he kept getting more air time in the Airodium, and the checks he got from his Bar-Mitsvah he deposited into a savings account.
When he got to the age that he could start skydiving, Omri came to the dropzone for a skydiving course which he got as a present from his mother on his 16 birthday. On Friday, April 13th his dream came true, and he jumped out of the plane. Despite of the date (Friday the 13th...), Omri wanted to jump anyway. "I didn't know what to expect, I was frightened and I was screaming", admits Omri. During the first 3 jumps the parachute is opened automatically by a static-line almost right after you leave the plane. Thereafter the skydiver has to pull the pilot chute himself.
Omri has now jumped 31 times since that first jump. A great achievement for someone who has just finished the course a month ago. Every Friday he arrives to the dropzone, and there with the other skydivers he jumps, packs his parachute and when his turn comes he gets on the plane and jumps again.
A MINUTE WITH GOD
What makes people get on a small plane, climb to the height of 12000ft, jump out of it to fall for a whole minute?
At Friday afternoons, the "Skydive Eilat" dropzone is crowded with men and women, mostly youngsters, waiting for their turn to get on the plane. The whole procedure starts with gearing up, through waiting at the waiting point, the flight up, the jump and getting back to the hangar, and finally the tiresome job of packing the parachute.
Between jumps, they eat, exchange experiences, and catch a short nap in the shade. Bout not Omri. After the landing, he picks up the parachute and goes to the hangar to do what every skydiver hates the most - packing! Omri lays the parachute on the ground and desperately looks at the mess of the strings and fabric. While his hands dig and turn the fabric over, he exchanges experiences and impressions with his skydiving friends. Later they talk about altimeters and different kinds of parachutes, and all in a totally professional language. Most of the information is taken from the Internet.
"When Omri wanted to buy a parachute, he came to me with specific details of what he wants", explains Ritter, "he knew exactly which kind, size and colors he wants, everything".
The experience the older skydivers get in the field, the younger ones get from the Internet. At the club itself there are no differences. Everybody mingle with everybody: CIO editors, pilots, insurance agents, hi-tech people, students and high school pupils.
20 Percent of the skydivers are girls and their numbers are rising. Since there is no limitation on food before skydiving, everybody is busy eating what Dudi is making them. Everybody but Omri. After finishing packing the parachute, he sits on the benches not eating, not drinking and only waiting for his turn to go on the plane again.
Q: What does your mother say?
"She's cool with it. She's not frightened, only calls at the end of the day to ask how it was. I want her to do a Tandem, which is a skydive for two people, when the instructor and the student are connected together with a special harness."
You don't have to take the course to do a Tandem, and it is suitable for everybody, 13 year old children and over 70 year old elders. Even people with physical disabilities and blind people for example can also do a Tandem.
TO SIT IN THE AIR
And what exactly are the skydivers going through?
After getting on one of the two planes, one of them was purchased recently, the skydivers take off to the height of 12000ft (4km). At the signal of the instructor, they sit at the edge of the plane and after another signal, they jump. Then for a minute, at a fall rate of 250km/h, they fall. While falling with movements of the arms and the legs, you can sit, stand on your head and also do flips backwards and forwards, or dock with other skydivers for a group formation.
After the first minute, which is as the skydivers say, the best part, you open the main parachute and float down.
Q: What's in that freefall?
Omri: You can't explain that feeling in words. You have to jump yourself to understand. Your body turns into a flying machine. Your arms and legs are like wings of a plane, and every movement effect your body."
Q: And what do you think about while you are falling?
"While freefall I think only about I'm gonna do at the next moment and just have fun. The thoughts are always focused on the jump."
You could've thought that one of the main reasons to skydive at the area of Eilat is the incredible view, but apparently that's not it. "It isn't the view, it's the people that jump here", explain Omri.
