Why learn to skydive in Portugal?
One of my favourite places to skydive is at skydive portugal, about an hour and a half in-land of Lisbon in a town called Evora. Its baking hot, rarely windy and never super busy so you can get on every load and make 10 jumps a day if you have the energy. It is worth mentioning that you will need appropriate insurance to cover your jumping out here as it is not affiliated with the BPA (British Parachute Association).
Before I talk about formation sky diving, here is my reason for this trip:
On this trip I came out to try my new wingsuit out for the first time after attending a wingsuit school in Florida, and to also chill with my mate Barry Maple for a week, who had students over from the UK learning to skydive and also students working towards their FS1 sky diving qualification.
Netheravon, my local dropzone in the UK were not happy with me jumping my wingsuit in the UK, even though I had my wingsuit qualification signed off (WS1 sticker) until I had got another 30 skydives, to total the '200 skydives in 18 months' rule.
I had just spent a week out in Florida flying a wingsuit, so I wanted to stay 'current', something in the sport of sky diving that means a lot. For example, you could have 1500 skydives over a 10 year period, but if you havent jumped in over a year, you are considered more of a danger than someone who has only 100 jumps, but has done 50 of them in the last month.
In my opinion this comes to play even more with wingsuiting, I made the decision to come out to Skydive Portugal so I could get the 30 skydives required, but use my wingsuit in those 30 skydives. That way I am remaining current, and when I get back to the UK I would have close to 50 wingsuit jumps, and I could show Netheravon that I have at least 30 jumps on the wingsuit I plan to use.
FS1 (Formation skydiving sticker)
This qualification teaches you how to fly relative to other people in freefall, for example moving up/down, forwards/backwards and taking grips etc. You remain on your belly, we call this 'flat' in sky diving.
Once you have this sticker you are allowed to jump with other skydivers and eventually in large groups we call big-ways.
Here is a 2-way jump:
Here's what a 2-way looks like from a skydivers perspective:
On this skydive I was making up the 3rd person for a 3-way, as part of a student's FS1 training:
Sweet jump, lets go again!
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