Happy New Year to everyone!

03/01/2006

It was nice to meet up with Arnold Collenteur, the European rep for Aerodyne. Freefall Addicts are a main dealer in Spain for Aerodyne. Arnold has been at Empuria Brava, Skydive Lillo and Skydive Spain this week and has brought along a vast array of demo equipment for customers to try.

Rack 'em and stack 'em, after back to back Dornier lifts to 16000ft!

Team Polaris are training at Skydive Spain this week. The team, current British Junior Champions, consists of Vicky Scargill (Hinton DZ), Maxine Tate (Hinton DZ / Skydive Lillo), Luci Boella (Skydive Lillo) and Mike Worthington (Freefall Addicts). Barry Maple (Freefall Addicts) has just joined the team as camera flyer.

Mike jumps the Vision 132 on the Aerodyne demo programme. Freefall Addicts now have a full range of demo canaopies available. Contact us for more information.

It was nice to see so many Brits around at Skydive Spain for the boogie. Congratulations to Vicky Scargill from Team Polaris who completed her 300th jump today! We celebrated in the bar with a few beers after jumping.

Most 4-way formation skydives are run through on the ground first. This is called a dirt dive. On our AFF courses we do this too. Here you can see Team Polaris dirt diving their first jump of the day.

Here you can see the 4-way team exit from the aircraft. The formation they are flying is called a Crank.

This is one of Skydive Spain's aircraft. It is a Dornier G92 and it is one of the fastest climbing aircrafts in Spain. Lifts are regularly taken to 15000ft. This makes for more student learning time and generally means students progress through our courses very quickly.

As you can see the weather is beautiful in sunny south Spain. Check out our weather page for an up to date forcast. Here in Seville you really can skydive all year round. The weather is really warm, even for January!

Play time, after another 4-way jump! The team has managed 8 jumps today, due to a smoothly run manifest and multiple aircraft (three) being available!

Early morning skydiving......... the team decide to take advantage of the first lift of the day and were greeted by cloudless skies and a view all the way to the coast!

Barry Maple one of Freefall Addict's instructors and camera flyer for team Polaris, uses his airtime for some canopy training. Barry is going to compete at World level this year. If you are interested in one of Barry's canopy courses why not visit our canopy course page for more information.

Team Polaris is made up of two members of staff from Freefall Addicts (Mike on tail slot and Barry on Camera). If you are interested in a BPA FS1 course with us then have a look at our FS page or contact us for more information.

At the end of training we settled down for a beer in the DZ bar! We will be down in Seville on a semi permanent basis this winter so if you want to learn to skydive at a place with the best winter weather in Europe, that is cheap to get to via budget airlines and has the fastest aircraft going to the highest altitudes, then drop us a line to find out more!

After a few beers in the bar we headed to the medieval restaurant for a steak dinner.

Today was a free day for us - team training has finished and our next student does not arrive until tomorrow. We started the day with breakfast in the garden at one of the houses we have available to stay at in Seville.

As the temperatures hit a nice 22 degrees, we decided to head to the beach to take advantage of the winter sun in the south of Spain. The dropzone is situated within a 30 minute drive from the coast. Have a look at the pictures below from our day out:

This is the nearest beach to the dropzone. It is well over 3 miles in length and has fantastic facilities for relaxation. There are surf schools and sailing schools based on the ocean front and there are numerous bars and restaurants.

One of the beach front restaurants where you can sit and have an ice cold beer.....and watch the world go by!

After the beach we dropped into one of the local golf courses to have a go on the driving range. There are many different activities to do around the dropzone from watersports to horse riding to quad biking.

Welcome to Rui, who is here to learn to skydive. Rui is a Graphic Designer from near Lisbon in Portugal.

Here is Rui learning the dive flow for his first AFF level.

The drills we teach your are designed to make you confident and self sufficient. Here Rui works on some canopy deployment exercises.

Rui makes his final preparations for AFF Level 1. Rui informed us last night that another of his hobbies is fire walking! Apparently the world record for a fire walk is 220 feet!

Rui gets the thumbs up from Mike on his level 1. Perfect body position!

Rui on his AFF Level 2. He did so well we were able to release at 8000ft on the left side.

Rui brings his canopy to a soft landing. In the background you can see a few fluffy clouds in the otherwise bright blue skies above sunny Seville. This region of Spain boasts by far the best winter skydiving weather in Europe!

Rui masters freefall turns on his AFF Level 4

Rui gets in the last lift of the day. In the background you can see a beautiful Seville sunset! This is AFF Level 5 and Rui managed several 360 degree turns!

Sunrise at the dropzone! Due to its perfect location, Skydive Spain offers early starts and late finishes to jumping. This means you can get through your course very quickly and spend the rest of your stay finishing your consolidation jumps or soaking up the Spanish winter sun!

Rui on his AFF level 6. He is just about to start a 360 degree turn.

Rui deploys his main canopy. Here you can see the parachute back lifting away from its container. Congratulations to Rui! He will return to complete one of our advanced courses in a months time.

In contrast to the rush of freefall, flying your canopy is very relaxing. On a clear day in Seville you can see the ocean and right across the city. Below you can see the main and student landing areas. Being at sea level and based in a large open space, Skydive Spain offers unrivalled levels of student safety.

Some of the Freefall Addicts staff are in Florida this week. We are here to run courses at Skydive DeLand. If you are interested in learning to Skydive in Florida, keep looking at our news section for the rest of the week's news....... For information, Virgin Atlantic are currently offering great prices on return flights from Florida. This time we managed to get our tickets for 305 pounds inclusive!

Welcome to Matt Pichel, who is in Florida on our BPA FS1 Course.

Skydive DeLand offers one of the best Skydiving holiday environments in the world. Here you can see a view of the primary landing area and outside patio. The sun is shining and the Twin Otter is on the 8th load of the day (and it's not even noon yet!)

Here is Matt getting ready for our first jump of the day. He is wearing his new rig, purchased through the Freefall Addicts gear store.

Matt exits the Twin Otter. Above him beautiful blue skies!

Matt is moving in to dock. This is one of the many skills you learn on our FS1 course.

Deland at 10000ft! Matt is now working on his 90 degree turns in place. We were jumping from 14000ft, so we had plenty of time to get in everything we planned to do.

We were having some fun jumping the SkyVan over the last few days. This is an aircraft with a rear tailgate exit. Run from the back and jump out!!

Matt works on his freestyle exits. I think this one is called the superman?!

Matt sporting his brand new parachute system gets to grips with another FS drill.

Matt comes in to land his parachute, just next to him you can see the accuracy cross, nice job! Matt is working towards his A licence at the moment.