Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld made his first skydive in 1980 when he was a freshman at Ohio State University. He instantly fell in love with the sport, which he believes to be the closest mankind has come to experiencing true human flight. He worked his way through college as a licensed skydiving instructor, jumpmaster, parachute rigger and pilot, graduating in 1984 with a major in Aviation and a minor in Theatre.

A National skydiving competitor since 1983, Dan’s extraordinary talent for bringing out the best in others has made him one of the most influential people in the history of skydiving and one of the most sought-after coaches in the world. Dan also coached both UK Women’s World Champion 4-way Teams Airkix and Storm. As a competitor, he co-founded Arizona Airspeed in 1994 and holds the record for attending most US National Skydiving Championships. This year was 38 and has seen him earn the titles of National and World Champion in 4 and 8-way and National Champion in 10-way, 16-way and 20-way.

In 2011 Dan published the memoir: Above All Else: A World Champion Skydiver’s Story of Survival and What It Taught Him About Fear, Adversity, and Success which is available on Amazon. In 2014 Dan was inducted into the Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fame.

Dan is currently General Manager at Perris Valley Skydiving, one of the largest skydiving centers in the world. Dan still manages to do around 400 jumps per year to add to the 30,000+ in his logbook.

Melanie Curtis is a life coach, speaker, author, podcast host and professional skydiver. As a leader and influencer in both skydiving and personal development, Melanie has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Thrive Global, on CBS Sunday Morning, Masters of Scale, and wrote a monthly column for Blue Skies Magazine for over a decade. She has written 3 books, her most recent, How to Fly: Life Lessons from a Professional Skydiver, the anthology of all her columns, launched on Audible in 2021.

Melanie has over 11,000 jumps, has been skydiving 26 years and was the first-ever recipient of the Parachute Industry Association Mentorship Award. Melanie is the Executive Director of the Women’s Skydiving Network nonprofit and co-founded Highlight, an all-female demo team whose mission is to inspire women and girls to live bold brave lives of their own design, elevate gender equality and motivate social impact.

Allan Hewitt

Allan is a TV & Film Skydiving Coordinator, instructor and rigging examiner, with British, Dutch and American qualifications.

He has been designing, manufacturing and testing parachute equipment for sport parachuting, military parachuting and the TV and Film industry since 1991. As a member of The Red Devils Parachute Display Team, Alan went on to become a British National champion in CF sequential.

Allan’s long list of film credits includes the Mission Impossible franchise, in Mission Impossible Fallout he got to jump with Tom Cruise from 25,000ft out the back of a C17. Other films include The Kingsman, Black Widow and several Bond films.

Ray Armstrong

Ray has been involved in Air Sports and Skydiving since he was 13 when he started Parascending, becoming a Parascending Instructor when he was 14. After completing 700 flights including piloting 300+ tandem flights, Ray then did his first parachute jump on his 16th birthday on 11th September 1982. Ray then joined the British Army at 16, qualifying as a Parachute Regiment Soldier in 1983.

In 1985 Ray joined The Red Devils Freefall Team specialising in Canopy Formation and Rigging. Ray has completed over 6000 skydives including Low-Level Military Static Line, HALO, BASE, AFF Instruction, Tandem Instruction, Wing Suiting, Canopy Formation, Water Jumps, Night Jumps, Stunts and Displays. Jumping from Fixed Wing Aircraft, Jets, Biplanes, Helicopters both small and large, Balloons, and Cliffs.

Ray’s impressive film credits include the Mission Impossible franchise, Black Widow, Strike Back 8, Blindspot and James Bond Spectre.

Dr John Carter has been the British Skydiving Medical Adviser since 1989.  He started jumping in 1973 and has held conventional, tandem and AFF instructor as well as parachute pilot examiner ratings.  He has the Certificate of Aviation Medicine, has intentionally experienced supervised hypoxia in ground-based facilities and has jumped at a range of altitudes both with and without supplemental oxygen.

After stepping down after 9 years as Chair of the Association, Martin asked to start a working group to look into a new coaching structure and qualifications.

This became the Coaching Structure Working Group with the remit to improve the overall standard of our coaches, create a journey for our coaches, develop a qualification that would be recognised outside the sport by the wider sporting sector and to improve the skills of our members, as better skills = better skydives.

