I am a student currently finishing a diploma at the school, and having been here for the last 5 months, can share with you my honest opinions and observations about the course. I started in January this year, the courses are set up to overlap so that the junior students can learn off the senior students before they leave, which is good. Currently at the school there are about 15 students, one asian, two australians, one from the U.S, and the rest are kiwis. As i had my A license when i started the course, I have done 145 jumps here and will do another 30 on my work placement. When my course started, things were a little disjointed and unorganized in respect to the structure of our learning. This has changed massively for the better, just in my short time here, due to a new person taking over the running of the school, who is an extremely experienced skydiver of over 20,000 jumps and holds world titles in relative work skydiving. I have no doubt that after I leave the school will keep improving under his leadership. The school is a great learning environment. Being around skydiving constantly for 6 months and jumping pretty much every sunny day, you really learn alot in a short space of time. Not just about how to fly in freefall, and how to be safe under canopy, but also we learn alot of things on bad weather days when we are stuck in the hangar, e.g. how to make closing loops, packing races to get quicker at packing sport rigs and tandem rigs, watching our landing videos to analyze landings so we can all improve our landings, gear checking tests (purposely gearing up the wrong way to see if people can find all the faults), learning about cameras and camera flying, etc. Having an allocated number of 1on1 coaching jumps on the course is really good for allowing you to work on things you want to improve in your technique. The best thing about the diploma is the people. The instructors are awesome and the students are awesome. The culture is really supportive, nobody's out to try and cut each other down, everyone just helps each other learn. Instructors dont yell at you for doing something wrong, they just use it as an opportunity for everybody to learn from, to make everybody here safer skydivers. You will make friends here that will go into the skydiving industry all over the world. The setting for the school is also wicked. set at the foothills of the southern alps.. jumping here is beautiful, especially when snow falls on the surrounding mountains. This week is my last week at the school and it is really sad to leave ! I can truly say ive had an awesome time, and while I am sad to leave the school, new adventures lie ahead in the opportunity of work placement.. and I definetly feel equipped and ready to tackle it with everything ive learnt about skydiving from the school. Anyways, feel that ive blabbed on long enough, but I hope that for anybody that is wondering what its like at the school .. I may have just answered some of your questions. One love
