Blue Skies, Patrick Swayze

To the general public, Patrick Swayze—who died at age 57 this week—will best be remembered for the films Dirty Dancing and Ghost. To skydivers of the day he’ll be remembered for Point Break. And for two reasons. First, Swayze took up skydiving at Perris Valley so that he could film many of the skydiving scenes himself. According to co-star Keanu Reeves, the production company issued Swayze a cease-and-desist order to stop skydiving; he kept jumping anyway. Along the way he joined USPA and earned his A license. Second, the movie’s release in 1991 brought a flood of first-jump customers out to DZs nationwide. Those customers didn’t find skydivers bantering in five-minute freefalls, but many did find a sport of their own as shown by USPA’s membership totals. Membership rose from 20,000 at the end of 1990 to 26,150 in 1992, and steady increases in subsequent years. Thanks, Patrick, for boosting our sport. Blue Skies.

Skydiving Music Video Challenge

Most of you have seen the ad for the Skydiving Music Challenge in Parachutist. It’s a simple challenge where you create a skydiving video using the song we give you. We choose the top-5 and let the voters decide who wins. Some might have already started on their own videos, while others might have dismissed the challenge for whatever reasons. A few are probably beating themselves up because they don’t fly camera yet, and therefore won’t have any aerial footage to work with.

The challenge came about in an effort for us to get more involved with our members. Once we heard about Jonay’s interpretation of our sport, we listened to the music and, gambling with the fact that music doesn’t please everyone, we decided the beat was good enough to do something with it. Contacting Jonay and getting his permission for the challenge was easy. Finding a sponsor to donate a prize wasn’t. It took some calls, e-mails, and research on gear manufacturers. In the end, Tonfly was kind enough to give us a hand and furnish us with a fully accessorized camera helmet for the first place winner.

The challenge itself brings no revenue to USPA. It was done entirely with the intent for our members to have some fun. Therefore, we are not looking for instructional videos or tandem promotional videos, but for the videographers to enjoy flying and editing, for some sick videos to come out of this and for someone to go home happy with a free new helmet. Show us what you got!

More information on the challenge – rules, entry form, deadlines and any other instructions – here

Sponsors: Tonfly and Jonay

Blue Skies!

Let’s Do a Dive for Shifty—and his Brothers

You may have recently seen a sentimental email about the June 17 passing of Darrell “Shifty” Powers at age 86.  If not, read about it here on Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/shiftypowers.asp

While Snopes can’t verify the source of the reported encounter, “Shifty,” as he was known, was real, and so was his bravery as he served with Easy Company of the 101^st Airborne in the dangerous days and months following his drop on D-Day.

It turns out that skydivers have a perfect opportunity to honor Shifty and his band of brothers. Sunday, August 16, is National Airborne Day, a day annually commemorated by Congress to remember and honor those servicemen who volunteered to earn their jump wings and serve our country as an airborne soldier. (Read my blog about last year’s National Airborne Day here: http://skydiveuspa.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/national-airborne-day/)

So here’s the thought: Let’s honor Shifty—and his band of brothers—with a memorial skydive. Actually with lots of memorial skydives. Why not organize a memorial dive at your DZ that day? You could form an “A” for Airborne, an “E” for Easy Company, or a “101” for the 101^st. Or form a star (if large enough, let a veteran fly in the center), and facing each other with joined grips, give thanks to Shifty and all those who set aside their lives, answered their country’s call, and literally saved the world.

So do a dive for Shifty and his band of brothers and let us know how it went. Send your description of the jump and any photos or links to videos to communications@uspa.org. You don’t have to stop there. Nearly every assisted living facility has WW II veterans who would thoroughly enjoy a visit by a bunch of skydivers expressing appreciation for their service. After all, we not only owe them for their service; we also owe them for sowing the seeds for our sport. It was post-war veterans that wanted to continue jumping out of airplanes who began what became the sport of skydiving.

Parachutist’s 600th

As you may have read in July’s Five-Minute Call, in October, Parachutist will print its 600^th issue. We are working on a pictorial and looking for crazy, skydiving-related things involving the number 600. Send us a picture with the most amusing ideas you can come up with to communications@uspa.org or Submit a Photo.

Best picture wins a cookie! – Well, no, not really, but you do get compensation for print use.

Oh, yeah! Remember! High-res pictures only.