Q: And have you done scuba diving?
"Nope. And I'm not interested in that either. I don't relate to the underwater view".
"It's the adrenaline", explains Omri's sister, Efrat, which is also caught in the skydiving enthusiasm. After landing she breaks into screams of excitement. "I was screaming up in the air also", she laughs. "What a trip it was", said some other skydivers.
Omri and Efrat were at the dropzone when the accident of the English skydiver who broke his leg occurred. Both of them don't understand why he did the turn so close to the ground. Both of them weren't intimidated by it. "There's nothing you can do, it's a dangerous sport", says Ritter, the chief instructor, who has about 4,500 jumps and was second place world champion in '94 for 2-way skydiving.
There are two skydiving clubs in Israel- "Skydive Eilat", and "Paradive" at the Bonim beach. "And that's quite a lot for a small country like Israel", explains Ritter. The dropzone in Eilat was opened at 1996, and it's a family club. As mentioned, Roy is the chief instructor, and his sister Noya with 900 jumps is the dropzone manager and also an instructor. Their father, Moshe, flies the planes. 800 skydivers are members in the club. Skydivers from all around the world arrive there, among them Kenshy from Japan, who after doing a Tandem while he visited in Eilat, decided to take a course and eventually decided to stay in Israel. Today he works at the Jewelry Stock Exchange in Ramat-Gan and comes to the club every weekend.
COLD FEET
Q: Has it ever happened that someone got into the plane and didn't want to jump?
Roy: "there was a reporter at the US who did a big article about skydiving and she was to jump herself, but she got cold feet at the last minute. Skydiving is addictive. And most of those who tried it wouldn't give up the treat."
"I'm looking at the menu in a restaurant and thinking that for a meals price and a little bit more I can jump, so I give other things up", says an enthusiastic skydiver.
For those of you who are interested, we will tell that it's not a cheap story - a skydiving course lasts 4 days and costs 990$. "In the north and other places in the world the price is much higher. 1500$", says Roy, "We're cheaper, because we have the Airodium. The students fly first at the wind tunnel, and only then gets to the dropzone. It's a great practice and prevents mistakes".
The jumps themselves are also not cheap. A price of every jump 250 NIS (New Israeli Shekel, 64$). Omri who dropped out of school for personal reasons, works at operating a chat room of the Israeli children channel, and that's how he finances his jumps. He also bought a parachute which he paid for by himself with a little help from his grandfather.
Omri comes every weekend to Eilat to jump, and gets his rides with other skydivers from the north. "And what do you do in the evening, go to parties in Eilat?". Efrat and Omri shake their heads: "After a day of jumping we don't have the strength to move", says Eftat.
At the dropzone there are also air conditioned bunk houses, and at the end of the day, the guys continue diving. Straight to bed...
THE EQUIPMENT
The parachute is made of a Teflon fabric and silicone. The fabric is strong, light and can handle large mass. Every skydiver has also a helmet, altimeter, audible altimeter that beeps and tells you when it's time to open. If for some reason, the main parachute didn't open, there is a "babysitter", which is a black box that automatically opens the reserve parachute. And of course there are the jump suits. Despite of their beauty, they are not necessary, and you can jump in the nude. And some do. A few tourist skydivers chose to celebrate the new millennium with nude skydiving, and pictures of that funny jump decorate the club's walls.
"Every skydiver has a nickname", says Ritter. Omri, who is today the youngest skydiver in Israel got the nickname FLY BABY. Omri likes his nickname very much: "Here the age doesn't matter. We are all skydivers and we are all friends. They treat me like an adult, and only sometimes they call me kid".
When the "kid" grows up, he wants to be a skydiving instructor. "He will be an instructor and he will come to instruct here", says Ritter with pride. "I want him to do it all. You are looking at the pride of the club!".
This article appeared in a local Israeli newspaper and was translated from Hebrew to English by Omri. Omri hangs out in the Dropzone.com Forums.

