Saturday January 21st brings the first meet of the 2012 season for the Florida Canopy Piloting League (FLCPA), taking place on the glorious pond at Skydive City, Zephyrhills, Florida. We have always been supportive of the FLCPA – it’s a league that fosters competition but also provides an incredible training environment for jumpers wanting to get into swooping, complete with top-notch coaches. It’s easy to get behind that kind of “pay it forward” attitude.

Quite a few of the top pilots in the world came up through the FLCPA, and this environment has fostered a few champions, both national and international. The FLCPA meets continue to draw a strong pool of competitors and 25 are already registered for Saturday. You can take a look at some of the names already registered on the Swoop League website. Pay special attention to competitor #20, and lets see if you can guess his or her name based on these few clues below:

• The person in question has just taken receipt of 2 brand new Comp Velocities.
• This swooper is a World Champion
• This swooper is not Jay Moledzki

Leave your guess in the comments below or on our Facebook page. Let’s see who can figure out the name of the mystery swooper!

Well, our last post evidently didn’t tell the whole story! Dreadful journalism on my behalf, but then again I hope you can forgive me. I thought footie pj’s for grownups were a NEW abomination, rather than a resurrected one from mere 2 years ago.
After we bragged about the event on Twitter, Daniel Croft was kind enough to point us to the original video of a 7-way footie PJ jump! This was initially done by some Ranch hands at the Blue Skies Ranch in Gardiner, NY, but like most New Yorker’s, they were too modest to flaunt their accomplishment.
The Ranch hands did however stick to belly only, so we will give the Blue Skies Boogie crew in Nevada the credit for the biggest freefly Footie PJ Record.

But now that begs the question, in the world of Footie PJ’s, what comes next?!
A jump off? Footie PJ hybrids? The possibilities are endless.

Fun jumping in Nevada? You betcha. And not just fun jumping, but some amazing talent met up at the Blue Skies Boogie for hard hittin’ record settin’ jumpin’.

Without further ado, we present the Footie Pajama World Record, set in Mesquite, NV on January 14th, 2012. Congrats to Gunnar Jeannette, Mike Steen, Thomas Hughes, Dan Drage, Sean Hennessey, Jason Powell and Sher Drage for a brilliant performance.

If you didn’t get one for Christmas (poor thing), these cozy little jumpsuits can be ordered here.

Many thanks to Gunnar Jeannette and Mike Steen for sharing!

January 1st, 2012 Dr. T. Elaine McLaughlin passed away due to trauma sustained after a low cutaway followed by reserve deployed too late to inflate. The incident took place at Skydive City, Zephyrhills, FL.

Dr. T. Elaine was 60 years old and an active and current skydiver in Z-Hills. After deploying her parachute (a Spectre 120 in a Javelin container) at a normal altitude, her canopy was observed to be turning, followed by a very low cutaway. Reserve was deployed manually but did not have enough time to inflate. Sources from the dropzone estimate cutaway hight at approximately 700 ft and reserve activation at approximately 400 ft.
It is not known why the cutaway was performed so low. Details of the accident are still under investigation.

We send our sincere condolences to her family and friends in Z-Hills. Memorial services have already taken place. Her obituary in the Tampa Bay Times can be found here.

Enjoy the holidays, hug your friends, love your family, make lots of jumps (if appropriate) and pay homage to SkyGod for getting us through yet another year.

Best wishes from the Blue Skies Mag team,
Kolla, Lara and Pierre.

A damn sweet video, featuring the good boys from Jump4Heros, brightening the day of children whose parents are currently serving in Afghanistan. Santa unfortunately couldn’t bring their mom or dads home for the holidays, but at least he was able to give them a good show, hand out some presents and most importantly – deliver the children heartfelt letters from their parents.

A nice article showing a close-up of Santa’s swooping setup can be found here.

Crappy weather in Deland today, clouds kicking around the tree tops and not much to do.
Caption Contest to the rescue – let’s hear your best ones!!

Photo snapped by Brianne Thompson of AXIS Flight School, taken at their homebase in Eloy, Arizona.
The sad guy in the photo is Trunk from Hypoxic. Trunk is probably responsible for all the GoPro’s already in the basket, can you count how many?

It’s always a good day in the media when skydiving/skydivers are featured in a positive and exciting manner – and the boys from Thunderstorm (the Denver Broncos demo team) got us some good press recently.

Michael Demma edited this great video showing their jump into the stadium but also gives a glimpses of what the team does behind the scenes to prepare.

Slipstream Airsports members Justin Thornton and Stuart Schoenfelt do a great job during the interview. We are also happy to report now that Movember is over, Justin has shed the hairy upper lip.

Danish skydiver Kenneth Gajda has graciously shared with us the view through his lens, as he explores the 3rd Dubai International Parachuting Championships (DIPC).
Visit the Skydive Dubai website for scores, standings and general updates from the event.

Photo by Kenneth Gajda

Wow. That’s all I can say. What an amazing opening ceremony. I’ve been competing internationally since 1998 and I’ve never seen an opening ceremony like it – but then I’ve never jumped at Dubai before either. It was a night show and the use of colours, lights and fireworks were superbly choreographed. The illuminated stunt plane and skydivers closed the show that had video, horses, skateboarders and dancers performing on the sand and on the angled stage. It was very cool indeed.

Thursday, the FS and CF have been jumping. The CP was put on a call then stopped with the Classic Accuracy then called. About 1/3 of the first round of accuracy was done before the Meet Director switched to CP for the practice jumps. The CP practice round was completed although some were done over the wind limits – which is legal as the practice round is not mandatory. One competitor had a nasty canopy collapse as he was about to start his turn. Some good drills and a low cutaway certainly entertained the crowd. It then stayed windy for most of the day. CF and FS carried on but the strange decision to switch disciplines part way through the round leaves the accuracy round incomplete.

Classic accuracy kicks off Friday although the winds are forecast to get up again. Hopefully the organisers will be swifter on standing disciplines down when it’s clear they won’t get to jump so we can get a bit of beach time if that’s the case.

Work that tan Alastair – and thanks for all the updates!!