The PD Blog

AXIS goes to M.O.A.B.

Brianne Thompson and Niklas Daniel of AXIS Flight School arrived with the Skydive Arizona otter in MOAB to help organize during the 8th annual Mother Of All Boogies. Over the course of four days, jumpers from all over flocked to the beautiful dropzone to enjoy the great scenery, friendly people, and make some awesome jumps. We had an awesome time jumping and organizing at this boogie and would like to thank everyone who attended!

 

 

In addition, AXIS was able to take part in some of the off-site jumps, such as MOAB Airpark and  Castle Valley in order to take pictures. Please visit Nik's Blog to view more images.

And for all you freeflyers out there, here is some GoPro footage from an interesting jump we did with some tunnel instructors from SVCO (Skyventure Colorado).

 

AXIS would like to thank Skydive Moab for hosting this great event, and is looking forward to attening next year!

CarolinaFest 2011

During the first weekend of June in Chester, SC, Skydive Carolina held their annual CarolinaFest Boogie.  Over the past several years it's been building as one of the best boogies on the East Coast.  This year did not disappoint.  With more organizers than ever, Team's Turbo XP, Scarecrow and individual organizers, Amy Chmelecki, Melanie Curtis, Melissa Nelson, Pepe Rodrigues, Ryan Risberg, Simon Bones and Joe Freeman, everyone always had someone to jump with and a fun jump at that!  I had my work cut out for me to try and cover all of the event.

During my jumps there, I was asked by Greg at UPT to come up and film an intentional cutaway on a SkyHook equiped Vector!  I had never seen one up close and personal before.  It was amazing how quick that beautiful PD Reserve inflated to full flight!  If you haven't seen one or tried it yet, I highly advise giving it a shot the next time you're at a boogie and UPT is there.  I was also lucky enough to witness an actual cutaway and see the beautiful Optimum Reserve show it's true colors!

Overall the Boogie was a blast!  If you'd like to see the Entire Gallery of my work from the event please click the link.  Looking forward to next year and more PD Reserves and Optimums in action doing what they were designed to do!

-Brian Buckland

Tracking anyone?

Photographer Niklas Daniel captured this shot of Brianne Thompson of AXIS Flight School

diving out of an otter over Skydive Arizona. 

PDFT Training Camp

Its 6am here at Skydive City and the PD Factory Team is getting ready to start their 5th day of a 6 day training camp.  The PDFT devotes training time to a number of things, including team flying, demo practice, enhancing their coaching techniques and many more.  But this week is all about one thing, Competition training.  Each day begins with morning stretches as the sun rises, and the team promptly heads into jumping after that.  Finishing up jumping in the early afternoon, the team continues each training day with a rigorous PT session led by Jessica.  Yesterday they finished up their second day of training the speed event and today they move into training Zone Accuracy on these last two days of the camp.  The conditions all week have been ideal for the team to hone their skills and they look stronger than ever.  

 
 Photo's by Tony Hathaway

New Skydiving Blogs!

A couple of new blogs have appeared on the pages of the internet lately! 
We here at the PD Blog are happy to see that this method of disseminating news and information is becoming more common within the skydiving community and we look forward to watching these blogs grow.

Without further ado, lets get on to the blogs!

Team Voluntas - the new Danish National 4-way team blogs about team stuff, training, tunnel, competition and anything else they might think of, mostly 4-way related.
FS enthusiasts - this is something for you (oh and don't worry, the blog is in English).
They have also set up a Facebook group for those that want to be a part of following them on their journey to the next world meet.

Phoenix Fly wingsuiters Macca McDonald and Jarno Cordia recently launched the World Wide Wingsuit Blog, which focuses on wingsuits and everything related to the birdmen of the sky.  Macca is a brilliant writer and Jarno puts together the most amazing videos, so you know this blog will be good (even if you aren't into wingsuits on a personal level).
They have a few people contributing to the blog so that one should be frequently updated.

For the US skydivers out there (or those holding licenses or ratings issued by the United States Parachute Association) - check out the USPA Blog.  They update that on a regular basis with news pertaining to the association, lastely much awaited board election results.

Enjoy - and by all means do let us know if you know of any other good skydiving blogs!