Thanks Omri!

~ sangiro

By admin, in News, June 10, 2001

Man Parachutes From Eiffel Tower

By admin, in News, June 25, 2001

Chuck Parsons - A Life Lived in Flight

PEPPERELL -- Shortly after Ann Parsons saw her husband hit the ground while practicing a new skydiving move, she saw him do exactly what they learn in training: roll. "I thought, 'Oh my goodness, he's going to be sore tomorrow,' " she said.
But Charles G. "Chuck" Parsons, a 41-year-old Groton resident and noted nuclear physicist, would never regain consciousness.

'A LEADER': Skydiving was just one of Charles Parsons' passions. A noted nuclear physicist, he invented many scientific devices, several of them patented.

PHOTO COURTESY CHAD GRONBACH After remaining in the intensive care unit at University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester for three days, his family decided to take him off life support Tuesday evening and donate his organs.
Witnesses to the Saturday accident said Parsons, an experienced sky diver, miscalculated the depth of an advanced move called a "hook turn," which involves spinning around 180 degrees at a low altitude and steering downward to catch speed.
"It was horrible," said Dennis Ducharme, a 30-year sky diving veteran who witnessed the accident from the ground at Pepperell Skydiving Center. "It was just plain horrible."
Ducharme said Parsons should have attempted the move at a higher altitude. Parsons was also experimenting with a new, faster type of parachute. Weather did not appear to be a factor, according to police reports.
A wake will likely be held Saturday at the Badger Funeral Home in Groton, and Parsons will later be buried in his hometown of Canton, Ohio.
Parsons, who moved to his Ames Road home in Groton four years ago, had owned his own company, Catenary Scientific, for the last eight years. He had invented many devices, several of which were patented.
"He was the most brilliant person I knew," said his wife, who is the head librarian at the Lawrence Library in Pepperell. "This will be a big loss to the physics community."
He formerly worked at Bedford-based Niton Corp., where he developed improved technology for measuring lead in lead-based paint. Ann Parsons said her husband was working on several other projects that would have benefited the field, as well as the community at large.
Parsons held bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees -- all in the field of physics. Her earned his doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
But there was more to Parsons than sky diving and physics -- he loved just about everything, his wife said.
"He was passionately into to every facet of science and the environment," she said. "He could crawl under the car with you and repair brakes, and in the next minute talk physics with world-renowned scientists. He was a very special person."
His friends agree.
"He was a leader," said Chad Gronbach, a close friend and sky-diver. "He had a very large heart. He was someone who always went out of his way for someone else."
Gronbach, Parsons and three others formed a sky-diving team called Burning Daylight -- a team that Parsons put together two years ago, members said.
The team hasn't decided yet if it will remain intact. At the time of the accident, members were training for the U.S. National Skydiving Competition this fall -- the largest of several sky-diving competitions that take place throughout the year.
Parsons started sky diving about 20 years ago, but gave it up when he began school and his career. When he and his wife moved to Groton, she treated him to a tandem jump at the nearby Pepperell Skydiving Center for his birthday.
After that, she said, he was hooked.
Even though the sport eventually took his life, Ann Parsons said she's glad her husband did what he loved. Participating in the sport improved his life both physically -- he lost 60 pounds in the last year -- as well as emotionally, she said.
"He sky-dived the way he lived his life -- passionately," she said.
When Parsons took the sport up again in 1998, he earned his Accelerated Free Fall license, which is needed to jump alone. In all, Parsons had about 920 jumps under his belt.
The sky-diving community is very tight-knit, and news of the accident spread across the nation via e-mail almost immediately after the accident.
Those involved in the sport say it is generally not dangerous, despite its seemingly risky nature.
Paula Philbrook, vice president of the Pepperell Skydiving Center, said there are about 15,000 jumps a year at the center. Minor injuries such as twisted ankles are not uncommon, she said, but serious injuries are rare.
The center, located at Pepperell Airport on Nashua Road, has been open for more than 30 years.
According to the United States Parachute Association, there were 3.4 million jumps made in 1999 and only 27 fatalities. The percentage of death in other sports, such as scuba diving, skiing and flying, is much greater, according to statistics.
There are strict rules and safety regulations that each sky diver must complete before jumping, said Philbrook, who also knew Parsons well. Those who receive a license must complete a seven-jump training and safety course.
Friends said Parsons was a very safe sky diver, and always took precautions.
"He was very safety-conscious for himself and the people around him," Gronbach said.
"He was always full of smiles, a very happy man."

By admin, in News, July 14, 2001

Beatles fall from the sky?

By admin, in News, July 2, 2001

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