These past two months have seen some better weather and so more successfully completed jumping days. This has coincided with a resurgent Accelerated Free Fall Programme with 83 AFF & AFFC jumps being completed during September & October and 4 AFF Students completing their AFF L8 Skydives.
Indeed, during the latter half of October, we jumped 4 out of every 5 scheduled opening days!
September saw the completion of the Re-scheduled Great Northern Speed 10 Event with Cark again producing the Winning Team “Not Buying it” of Alister Bould, Deborah Bould, David Hunter, Tracey Miffen, Ian Wake, Lisa Crewe, Neil Rigby, Karen Pickering, Peter Spedding & Peter Donald with David Houghton of Peterlee their Cameraflyer.
The end of September also saw the end of an era with the sale and departure of our Cessna 182Q G-PLEE. ‘EE” was flown away by new owner Alex Thomson of Airgasmo and whilst we have more than enough lift capacity in our Cessna Grand Caravan Supervan 900 N208UP it was sad to see the departure of EE. Alex plans to keep EE in the parachuting role and in time fit an uprated engine with increased horsepower – we wish both him and EE well.
Given the advent of the new Academic Year our Affiliated University Clubs have now returned to jump with us again and with that we have seen at least one Solo Static Line Course being run every week. Great to see returning University Club Jumpers too, with Angus Tudsberry of Newcastle University Parachute Club completing his First Free Fall. Congratulations are also due to Tony Ebdon who also completed his First Free Fall during October.
All in all, it has been a great 2 months with the DZ seeing our 2,000th Student Parachutist trained this far in 2019 and the period ending with a great Halloween Party organised by Jared & Karen Morris. As we enter our last operating month of the Year we look forward to our Annual Christmas Function and Presentation of Annual Awards.
Ian Rosenvinge
Achievements: 1ST FREE FALL Tony Ebdon, Angus Tudsberry, AFF L8 David Tweddell, James Addison, Laurence Westall, Barry Remy FS1 Mark Robson A Licence Eoin Dennehy C LICENCE Mark Robson, Sam Bainbridge, David Picton JUMP NUMBERS 100 Alice Mitchell 200 Mark Robson, Sam Bainbridge, David Picton 500 Mary Sunter, David Houghton
Find out more about Peterlee: https://skydiveacademy.org.uk/
Photo: Ian Rosenvinge with G-Plee
