nadi

A big DZ with a lot of facilities. The weather was good in March, though it is blowing hard sometimes. Can land everywhere in the desert if you miss the landing area and (usually) they come to pick you up...

Many loads per day, though there was a lot of military training when I was there, something which is bothering since usually they have there own loads and there are many canopies which needs to land.

People are usually friendly, specially the organizers. Coaching is very good there and one can do both freefly and belly jumping. It may be a bit hard to find a partner or a group if you come alone though, since there are many groups that do coaching and training but I did not have any problem with that. Manifest is usually ok. Packers are great.

There is an irritating problem in Eloy: if you come without a car, you are stuck and with no food or water, you have to pay an extremely expensive price for small water bottles in the machines and restaurant. Food is not particularly good, and there is no alternative to the restaurant. They even charge for internet access, and not cheap at all: 25$ (march 2007) a week! There are many DZ with free internett access, I dont see why AZ have to exploit the jumpers who pay anyway a lot of money for jumping and coaching and are stuck in the middle of the desert.

Dispite the small cons, this place is great if you want to jump a lot and escape from cold and bad weather. I did 100 jumps in 10 days without any problem. You can do easily twice as much with a packer and 2 rigs...

They have a lot of planes, but most of them were shutdown when I was there, the porter was broken and only 1 otter went up (occasionally 2 otters in the weekend). Not always enough people to jump during the week and many shutdowns. The people are extremely friendly, fun to jump with and to talk to. They have a lot of parties and very social.

The store is very good and reliable, I bought a new canopy there and the guy sent it to me home fast.

As for September 2006, The ranch had relatively old facilities, with bad showers and toilets, not any place to stay besides camping and packing hall but I heard they built a new hanger and changed all this.

Has only one small C-182, making long waiting time. Using an international runway does not help the waiting time either... Not to mention that the weather is almost always bad. But, very nice sceneries when you finally jump and renting equipment cheaply if you do not have one making it nice place to jump if you absolute must.

I would recommend this dropzone with all my heart. I took my A license there, and the instructors (all of them) were very precise and careful. DZ put a lot of effort in students and security. They have many several planes, and a caravan in the summer, making it easy to jump. The DZ is private though. Having said that, they prefer tandems and you are often pushed in que, specially in weekends.
Overall - good place to jump, and excellent place to learn to skydive, specially from educational perspective and security.