We finally had our first event of the academic year back in late November, and what a success it was! We had over 70 people travel to Hibaldstow from all ends of the country, including Plymouth and Cardiff, making it the biggest BCPA event since 2014!
Unfortunately, the weather did not agree with us and we were not able to jump, but our members stayed occupied with packing lessons and practice, a creeper competition and talks that our coaches and load organisers kindly put on for us.
These included a talk on how to plan a tracking jump by Paul Cooper, followed by an introduction to freestyle by Chris Mayhew and a discussion about canopy choices from Jack Bradford. We also had XDream and Symbiosis Suits providing gear advice and suit alterations throughout the day.
Congratulations to the winners of our Freshers competition – University of York – for bringing the most Freshers (skydiving students) to the event. They were awarded with logbooks kindly given to us as part of an event sponsorship agreed with XDream – thank you! Another congratulation goes to Four-gy, the winners of the creeper competition organised by Catherine Leather. They were awarded with logbooks kindly donated to us by Ali Woodhouse of Cypres and Alti-2 Europe – thank you! A warm thank you also goes out to all the coaches, load organisers and cameraflyers who made themselves available for us for the weekend: Jack Bradford, Cara Pritchard, Catherine Leather, Rich Cotton, Paul Cooper, Weed Stoodley, Chris Mayhew, Ali Woodhouse and Alex Potter. A massive thank you also to Skydive Hibaldstow who have let us host the event at their dropzone!
Now it’s time for our next event… BCPA Indoors! This is going to be held at Bodyflight Bedford tunnel on the weekend of February 22-23. Head over to our website to sign up. Last but not least, for those of you who attended Skydive the Expo, did you see our Chair and Vice Chair, Catherine Diffey and Amber Padfield, give a talk about “40 Years of the BCPA” If you missed it, cath up now:
Karolina Zatorska
Find out more about the BCPA: https://www.bcpa.org.uk/
