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Progress report on the AGM's hottest topic
The PASA Management Council is pleased to announce that the SSA will this year enjoy greater representation on the MC.
In line with our discussions at the AGM, many conversations have taken place between the SSA and ADZO. An agreement has been reached to have a 2nd, non-voting, seat available on the MC for the SSA this year, to test the efficacy of this arrangement.
SSA Vice Chair, Claire King, will fill this role for the year ahead.
As a result, we will not need to have a SGM at our Nationals coming up, but instead competitors and organiser can concentrate on the job at hand.The SSA and ADZO feel that this is the most effective solution for now. Any individual PASA members who feel otherwise are welcome to contact any of our Non-Executive Directors via neds@para.co.za. - PASA MC
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It's on. The South African Freefly league is live, and we have been given huge support from Parachute Systems and Odyssey to Flight. We are proud to say that the winner will get a custom Vortex2 container and our runner ups will be getting some custom freefly suits.
Two things you need to do to be in the running -
Tick the AE box on your PASA form! Sign up on the website - www.freefly-sa.co.za and start submitting your videos.
Remember Guys, the comp has been designed for all skill levels, even if you are not the competitive type, sign up and give it a bash!
To submit your videos, we have done it in a really simple way. Just use your own Youtube log in on our page and upload away. The video of the month will then get a special mention on our website. -R,Morgan
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From Rustenburg...
Rustenburg Skydiving Club proved once again that it is the ultimate club to Freefly at in South Africa. Over the weekend 9 & 10 April, the SSA Artistic Events Committee hosted its second skills camp of the year, drawing 18 free flyers to complete 20 loads over the two days. What's more, thanks to the awesome team at RSC, we got 12,500ft MINIMUM (although many loads went well above 13,000ft).
With teams training for Nationals, the extra altitude was much needed and appreciated. The weekend started off at 7:30am on Saturday, with 3 jumpers getting a briefing on their very first sit fly attempts.
With skydivers from Durban, Pretoria, Botswana, Johannesburg and Rustenburg attending, this was an incredibly well supported event that Braam Van Heerden and Julie Teague provided coaching for. Manifest made sure to stagger loads to ensure all students and teams were able to be debriefed, watch their videos and plan their next jump before kitting up again. Great weather played along and there were zero incidents to report. This followed closely on the heels of the skills camp hosted by Andre Du Preez and Marais Badenhorst at Robertson the weekend before......
...to Robertson
I am proud to say that freeflying is alive and well at Robertson. Since the last time Marais and I coached there the general skill level has gone up dramatically. We did 23 coaching jumps (15 for me and 8 for Marais) in absolutely perfect weather, and the people were passing Cat 2, 3 and C licence jumps with flying colours.
People that attended were: Hennie van Zyl, Brent Rumble, Graham Watkins, Alex Nightingale, Allan Skinner, George and Jess Schoonraad, Luke Godfrey and Cayne McMahon. It was an absolute pleasure to jump with all of you, with the dropzone staff making sure the loads run smoothly, as well as giving us enough time to brief and debrief while keeping us jumping all day long.
Upwards and onwards and next time we take it to the next level again. Well done!
J.Teague & A. Du Preez
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How do you get 12 skydivers to the drop zone by 7am?
Promise them tequila and money of course!
On the long weekend at the end of March, Pretoria Skydiving Club hosted a fun swoop meet, organised by the SSA CP Committee. This novel format pitted 6 teams against each other, with each team being randomly selected but consisting of one intermediate and one open swooper.
With a very pregnant Mrs Kemp running the judging side of things, and assisted by Amy Shaw and Renier Viljoen, action got underway early on Saturday morning. 2 Distance rounds were completed before winds picked up and the CP was put on hold until the end of the day.
The competition was tight from the start; with intermediates having the advantage of higher gates and a handicap, and seniors needing to enter at the 5ft gates. Early surprises put favourite-to-win Chris Teague and his team mate De Wet Davel close to the bottom of the table; but a massive swoop by him at the end of the day got them back into the top 3.
But it was consistency (and/or Formation Skydivers!) that won the day, with James Meyer and Matteo Pagano eventually closing out the competition. Luckily neither of them drink tequila and so the liquid prize was happily shared by all the competitors. They also kindly donated the monetary winnings back to PSC in support of the up coming Nationals - where CP is always a well supported but judging-intensive event. -J.Teague
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