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FFAdventures

USPA Puts Swoop Nationals on TV

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Live National TV at USPA Swoop Nationals and Boogie, Wildwood, NJ

The United States Parachute Association contracted JWalcher Communications to organize the PR at the Wildwood USPA Nationals of Canopy Piloting, and the media interest is HUGE.

Both “Good Morning America Weekend” and the “Weekend Today Show” will be doing live broadcasts from the beach during the competition. All local TV stations are sending crews, and even the radio stations are getting involved! Matt Cord, local DJ from WMMR will be jumping onto the beach for the official opening ceremonies on Friday, September 1.

This is the first time a USPA national competition has been held in public, rather than on a DZ, so the media interest is enormous. Promoting the sport to a larger general audience was the intention of the USPA when they chose Wildwood for the competition – and it seems to be working. By Saturday morning, skydiving could be the biggest thing on TV!

Fun jumpers are welcome to be part of the event and skydive onto the beach, too. Freefly and RW organizers are available all weekend. A “D” License and water gear are required. Jumps are $22, and registration is $25. Please email [email protected] for an invitation to the Beach Boogie!
Where the world comes to skydive!

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Haha! I finally found it! I've been looking for info on the Nationals. Is there anything posted under upcoming events with more info yet? I haven't been able to find anything within the first couple pages...
"...I'm going to feed your fingers to the wolverines..."

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There have been many attempts to get skydiving in front of the mainstream public over the years, all failed, we are still considered what ever the f#*@ they think we are, crazy, suicidal, et al. In the mid 90's it was Skyblazin'(on ESPN) with of all people Don Swayze as one of the hosts/commentators, the the X games that lasted for awhile but really did not bring people to the manifest counters in the promised numbers.
The only mass media event that had any affect on skydiving was the hideous movie Point Break, at the DZ I was jumping at we had a huge boost in first jump student numbers, Cutaway and Dropzone were touted as the sucessors to Point Break, the best part of those two turds was seeing if we could recognize our pals earning their extras pay in the background.
Then there was the smoke job of how if we had Nationals at one DZ two years in a row we would attract all kinds of media attention, nothing like showing up at 6am and sitting on our asses until 10 so we could finish 8way, definitley one of the better BS jobs I've seen.
The whole purpose of my rant is to try to show that no matter how we package our sport we will never sell it to the mainstream, Nascar takes amoebic mentallity to understand the premise, as do most stick and ball sports, nobody gets skydiving, except for the skydivers.
Don't get me wrong, I come across as extremely cynical, fueled by Redhook Blonde, I truly do hope the Wildwood event becomes a media rich venue that brings fame and sponsors to all but, there has been alot of smoke blown up alot of asses for the last 15+ years that I've been in this sport and it is hard for me to get excited when I read a story like the original post.


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Quote

We hope the peeps will understand "don't try this at home these are highly trained pro's".




And that's the mistake that is being made every time the USPA tries to market skydiving.

Skysurf: "Boy, I'd like to try that"

"well you can't till you have hundreds of jumps."

"Bummer, forget it."

Swooping: Ditto.

Why don't we try to invest the USPA's resourses in more demos, tandem exposure, etc.?
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You're not as good as you think you are. Seriously.

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Interesting point about accessibility to activities shown on TV, from newbies' point of view. Maybe more stuff about tandems and elementary skydiving would be helpful. Would it be a good idea for someone to be shown stuff that they can do after a few weeks rather than after a few years?

It's tough enough to convince people to jump, given the fear factor, time, and money. After I did my first tandem, I asked what percentage of people went on to do AFP (AFF at other DZs). The answer was about 2%.
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I don't drink during the day, so I don't know what it is about this airline. I keep falling out the door of the plane.

Harry, FB #4143

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