Yes! The rumour is true.

SASL – the South African Skydiving League - is returning to the South African skies. Season VI will launch in October and all that is left is to get you registered and jumping.

If you are wondering what all the fuss is about, this is a great place to start. ESPECIALLY if you are a lower experience jumper!

The details are on our rules page, but the gist of SASL is a country-wide FS competition, with an individual (not team) winner that equalises jumpers across all experience levels using a weighting system.

Entry is free, you can do the jumps at any PASA DZ, at any time, as many times as you wish, and submit your best efforts online by the end of each month.

It’s all about strategy:

• Your score gets weighted up according to the combined  experience level of you and your team mates, so its in your interests to balance a highly experienced jumper’s skills with the heavy weighting advantage of a low experience jumper. You need each other.
• More jumps = better chances. Repeat the 3 rounds through the month and submit your best of each.
• No team? No problem. Grab who you can find each month. You carry over your personal points independently of your team, so you can change team mates each month with no disadvantage.
• Earn points for placing on the leader board, so a veritable thumping in scores in one month doesn’t carry any more advantage than the difference in positions. The fight stays tight.
• Even if you don’t do all three jumps in a month, everyone gets a point just for submitting so it still counts towards your final total.

The only difference from your normal weekend plans is that we’ve already helped you plan your jumps.

The league culminates at Nationals, which forms the final entry, earns you double points and finishes up the season with the final prize giving.

Prizes this season are again spectacular, with the mighty Aerodyne, Cypres, PASA SSA FS Committee and Cookie behind our prizes, and more still coming in.  All this for the individual winner and a single second place. That’s a lot of loot. 

Month 1 is October and the draw will be announced on Facebook before the weekend!

So, time to get started by registering on the SASL website, figure out the rules and manifest (Be wise. Strategise), follow us on Facebook for draws and updates, and prepare to light the fire in your booties!

Questions? Give us a shout.

Game ON.

The SAP SSA committee, in cooperation with Skydive Parys, ran an accuracy coaching clinic on 28-29 Sept 2019. Fantastic learnings were had and a new respect for the technicalities of the discipline were instilled. 

The camp was a great success and we will be hosting another in the not too distant future so watch the media channels and sign up!

I was a recent participant on the Classic Accuracy clinic hosted by Skydive Parys with the SAPcomm.  It was a weekend that saw many firsts, lots of fun and, surprisingly, just as much excitement.

Six aspirant (possibly nervous) jumpers with varying skydiving backgrounds and experience pitched up bright and early at Skydive Parys for the over-subscribed event. I was fortunate to be part of this motley crew; but luckily arrived late enough so as not to be among the half of the class that landed off-DZ on an FS fun jump first thing that Saturday morning.
Our coach clearly had his work cut out for him. 

Our patient and very enthusiastic coach, Laurel (Thatch) Thatcher, kicked things off by showing us the enormous 7 cell canopies, the equally big containers and unusual brake setups we were going to contend with. This was followed by an informative presentation and some demo videos to get the basics of accuracy landing through our thick skulls. 
Before we went up to apply our newly acquired knowledge, Corné Myburgh did an equally impressive and intimidating demonstration landing for us.

At 6000’, our first jump was slightly higher than is usual for accuracy, in order that we could try out accuracy canopy manoeuvres such as spiralling down by stepping down between the A riser cascades with your foot (yes, you read that correctly). 
Thanks to Thatch’s debriefs and eager instructions we were improving with every jump, some landing against the inflatable tuffet and others bouncing off of it onto their back(!). 

The weekend ended with a two-jump competition between the participants, with the top 3 taking home jump slots from Skydive Parys. 
We mostly brought our A game and quite a few landed on the mat.

   
Photos courtesy of SAP Jumpers Having Fun

All of us had a fantastic time, both improving our general canopy skills and learning how much fun it can be to try and land a gigantic specialized canopy on a small little circle. 
Thanks so much to the whole team at Skydive Parys, SAPcomm, Thatch and Martin and everybody who joined in the fun. 

Hope to see you all at Nationals!

Nico Hickley, D953

Summer is here (Spring? What’s that?). While our climate doesn’t directly dictate our competition season, the warmth brings on more jumping, events (hopefully competitions), and fresh enthusiasm. Teams start to plan for Nationals (April), and new teams are born.

