It all depends on YOU, and of course the weather!
Subject to weather, it is in theory possible for you to go through the Accelerated FreeFall course in 3 days (one day ground school, first jump on day one and two days of jumping). I had two students who did exactly this but it was a bit of a record! The two guys who did it were already experienced athletes and they were very lucky with the UK weather. Before that, my student previous record had been a ground school plus two and a half days of jumping (a self employed chauffeur and at 15 stone with most of it on his belly, definitely not an athlete). This means that with the same good weather and real focus you could well graduate AFF and also crack in a few of your ten consolidation jumps. It would be a really tiring week of course and when we get tired, human beings tend to make more mistakes. Therefore we tend to advise you to allocate a minimum of a week just for your AFF course, and if possible, we suggest that you try to give yourself the option to extend for a day or two in case of bad weather and if things are going really well, to maybe take a short break in the course to stay fresh and performing well, to reduce the possibility of re-jumps.
A reality check; Many people can’t take a mid-week break, especially if they have children. Therefore they will probably want to do this during multiple weekends. If you’re planning to do this, then try to make a full long weekend of it, and sometimes you may even find instructors who are willing to start their ground school on the Friday evening, so you can get finished early afternoon on the Saturday. If you live some distance from the drop zone it might be worthwhile staying over, perhaps camping or staying in the bunkhouse. Combining your course with a family camping trip (erm, based at the skydiving centre) can be one way to arrange things. As long as you have an understanding partner, it can work. More about families on DZs in another article.
Which month? It’s always back to the weather isn’t it? Statistically I’ve found that June seems to be the best month for skydiving weather in Europe. July, May and August follow as the next best European options.
Follow-up weekends; After the first weekend (or a full week course) if you want to keep progressing, you should plan to come skydiving for a minimum of one weekend per month, although two weekends would be much better. It’s the principle of ‘being current’ or ‘two steps forward- one step back’. See the article on using weather forecasts.| < Prev | Next > |
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