Martin McDowell's Blog

As mentioned in my I had my FAI paperwork done after completing the FS1 certificate.
To on the safe side and prevent from the mail to BPA with the paperwork to get misplaced (as it likes to get with the Royal Mail) or get severely delayed I decided to use the local DHL servicepoint in [...]

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Back here again, desperately trying to find an FS-1 coach to get my FS-1 license done.
Only did one jump today as I developed one very nasty headache and it seems this is one of the rare times I didn’t bring any painkillers along.
Oh, what fun
Beside that the Friday night jumps will commence soon, [...]

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After waiting for 11 months and practically giving up on the notion of jumping out of a plane for the foreseeable future. The given opportunity came last week, Friday off and a sunny forecast. Great weekend.
Managed 7 juat the Netheravon DZ. Now all I am left to do is to get my FS1 licence as [...]

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Ooops no more. I have received my container back this morning via FedEx. The tracking itself proves why it sometimes makes sense to switch your courier service. As I mentioned in my previous post here and here, I chose DHL to send my container to the U.S. It has a good network here in the [...]

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Thinking the next time I see my skydiving rig would be in a few weeks – all nice and repaired I forgot about it after leaving at the Swansea Staples store. It turns out it is not going to be that straightforward. At least not for the moment. As I sent it through a specialised [...]

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I have now managed to send off the container to the manufacturer Aerodyne in Florida. I have just driven back from Swansea where I send off the container through a DHL ServicePoint location in the Parc Tawe Staples shop. Great service, if you ask me, as you don’t have to pay a high price to [...]

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My recent visit to the motherland gave me the opportunity for yet another skydiving session, I joined my instructor and mentor Aleš Debeljak from the Paranoia skydiving school.
All went well and on the third jump of the second day just as I exited the Cessna 206 I apparently managed to hook my rig on the [...]

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Channel 4 has been showing adverts names »Difficult is worth doing« introducing skydivers jumping from an airplane and make formations in freefall and one canopy formation.
It columnated on May 29th 2008 when a live TV add was broadcast from the Spanish DZ Lillo at 20:10 local time (CET). After exiting the aircraft 16 jumpers made [...]

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I visited this very good DZ after the main group returned back to Ljubljana. It turned out to be a great idea, especially as the alternative was to go up north into Georgia, but that plan had to be scrapped due to severe weather warnings and big snowfalls in Georgia.
The photo on top showing Padalček [...]

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The day was very very cold, but with blue skies all day. I did 5 jumps, but was hoping to do 6, unfortunately the sunset load was cancelled – we wanted to do a big way
At the moment the first group has already departed for Orlando airport with the second group waiting to go [...]

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We woke up this morning into a very cold day. After witnessing the birth of the foal we decided to have a look at the DZ in case there was spomething going on. There was, despite the low temps, clouds and high winds. The clouds were very high, above 4.000 metres.
Some of the groups did [...]

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The morning had low clouds but we hoped that they would soon lift and that we would see blue skies again – unfortunately this took much longer than first predicted as we started jumping at about 1PM.
As it was a Sunday most of the skydivers wanted to make the most of the day and the [...]

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As we woke this morning we could only take a depressing glance out of the window and despair over the rubbish weather we had. It was bucketing down. We had to decide either to stay in the house, go on a (inside) sightseeing tour, or drive to a DZ that does not have bad [...]

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Še nekaj kitic v slovenskem jeziku, da ne bom samo te forenščine natepaval. S sabo sem privlekel zastavo, ki sem jo kupil že pred mojo selitvijo v Wales. Zdaj ponosno plapola na dropzonu v DeLandu. Vreme, kot ste verjetno razbrali, ni ravno veselo in skakanju primerno, že včeraj sem opravil le dva skoka, za danes [...]

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Now that I have got my reserve deployment out of the way I can get to some good and proper skydiving. Managed to get the record number of jumps for a day – 5 and I could have done at least one more but I had to arrange another rental car for our group.
The picture [...]

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This is getting to be really tough. Last nights session started at midnight and I somewhat remember going to bed at 2am. This morning there are another three sessions, the first one on which starts at 9am. I am well and truly sore all over and hadn’t had this much physical exercise in a good [...]

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The wind tunnel training started a day before I expected so I had to get up at about 6am. I did 5×2 minutes in the morning, then another 5×2 minutes in the afternoon and I have just completed another 2×2 minutes session. I have now finished debriefing and it is ten minutes to one in [...]

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I must sadly inform you that the Antonov-2 airplane (we lovingly called “Fata”) from which I learned how to skydive and did many jumps, the most recent ones in September 2007, crashed in the mountains near Trbovlje at about 1pm local time.
Photo taken by Daniel Zavratnik in Bovec in August
2007. Viktor Bečan a.k.a. “Som” is [...]

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As mentioned in a previous post, this is the DZ (dropzone) where we will do our skydiving in Florida in 2008. There are quite a few of us booked for the SkyDragons tunnelcamp and all will skydivers will also be doing jumps as well. Why on earth would you miss skydiving in Florida and the [...]

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And finally I got around to actually purchasing the airline tickets for my first ever skydiving trip abroad as well as my first transoceanic trip as well as my first trip to the US.
I will be going in mid-February and arriving at the beginning of March 2008. I will be flying with Virgin Atlantic from [...]

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