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David.Vidu

New Zealand skydiving school, It really worth it?

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Greetings to everyone.

New Zealand skydiving school, I'm sure that every one inside the sport already have heard about the Commercial Skydiving diploma, a 32 week course 200 skydives with Camera coaching, video edit, dropzone management, and more you can check for your self. What is my big question?
It really worth it, get a loan from the bank, pay 32 weeks of housing, more everything else. Do you really get a job in the end of the course? Or you take your money from the loan and invest in a 'private course'' you do it for yourself in a dropzone around the world with cheap slot's good weather and also cheap life. You do it in less of time and more focus.
Do a Diploma matter in the Skydive industry?
Is easy to get a job e US or around the globe for a camera flyer?


Waiting all your opinions.
Thank you

David

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Hello I recently did the January 09 Course and if your a coming from anywhere but NZ and Australia I highly recommend saving your money and not doing the course. Nothing personal against the staff there great people and pretty knowledgeable but If i could do it again I would just go spend 2 months in eloy arizona or skydive chicago and put down the money on fun jumps. You will probably become a better flyer this way anyhow and you will get more bang for the buck. The biggest problem with the course that I have is that the jumps are not structured. By this I mean they pretty much are all "fun jumps" with another student. You can do this at any dropzone in the world... Also the coaching is pretty much a joke. I think I got the most coaching and I had had to nag at the instructors to do coach jumps and walked out with about 6... about half of those actually got "Debriefed." However they did bring in Stephan Lipp who used to work at Eloy and he did 5 coach jumps with all of us. I learned more from him than anything at the school.

As far as your specific questions go. Methven is fairly cheap however it is a super small boring town and the locals dont like the skydivers very much. You get an opportunity to do a work placement program. So far most of the people I did my course are working at the drop zone as a packer and a few even as flying camera, However if your looking at doing your work placement in the U.S. good luck getting on camera with only 200 jumps. I don't care how good you are.. I would definitely find a better spot for weather. The weather is probably the biggest downside to the school. Less time and more focus is the way to go if your serious about getting a job. Probably more than half the time spent at the school was playing ping pong and waiting for the weather to clear. As far as i have experienced, in the U.S., the Diploma does not matter. In fact most people just laugh when you tell them what it is. From my experience if you have the jump numbers, your safe, and can hold your head still while biting on a switch, able to use basic PC skills or an editing bored, then its not to hard to find a job. Might have to be at a smaller drop zone at first...

Also, While I was there they had 2 instructors for about 30 total students there. I think 12 in my class and 18 in the other. You can already see the problem here. These instructors also have to do tandems as well. At the end of my course the Head Instructor Mark Horning left to run his own drop zone in the north island. At the end of my course the were integrating a new instructor to take over for mark Wade Challenor. I have not heard any recent updates if the course has changed with Wade in charge or if they have gotten any more instructors.

If you have any other questions feel free to PM me or ask on this forum.

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I realized after posting that I was pretty biased in sharing my option so here is a list of some of the positive things about the school.

They teach you how to pack tandems
They let you video tandems that dont have payed video after 150 jumps
They let you jump camera at 100 jumps
They brought in Stephan Lipp for some coaching
They have a beer night every thursday night
They have student gear, not enough for everybody so you will have to share. Not sure if they have gotten more
They help you find gear however most of the time Mark would say here is your equipment and people would buy it.
You have allot of fun.
The facilities are nice.
They just bought a Caravan

... if I think of anything else ill try to post it. I also want to mention that you dont walk away from the course holding any ratings... except your NZ B License, but no "professional rating" such as a coaching license. aff

Also I need to mention that I took the course with 90 jumps over a period of two years so I had some experience, not much, but some before I went where most people in the course were either starting AFF or had 10 or so jumps.

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Quote

Looks like beer night is the only USPA BSR followed, good job.



Everything done at the course meet the requirements of the NZPIA and done under the supervision and consent of the instructors. You also need to take into consideration that the students are more current than your average weekend warrior with 200 jumps strapping on a camera.

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It is also definitely a problem of New Zealand, I don't know any country that have 3 different parachute federation, and we can blame MZ govt here : You can basically create your own part149 federation if you want and put the safety standards as low as you want : and that is not cool at all!
So basically you need to make sure of the safety standards of every oragnisations/federations before applying their rating!!!
Good luck to find informations about ParaNZ...

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