Parachutist magazine IMHO

[billvon 2,400]

>Skydiving, however, could do more to drive supporter interest within
>the sport itself (its own magazines), as a first step.

Actually, I agree that more could be done to emphasize competitions - but I don't think Parachutist is the place to do it. Parachutist is the official publication of USPA, and should represent the sort of skydiving all its members do, whether they are competitors, bigway jumpers, freeflyers, fun jumpers, swoopers, CRW sorts etc. While competitions are fun, they don't represent the sort of skydiving most skydivers do.

Perhaps a separate publication (either by USPA or not) could be dedicated exclusively to "professional" or semi-pro skydiving - full time teams, competitions, record attempts, high visibility demos etc. Basically concentrating on the best in the sport.

[skypuppy 1]

In large part, doesn't this describe 'Skydiving Magazine"?

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[4wayFly 0]

I agree, you might have a point.

[kschilk 0]

I always thought NASCAR, stood for Not A Sport, Carolina's Alternative to Racing.

"T'was ever thus."

[m1372302 0]

Quote

lol at the ppl saying that the uk mag is much better as we have a few ppl in the uk saying its shite...always the same stuff never enough so and so etc

To be honest the UK mag has only improved significantly in the last year. Up until then it was competition results and nothing much else. Most things were concentrated to the small percentage of people at the top of the skydiving world, but then again they were probably the only people who were submitting reports and photos to publish. There is almost half a dozen photos of outbreak freefly in every issue, but thats probably because they are in desperate need of quality photos and they are one of the few people submitting them on a regular basis so they keep using their material.

In the last year they have requested more articles for skills rather than events, 4 way, back flying, sit flying, wing suiting, 8 way. This has made it a lot more interesting to read from the perspective of up and coming jumpers or fun jumpers who are never going to compete in AAA class events or world championships. Which lets face it is 99.9% of skydivers. Personally before this happened i would flick through the magazine and put it down after seeing the same names again and again and how wonderful they had done in competion A or competition B. It's much more readable now.