peregrinerose

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Dropzone Reviews posted by peregrinerose


  1. My husband and I spent 2 days jumping at Start Skydiving over Labor day. When we first arrived, people were introducing themselves as soon as we walked up to manifest and inviting us to jump with them. The intro to the DZ was a little sketchy, we had to ask to be shown a picture of the main landing area (which isn't visible from the current main hangar), but they did make time to answer our questions.

    We both watched how instructors were interacting with students, and it was a very universally professional atmosphere for both AFF and tandem operations as far as we saw over the weekend.

    There was a helicopter pilot who gives lessons at the airport and is accessable, from what we could tell, pretty much full time for helicopter jumps. He was a delightful person and made the chopper jump we did that much more fun.

    Our second jump there was an 18 way to set a new DZ record.... these people had never met us, but still invited us on the load. They even flew in an otter from Xenia since there were so many people interested in an RW bigway that afternoon.

    The only drawback, as far as we saw was that the 'fun' jumpers there are very focused on 4 way and competition type mindset. Lots of complaining when 'fun' jumps didn't go 100% perfectly (even 12 points on a 4 way and a 5 pt 8 way wasn't good enough for them) there was a lot of complaining about it. That took a little of the fun out of it, though we did both learn a lot from the other jumpers... we are both more fond of no stress skydives.

    Greg, the master rigger, is one of the most interesting people and incredible riggers we know, so we can't say enough great things about him.

    We stayed in the camping area... there's plenty of room there. The showers were clean. There's only one porta john there which might be a problem on a really busy weekend, but wasn't an issue when we were there.

    Overall, we had a great time, learned a lot, enjoyed all the new people that we met, and will definitely be back!!!!!! I only wish it was closer to home than an 8 hour drive... :-)

  2. An early review here noted an attitude problem with upper management, but this is so far from what I've observed. This DZ is extremely newbie friendly, coaches teach patiently and never make students feel like morons. Other jumpers very friendly, layed back atmosphere. Although I live 5 minutes from another DZ, I prefer to make the 1.5 hour trip to Chambersburg.