Bootielicious quickly settled into their stride with an enviable calm evident in their flying style and took an early lead. Flying close and cool, they delivered a bust-free round 1 and 2 but were dealt a heavy blow when round 3’s quick-and-still draw caught them out, causing them collect 5 separation busts. Their recovery was swift and focused, flashing like pros for the rest of the meet, and delivering completely clean rounds for the rest of the meet to convince us all that they really did deserve that gold medal.

With 3 teams from JSC and 2 from PSC, from a broad range of experience, training and goals, we hope to see bumper Intermediate and Open 4-way entries at Nationals 2019.

The highlights for me were:

1. The winning 4-way Novice team had no tunnel time.  Of course, tunnel is a very important tool for competitive skydiving these days.  But this team showed that there are many important tools and that tunnel is just one of them. A win-by-creeper-pad, a win-by-mental-training, a-win-by-commitment?  What this team proved is that there are many ways to skin a cat. Experience, airtime and tunnel are advantages, what you really need is just enough hunger!
2. Quality camerawork is finally being noticed and appreciated.  In every discipline, video is critical and the requirements are specific and vastly different. In FS, camera angle and distance are critical. Tandem camera perspective on an FS competition round is a bust-a-thon.   In the Artistic Events, camera interaction, dynamism and spontaneity are key.  A cameraman’s flying skills can make or break a team’s meet. Nationals 2018 showed this in the results, and many teams found new appreciation for their (or their opponents’) camera flyers. 
3. The organisers.  The RSC team was once again incredible.  Accommodating, good natured and tireless, they bent over backwards to meet even the most unreasonable requests.  I don’t think Danelle Field or Herman Grobler slept during Nationals and everyone appreciated the energy and effort from RSC’s leadership and team.  

Full results can be found on InTime Scoring.

Train hard. Get excited. The road to Nationals 2019 begins NOW.

Claire King, D863

We were blessed with great weather over the long weekend 27th April to 1st May.

With 5 competitors in Open of which 3 came from overseas for the meet, and 2 competitors in Intermediate we managed to finish the competiton on the Monday.

It was exciting to witness the tight competition amongst the competitors. A close race was taking place between Christopher Teague and Matteo Pagani which kept us all in suspense until the very last second at the closing ceremony. 

We would like to thank Stefan Willi, Tim Jones and DeWet Davel, for coming out all the way to South Africa to participate. 

The results for the SA CP Nationals 2018 can be found here.

With next year in mind, the SSA CP Committee is very excited to see CP grow in South Africa.

Keep your eyes open for MiniMeets and Coaching days.

SSA Formation Skydiving at Skydive Pretoria's Autumn Festival

On 27 & 28 April 2018, Skydive Pretoria played host to a very popular SSA sanctioned C and D licence day for formation skydivers. Participants on both the Saturday and Sunday enjoyed spectacular weather and learnt a lot whilst trying to fulfil their licence requirements.

On the Saturday the goal for C-licence candidates was to achieve a 5^th or higher dock on 5 jumps as well as an eighth dock on one of the jumps. To give candidates their best possible chance of achieving their dock they were paired with 4 experienced FS jumpers as a base for the anticipated 8way. Due to the popularity of this day we had two 8way groups, promptly named: The Other Knights (as opposed to the Golden Knights) and Fatti’s and Moni’s (because The Other Knights did the naming).

On both days candidates flew well and impressed both the coaches and themselves. Congratulations to all the candidates! Many thanks to the SSA and Skydive Pretoria for making the day possible, especially Yolandi van den Berge, Mohan Chudalayandy and Bailey Edmunds for all the organising.

Nico Hickley, D953

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From the 27^th of April to the 1^st of May 2018 Skydive Pretoria in collaboration with the SSA hosted a free fly skills camp at the Autumn Festival. 

For more information contact the Aerodyne Parachute Factory:

(031) 502 6435

aneesa@flyaerodyne.com

www.flyaerodyne.com

Simba will be back at Skydive Mossel Bay on the 2nd & 3rd June 2018 to organise some good quality 8-way.

If you are an FS sport jumper looking for licence requirements or just to join in some fun FS, this is for you.

Just pop us a WhatsApp on 082 824 8599 or email us to let us know that you are coming.

There will also be coaches on hand to assist you to make the grade.

All welcome.

PASA’s website will soon sport a new, fresh look with updates to allow it to cater for smaller screens.

We are calling on camera flyers who have good quality high res images taken at PASA drop zones, and are happy to share them with the world, to submit them for use on the website.

We need images of the various disciplines (formation skydiving, artistic events, canopy formation, accuracy landing, canopy piloting and wingsuiting) and the training methods (AFF, static line, tandem) as well as demonstration jumps.

Send images to admin@para.co.za