Well well, Fun or not fun:) I just had over a one hour conversation with skydiverbrian about this, I think it is harsh to judge if the DZ is fun or not fun when you don't really know what to expect from the dropzone, every dropzone is different. I happen to live at skydive deland over the last couple of years and I think it is great, there might be few things that i don't agree with how it is opertated, but who am I to judge, I don't know half of the reasons the management has for running the DZ this way. One ting I do know is that this dropzone is a team training dropzone and teams all over the world come and train there year after year and they love it, Skydive Deland has team training number 1 priority and that is what you can expect when you get there. If there is 1hour waiting for a ride and they don't pull out the skyvan, there is a reason for that, this last season They bought the Porter for many reasons, and one of them was for the teams that are going for Gap, so when ever they had teams training, they had to pull out the porter instead of the skyvan, why? because teams are the first priority. At skydive Deland we have load organizers, both for belly and freefly, usually the organizers for bellyflying are here wed and friday afternoons and all saturdays and sundays, freeflying there are organizers here, Im not sure when they are available, but as far as I know they are here when ever the dropzone is open and there are people to jump, The biggest chance is weekends like on most other dropzones. If it happends that someone askes to get on a bigway just like someone mentioned here earlyer (13 way) and gets the no for a answer, the reason is simple, when you manifest 13 people about 40min before takeoff, the rest of the plane is very likely full so there is no space for one more, But a can garantee that if the same person would have asked if he could join them for the next jump it would have been no problem at all, it's all about the timing. But on the other hand, here is alot more training then fun jumping, and few people are here full time trying to make a living on jumping, like the freefly coaches, and if they get a student to coach, they take the student up and noone is on the ground to organize for free, and I do think that there is a missing link somewhere, but I don't think it is someone one to blame, I think it is just the way the dropzone is set up and the priorities that keep that missing link. But in order to make one person happy, you might have to make someone else unhappy, thats just the way things go. I think this dropzone will continue to keep the teams in the air, even if someone else has to wait for 1 hour on the ground. If you want to go to dropzone where everyone are funjumping (No training) I think you should choose another dropzone. Skydive Deland is a great dropzone, it has great restaurant and great facilities for everyone who is here to learn as much as you want. The people here are very open for new people, and as far as I know I think most of us welcome every new person, some people are more into them selves, but lets look at the ones who are willing to share:) If you don't find what you are looking for here, there are other dropzones not so far away that might have what you are looking for, if so, then thats great. There are people all over the world who love this dropzone and keep coming back and we want to keep them happy too:) Thanks Ray for bringing this up and Im sure you could answer who you are in a more friendly way:)
