Land of fire and ice – and land of god damn never-ending nonstop effing wind. That part of it is less routinely advertised when Iceland attempts to lure over tourists with pockets full of foreign currency. But, it’s home. And there is no place in the world like it.
Anita and Ása, two very cool Icelandic chicks, embarked on a journey with their paragliders, a tired 4×4 and lots and lots of warm clothes. Mission: fly Iceland. They have charted some of their missions around the world on their website, the Flying Effect, but the video below was shared on the pages of XC Mag (a paragliding magazine).

Enjoy watching – and then let’s go for a visit. There is a skydiving club too, if paragliding isn’t your cup of tea.

The upside-down-bad-asses from Eloy,recently launched a new website. On there you can find out all about the team members, their services (civilian and military) along with their calendar. The 2012 lineup consists of Brandon Atwood, Amy Chmelecki, Sara Curtis, Steve Curtis, Ty Losey and alternate Niklas Daniel.

It’s almost time for one of the most fun boogies on the East side of the country – Carolinafest 2012.
The most important item of any event is the boogie t-shirt – and for Carolinafest the design usually a closely guarded secret until you arrive at the event. But this year, we applied some pressure and squeezed the secret out of the Boogie Master.
Shirt is designed by Justin Carmody, photographer and designer extraordinaire and is pretty sweet.
We’d love to show you the full glory, but since we don’t want to have our arms broken, this will have to do.

Hope to see you there.

As a magazine, we are in the business on creating conversation.  We don’t discriminate much, and happily engage in anything from idle chat to the deep and meaningful…   liberally sprinkled with strong language and the occasional f-bomb ( but ONLY when absolutely necessary).  We do it online, in print,  in person.  And the royal “we” in this instance doesn’t just mean Blue Skies Mag staff, it extends to pretty much every nylon-pilot* on the planet.

In our humble beginnings as a magazine, we were pretty stoked to get Melanie “Melsinore” Curtis on board as a columnist, and  she has proved to be a very popular feature writer, faithfully delivering top quality content on time, for every issue.
And here is the kicker, in her blog post on her website Highcomms.com, she fessed up – it wasn’t all song and dance, but actually some serious hard work involved. We never knew. Click to read and then come back here to finish up.

Back?
Good. And now let that be your inspiration to start sharing, engaging, interacting, all that good stuff. We wan’t fun, interesting, educating, honest, sincere contributions from the community. We want your No Shit stories, your memories, your reflections on gear and all that good stuff.   Click here for a few guidelines and then see about getting your own words in print. It’s a pretty cool feeling.

Thank you Melsinore, for a fabulous couple of years – here’s to many more!!

*The phrase “nylon-pilot” famously coined and minted by the one and only Scott Miller. If you don’t know who he is, please have a serious conversation with whomever is supposed to be mentoring you in your life as a skydiver. 

Our neighbors across the lawn have just reached deep into the 21st century and came back with a brand, spanking new website.
There is no denying that this is a great improvement in function over the previous one, where finding simple information was much like going on a photo scavenger hunt organized by Sandy Bobo. Pretty fun, highly competitive and you never knew what clicking a link would bring you.
The safety yellow background serves to remind us that skydiving is in fact dangerous.

Go on, mosey on over and see what you think.  Then you can follow-up with liking their Facebook page, which is also where you can leave website feedback, ask questions, tag pictures and do all that stuff we do on Facebook.

Skydivers are MASTERS of all kinds of handshakes, slapping and gesturing. Watch any plane on jump run, and you’ll see. We have often thought about putting together a little video featuring the most common/elaborate/silly/crazy/impossible handshakes to feature. Maybe we should get that done this summer… maybe we should a competition and give the winning slappers a couple of free jumps? Hm.

Anyway. Back to the point. Today is National High Five day. April 19th. Makes no sense, but there it is. Being a nation of slappers (and not in the British slang kind of way), we should celebrate.
If you aren’t sure of the details, you can head to Wikipedia for the definition:

The high five is a celebratory hand gesture that occurs when two people simultaneously raise one hand, about head high, and push, slide or slap the flat of their palm and hand against the palm and flat hand of their partner. The gesture is often preceded verbally by the phrase “Give me five” or “High five”.

- watch this detailed video, highlighting some common mistakes and errors:

- and this one for some sick variations to the common high five:

Practice hard, dirt dive often, and let us know when you have perfected your high five. We accept video contributions via e-mail.  Happy National High Five Day to all of you, with giant high five from us at Blue Skies Magazine.  SLAP!

The French guys from On Air hit up the Come on I wanna lei you luau and boogie, put on by Team Dirty Sanches.
Here is their take on the boogie, visiting America, jumping in Sebastian.  The video is awesomely done, sprinkled liberally with sarcastic French humor – and subtitles for us that aren’t too fluent in the language of love.

Below is a note that Tony Suits has shared with all customers who received a modification to accommodate auxillary handles on their Apache wingsuits:

This Service Bulletin applies to all Apaches received with the loop auxiliary handles:

Service Bulletin – Apache Wingsuit Owners – Auxiliary handles

In recent testing we discovered that the pull force with the auxiliary handles we’ve shipped recently with our Apache wingsuit can be higher than the TSO standard in some configurations.

As a result we ask all customers to cease using the auxiliary handles immediately.

If you wish to use the suit in the skydive environment in preparation for BASE jumping a master rigger should be consulted to modify your suit, adding slots so that the existing handles can be mounted on the front of the suit.

Tony Uragallo
President of Tony Suits, Inc.
40343 Air Time Ave
Zephyrhills,
FL 33542
USA
Telephone: +1 (813) 788-4753

For further information, please contact Tony Suits directly.

Tony Uragallo of Tony Suits has issued an urgent memo in the wingsuit forum on dropzone.com to owners of the Apache wingsuit utilizing the auxiliary handles. These handles are a thumb loop on the outside of the suit, that attach to the cables of the reserve and cutaway handles.
In testing, Tony Suits have found that the pull force needed to complete a cutaway or activate a reserve using the auxiliary handles can exceed TSO requirements (22 pounds).

Tony Suits strongly recommend that Apache owners that have modified their suit for free fall purposes using those handles DO NOT use the suit as is. It should be noted that the Apache wingsuit was designed and built for expert BASE jumpers it for BASE jumping. No issues are with using the suit for the intended purpose (with single parachute BASE rigs).