BHawks

I went to Lodi for the second time yesterday, we did six jumps. I had a blast. There is a lot of crap talked about this place, probably from people that heard this from someone who heard it from someone.

I guess for the swoopers out there, this isn't the place, Bill only allows 90s, but I saw some pretty hi performance landings with jumpers doing sharp 90s in rapid succession.

Its a bit far, 2 1/2 hours, but if you make 5 or more jumps in a day there, you'll make the gas money with their cheap prices.

The Beech 99 is fast to 13 grand, everyone was super chill.

One thing that kind made me scratch my head was how they put a tandem out first, followed by the fun jumpers then the rest of the tandems. One jump they stuck all the fun jumpers in the back and put out 4 tandem groups before us. I don't like coming down on top of tandems, so we adjusted our skydive to track away a little higher and it worked out well.

I will definitely be visiting Lodi again in the future. One thing everyone agreed upon was keep Bill happy and you will enjoy your experience.

Pacific Skydiving Center is by far the best of the two Oahu DZs. However in my opinion there are few wrinkles that they need to iron out. For example; If you need any kind of re-currency training they tell you to come in early and you come in early, and you watch load after load go up ... wondering when you are going to get up. You go up and ask manifest and they get annoyed at you. Then, all of the tandems are done for the day they shut down, and you wasted your whole morning. What they need is some kind of appointment to reserve an instructor.

Another problem is the availability of rental rigs. If you are a fun jumper, better get there early if you are not bringing your own rig. I have again sat around for a rig to become available, then the tandems stop, and there is another wasted morning.

That is the bad, here is the good. The clouds opened up and the light shined down upon me. I just did my A -License re-currency dive a few days ago. They pulled a tandem instructor away from doing tandems (wow) and took a right w/o a cypress to the rigger to have him put in a cypress, manifested me, gave me my ground school and wow, I actually jumped! Twice that day!

The other day I was able to get in 4 jumps, with the rig no one wanted. I wasn't picky, it was a pink Falcon 265, ( I would rather have jumped my rig, but its reserve was out of date) But I had a rig and was able to skydive.

It is hit or miss with this place. I am glad I had a stroke luck with everything working my way this previous couple of visits, but if you go there, and it doesn't work your way, well you have been warned.

The scenery is fantastic, the King Air gets up you altitude fast, and most of the staff are awesome to talk to.

Oh yeah one more thing, they need to start making coffee available to their customers!

I am new to the sport, I have 4 jumps, this is the second time I have been to this drop zone, my first jump was here, the other two at locations in WA state. As for being new and being very eager to learn all I can. I was very frustrated when I asked my tandem master about skydiving questions such as progression, questions about gear, and control in freefall etc. I can understand that he does this every day and probably gets asked a lot of the same questions but, I am paying good money to jump here, and I would least expect my skydiving related questions to be answered. Other than that, the jump was amazing, I was the most comfortable in freefall I had ever been, the camera person did an excellent job, the dropzone staff were very helpful, I will persue my AFF training there, I give the facility an over all rating of 4.