Celebrate the win – the other teams’ too

You won’t always win, and short of actual sabotage, if you didn’t win, you didn’t deserve it. You simply weren’t the better team today.

Cheapening anyone else’s win, devalues competition.  If the win “doesn’t matter” or the competition “isn’t important”, don’t enter.

Don’t make excuses

Telling everyone ahead of the competition that you aren’t trying or don’t care just sounds like you’re preparing to lose. You don’t sound good, you sound lazy.

Expect a realistic score (and celebrate them openly)

If you aren’t scoring a 15 average in training, you’re not a 15 average team and unlikely to score that in the meet. Set realistic goals, tell others, and openly express your excitement or disappointment in the result. People appreciate and relate to intelligent, honest commentary; delusional reviews and denial make for boring conversation and an uncomfortable audience, who are just humouring you while they try to understand how your perception could be so skewed.

Train if you want to perform, or create scratch teams if that’s more your style, but align your preparation and attitude with your expectations.

Compete, even when you have no chance of winning.

Nothing can replace actual competitions to prepare you for competition.

You cannot simulate competition.  Waiting until you’re “good enough” hides those “meet day” weaknesses that might still need work (Big Match Temperament, stress, energy and arousal level management, introspection etc.).

Enjoy the journey, and learn from it

Again, you won’t always win. The team that wins has usually invested more and sacrificed more to get there.  Or maybe they simply gel better than your team.  Your turn will come, maybe. If that drives you nuts, try something more fun.

Weighting systems to equalise experience levels are a fun, novel way to mix things up, but this is not your right. Your time will come. Enjoy the journey. Learn from superior performers, admire their achievements. Learn to lose. Disappointment is natural (in context), but If you can’t enjoy a meet unless you win, then you probably don’t like competing. Spend your money on something you actually enjoy.

Sometimes the categories don’t cater for your strengths and sometimes you are way out of your league, but that’s life, and how you gain experience. A meet where everyone places denies true competitors of the fight, the stress, the camaraderie and all the other things that make competition special.

Don’t resent better resourced competitors

Skydiving is expensive, takes commitment, and to make serious competitive gains, requires sacrifice. None of these alone creates a winner.  We each balance our priorities and resources, commitment and sacrifices to train, and the decision of how much is too much is different for each of us. You didn’t lose just because you’re not as rich. If someone trained harder, got better and won, they deserve it, regardless of their chosen route or starting advantage. 

100 Years of Free Flight

2020 is going to be a big year for Air sports in South Africa. It is the Centennial Celebration of the Aero Club in South Africa. 

Sport Skydiving in SA is an integral part of the Aero Club.  Skydiving will be heavily featured in their celebratory events including the Festival (most likely happening in May 2020) as well as their featured content online and the coffee table book they will be creating.

There has been a call for content in terms of the History of Skydiving in South Africa. 

Please can any content, articles, images, stories etc be sent to Bev Cosslett to be considered for inclusion in the book.

They are also looking at including Skydiving in some shape or form to participate in the Festival weekend.

Of course, it would be great to have a large representation of our sport at the event. News of possible jump ships, demo’s or any record opportunities that we may organise for the event. 

The SSA has been contacted to submit opportunities, so please either contact your SSA representative or Bev for inclusion.

 For further information please contact:
ned.luker@gmail.com / ned@flyaerodyne.com 
031 502 6435 

Diaz Beach Boogie at Skydive Mossel Bay 14^th-24^th December 2019. 

Diaz Beach Boogie features beach landing on 4 different beaches – Santos, Diaz, Great Brak and Wilderness. It’s packed with fun après-skydive social events including Christmas dinner on 24 December.

This year’s boogie is a bumper year for load organizers:

1. Claire King and Dirk Venter will be back to organize FS groups
2. Naomi Kotzee is here for AE as well as Julian Boulle who will also cover wingsuit jumps.
3. Plus, in honour of the return of the legendary Simba this year, we will extend the boogie (on a slightly scaled down version) to 30 December 2019.

We are also welcoming Joel Strickland and Annette O’Neil back this year to join in on the fun and provide some coaching.

All levels are welcome, including progression students but you must have a B licence or higher for the beach jumps.

The King Air will be the chief jump ship and we are super excited to have hot air balloon jumps this year.

To be included on the boogie email list, send Monica a message. Please also join the Diaz Beach Boogie group on Facebook for updates.

For more information please contact Ange.