Jimmy McCarthy is the founder and head coach of JST Coaching. He loves sharing his passion for bodyflight through coaching, finding the best way to communicate with students and getting the most out of them both in the tunnel and in the sky.  Jimmy is a Freefly and Tracking coach, British Dynamic and freestyle indoor judge and International Bodyflight Association Level 4 Instructor

AWARDS/ ACHIEVEMENTS

• 4way Dynamic 2018 Gold, 2019 Silver
• 2way Dynamic 2018 Silver
• Current UK National Speed Champion
• 2019 Speed World Cup 5th place
• 2021 UK Freefly Nationals Silver

Joel Strickland is a writer, educator, and professional skydiver.            

Anyone who knows Martin understands he is very passionate about skydiving. Always doing his best to help make this sport safe and enjoyable for everyone mostly by making memories they’ll cherish for a long time. Working in skydiving full-time is a dream come true for him.

Chris started jumping in 2014 and since then it seems to have become a pretty large part of his life. Chris enjoys learning more about the sport, flying canopies, different disciplines in freefall (and the tunnel), different ways/methods of coaching & instructing and also some of the bits that go on behind the scenes and on the ground in making DZ’s operate and is really looking forward to seeing what the next few years bring.

Phillip Webley is a British Skydiving AFFI, TI, CSI and Flight-1 Instructor with over 4000 Skydives. A former member of the British Army Red Devils Parachute Display Team with over 20 years of military service. Phillip is also an active VFS and CP competitor, regularly coaches the next generation of FF, TR and CP skydivers and is a UK head-up record holder. 

Brian Cumming is a professional skydiver and tunnel coach since cutting away in 2015. He’s a co-host of Radio Skydive UK and with 100k+ downloads it is Europe’s #1 podcast. He’s an AFF instructor and runs events at DZs across the UK and Europe, such as the popular Rookie Rumble and his multi-plane BigWay Skills Camps. He competed at 4way FS for nine seasons and represented the UK at two World Cups. Since his first taste of FS bigway he’s been wondering why the UK National record set in 1999 has never been bettered and it’s that fire that still burns brightly today. He has a World Record in FS Bigway and also one in wingsuit bigway but at flight line still hears “I didn’t know you wingsuited” quite a lot. When asked why he organises so many events, despite skydivers being a nightmare, he replies “I don’t know, it’s like a scab, you know you shouldn’t but you just can’t stop picking it”.

Cath has been an FS coach for the last 5 years and coaching is her ultimate passion. She finds it so rewarding and loves passing her knowledge onto others. For the last two years, Cath has been teaching others to become FS coaches. Being passionate about raising the standards of coaching in our sport to create better skydivers coming through the system. When she is not coaching, Cath spends time Load organising, doing FS 4-way and 8-way and coaching in the wind tunnel.

Liam started jumping for fun in 2011 and has worked full-time in the sport since 2016 after achieving his instructor ratings. He has worked at skydiving centres all over the world as a camera flyer, TI, AFFI, and rigger and has always been incredibly safety-focused, which served him well during the plane crash! At the end of this season he moved back into the real world and now runs a social media management agency with his wife. He feels incredibly lucky to have survived a plane crash, and now wants to share his experience with other skydivers to help them be better prepared for emergency situations.

Eros is a British 4-way Skydiving Team who has represented GB at World Level.

2022 line up: Travis Wood, Roy Little, Helen Williams, Matt Cumming and Craig Hicks on camera.

Taf is a successful entrepreneur with several business interests and is DZO, TI, AFFI, FS coach and Tunnel coach

He has also been a member of several 4-way formation skydiving teams including: 

• Uniga – A, AA, AAA
• DWS – AAA
• Vision 99 – AAA
• 4mula – AAA
• Satori XL – AAA

Team 4mula won the AAA silver medal in 2015, 2016 & 2017 at the British National Championships in 4-way formation skydiving.  Taf also represented Team GB with Satori XL where the team placed 7th at the 2018 FAI World Parachute Championships in Queensland Australia. 

Through his experiences of addiction, Taf now offers help and guidance to others in the community who find themselves in similar situations.

David did his first jump in 1997 and as soon he was able to jump camera he made himself a camera helmet, since then camera work and the technology behind it have been a huge part of his skydiving life. From his initial camera fun jumps he started flying with 4 and 8-way teams which lead to doing camera work for tandems. After a few years of tandem camera, he decided to see if he could make a living from skydiving and set upon the path to being a full-time skydiver doing AFF, tandem, camera and rigging.