skydiving

Group photo outside the wind tunnel - Click to enlarge Feeling better after the midnights tunnel session, still having problems with some of the techniques but my instructor Aljaž says there are visible improvements. I hope so as I sometimes feel like a sack of potatoes in a tornado when I’m in the tunnel. Today marks the end of the tunnel sessions for most of us as our group will be moving out of the hotel and heading up to Deland, FL.

Wind tunnel 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 few years. Most of us, who are doing RW work in the tunnel don’t have much time to do anything else.

This is the hotel we stayed in No real time to do anything else here as most of the time is spent either briefing for the tunnel, debriefing for the tunnel or actually IN the tunnel. I have hardly any time to eat - in fact I have only eaten once - yesterday’s breakfast - and that is it.

Wind tunnel The wind tunnel training started a day before I expected so I had to get up at about 6am. I did 5x2 minutes in the morning, then another 5x2 minutes in the afternoon and I have just completed another 2x2 minutes session. I have now finished debriefing and it is ten minutes to one in the morning! By my home watch it is just before 6am! Don’t even think that flying in a wind tunnel is easy and not exhausting.

Here I am, in lovely Hickstead, somewhere between Crawley (Gatwick airport) and Brighton in the local Travelodge. Took me about four and a half hours to get here from Haverfordwest and I can sincerely say, I am nackered. The drive was very smooth although I knew I was going to be hitting the London’s circular road (the M25) at rush hour. My satnav took me from the M4 via a shortcut to the M3 and then on the M25.

As usual some of the media outlets are taking a completely wrong ignorant spin on this genuine and sad tragedy. Slovenia lost a great pilot Viktor Bečan (a.k.a. “Som”). My sincere condolences go to his family. My hopes for a quick recovery go to the surviving co-pilot Savo Medved Photo on left featuring the “Som” made by Lubi in Novo mesto (Prečna) in June 2007. Slovenia lost a legend among skydiving planes the “Fata” - Antonov 2 from the Paranoia Skydiving school (part of the ŠOLT organization) that fulfilled the dreams of many skydivers in becoming the vessel for them to do their first skydive jumps.

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 the chap on the left in a green t-shirt. In the middle is one of our lovely fellow skydivers and on the right is the legend of Slovene skydiving who runs, in my opinion, the best skydiving school in Slovenia - Aleš Debeljak a.

Last weekend I did what I wanted to do for a long while - to actually skydive in the UK. I’ve been putting it off for a long time, lately mostly due to the weather we have been having. Last weekend the weather was OK, no flu lingering in the background and no lameness in any of the legs :-) The Skydive London dropzone is situated about 3 hours drive away from Haverfordwest , adjacent to the town of Swindon .

After a one year sebaticle I finally got the chance to do some skydiving again. The best thing about it, besides, of course, skydiving, was that I could do it at my old home drop zone Prečna in Novo mesto in the southern part of Slovenia. The other good part was that I could jump from the old Antonov 2 (the one we use bares the nickname “Fata”. I did my first student jumps from it two years ago.

Bodyflight Bedford in 2007 It was a great day probably more suitable for outdoor skydiving than indoor skydiving. I set of from home early Saturday morning and arrived at Bedford five and a half hours later after stupidly ignoring my satnav and adding another hour to my already long journey. The Bodyflight facility is situated in a generally abandoned ex-military complex outside of Bedford near the A6. I heard it was used to do tests for the Concorde.