Hey everyone!
I’m not really sure how to start up a part 2, so I’ll simply continue where I left off.
On Day 3, the weather was looking great out and being that we didn’t get to jump at DeLand on our first or second days in Florida, we were DYING to get into the sky.
We were supposed to stop off at UPT for a tour of the place, but couldn’t hold back from going jumping.
We got to:
And immediately proceeded to the Manifest.
Being that it was a Tuesday and the weather’s been on and off, there weren’t many skydivers… But we were extremely lucky, there was a group of Military jumpers following a Flight-1 canopy course. And where there’s military jumpers…
There’s the SKYVAN!!!!!! We had a lot of fun jumping from the Skyvan that day. We were about 3 or 4 going to full altitude, the Military guys were all doing hop and pops, so we basically had the plane to ourselves up high leaving us a lot of space to run =).
After doing a few jumps, I did a quick tour of the place, it’s really quite a big DZ..
Fairly straight forward, this is the DZ restaurant/bar
Outdoor “Tiki” bar which is pretty much just an open area anyone can go behind to bar tend.
Flight-1 School building
Waiting area/loading area
Packing room/climbing wall
more of the same packing area (Very comfy carpet)
Team room/packing area #2
Team room – another angle.
Tandem room – Mad Dog is Tara’s father and currently works at UPT… He is an extremely bad ass individual!
Enormous creeper pad / waiting area.
My overall opinion about Skydive DeLand: The drop zone has some extremely talented skydivers, a really cool Manifest staff and some awesome planes. The coaches there really know their stuff and are always keeping their eyes open for opportunities to coach you and help out (and not always for a price). The drop zone has plenty of indoor packing area to go around, lots of room for people to just hang around and talk, plenty of benches and a great restaurant that actually has reasonably priced food and good portions.
And to boot: Jump tickets are 23$!!!!!!! They have bulk options as well (50 tickets +) which lower the price, but at 23$, Geneviève and I were extatic (Being that it’s 35-36$ back home).
Needless to say, DeLand is set up to be a busy drop zone and it’s been said that DeLand is the epicenter of the North American skydive universe. But According to Mark Klingelhoefer at UPT, it’s NOT because of Skydive DeLand.
Tune in later this week to find out why…
Blue Skies in the meantime!
Adam
