John made his first parachute jump
in 1970 whilst serving in the Army,
40 years on he has now completed
over 10,000 skydives!
John made his first parachute jump
in 1970 whilst serving in the Army,
40 years on he has now completed
over 10,000 skydives!
This was a British Army Adventurous Training expedition organised by the Royal Engineers. John helped to train and jump with the sixteen A...
Ask any skydiving instructor about where you should learn to skydive and they’ll immediately start talking about weather conditions. Students learning to skydive may only jump in winds less than 15mph and it is illegal to jump through cloud. We do not get that many low wind/blue sky days in UK. It therefore makes sense to chase the weather and head South for your AFF course
Continuous exposure to freefall, in-air instruction, and 3 or 4 jumps a day is much more beneficial than a few weekends here and there interspersed by bad weather which can often happen in UK.
John: Going abroad you’re almost guaranteed the weather. If you try in the UK you could end up doing your AFF course over a number of weeks, if you learn abroad it will be a matter of days. Its proven that if you’re continually doing something, muscle memory takes over and you learn faster.
I have run a Drop Zone in the UK and it is really tough to see enthusiastic students, who have paid their money and completed the training, sitting weekend after weekend, waiting for the weather to clear.
Abroad you can easily complete the course in a long weekend, it is the concentrated “time in the air” that counts, not one jump per weekend if you are lucky in UK.
With that in mind John takes most of his students to a Drop Zone in Spain (the most Southern in Europe) that has good weather, great facilities, fast turbine aircraft, great nightlife and professional staff.
I first had the pleasure of working with John when i organised a military AFF expedition to Lake Elsinore, California in March for 10 soldiers from 16 Air Assault Brigade. I was put in contact with John through a colleague in the Army when he found out that I was looking for instructors for the expedition....