Rising Through the Recession

32,003. That’s the current level of USPA membership at the end of June. What’s the significance? Well, in addition to the fact that membership continues to grow, it’s the first time since May 2005 that we’ve exceeded 32,000. Here’s the full story: USPA membership reached its all-time zenith of 34,583 in August 2001. Then the following month came the attacks of 9/11. Like all of aviation, skydiving suffered for months from a public apprehension and mistrust of all flying. A stalling economy didn’t help either. Membership began a slow but steady decline, going below 32,000 in June 2005 and finally bottoming out in October 2006 at 30,488. Then began a slow but steady climb, and finally back over 32,000 last month. 32,003 is just a number, after all. But it signifies skydiving is holding its own through this recession. And that’s good news for all of us.

June Parachutist features

We just approved the final proofs for the June issue; here is a sneak peek of what you will see in just a few weeks . . .

• Historical profile of Leslie Irvin
• A beginner’s guide to 4-way formation skydiving (first in a series)
• Guinness Book of World Records: Tandem record (most tandems in a day)
• Core exercises to combat back pain from skydiving
• Intro to wingsuiting

We hope you enjoy!

Slack USPA bloggers?

Loyal USPA blog readers may have noticed the lack of recent posts lately. We’re not abandoning the blog, and we certainly have no lack of news! We have recently spread our online wings to include Twitter and Facebook, and are still on MySpace and LinkedIn. Those sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, have been more conducive to the kinds of news we’ve had lately – short, quick updates not really worthy of too many words–140 or less, in fact (that’s the maximum number of characters a Twitter update, or “tweet” can be).

It has been great for things like letting people know the SIM pdf is now updated with bookmarks (www.uspa.org/Portals/0/Downloads/Man_SIM_2009-2010.pdf), that there is a new job opening at USPA (www.uspa.org/aboutuspa/employment.aspx) or that Safety Day reports are online (www.uspa.org/USPAMembers/Safety/SafetyDay/2009Reports.aspx).

Those sites also get more activity and response than the blog has, so we’ll spend a little more time there. We will still be blogging when there is a major story that requires a little more behind-the-scenes, personal explanation, or if inspiration strikes! Let us know if you want to read about anything in particular, too – either comment here, or use the “Why” post (skydiveuspa.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/why/) as a forum to ask your questions about why USPA does some of the things it does.

Here are all the places you can now find USPA online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/skydiveUSPA
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/US-Parachute-Association/55722708148
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/_USPA
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=41846
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SkydiveUSPA

Oops!

In my previous Dues & Fees Increase post, I listed the one-year renewal for PRO ratings to be $15 and two-year as $35. It was a misprint and should have read that it’s $15 for a renewal without a card or $35 for a renewal with a card. We also posted a full list of prices (including rates for our members living overseas) on the USPA news page.

Dues & Fees Increase

By now you may have heard (or read our February 8th news post) what will be extensively reported in the April issue of Parachutist—USPA has raised dues as well as license and ratings fees, effective April 1st. I can guess your initial reaction; no one likes to pay more for anything. And you can bet that the issue was extensively debated at the February board meeting. But the board was faced with the reality that dues and fee increases had to happen. Here’s why. USPA ended 2008 spending just over $500,000 more than it took in. Part of the reason was the stock market. USPA has a rainy day fund of over $1.5 million invested, and most years we’re able to count as revenue the interest earned as well as the increased value of the stocks. But not last year. Add to that the rise in cost of providing basic services. Importantly, 2008 was the fourth year in a row of red ink, so the decision was made to come up with a balanced 2009 budget that doesn’t depend on investments.

But USPA wouldn’t ask you to pay more before we cut expenses first, which we started doing mid-2008. Largely through attrition we’ve reduced staff to 14 full-timers, down from the high of 24 in 1999. We’ve also trimmed other areas so that proposed expenses for 2009 are $161,000 less than what was budgeted in 2008. Not only that, 2009’s proposed expenses are also less than what we spent in 2007 and 2006. Still, we needed to find new sources of revenue in order to come up with a balanced budget for 2009. So, individual member renewal dues were raised by six dollars to $55. First-year member dues were increased by $14 to $65, largely to help recover the cost of PR efforts to attain new skydivers. License fees were increased by $10 and ratings fees and the rating renewal fee were also raised by $10. Group Member dues paid by DZs were increased by 25%. Here are the new rates:

New membership–$65 (paid only one time, ever)
Renewing membership–$55
License fee–$30
New coach rating–$35
New instructor rating–$50
Rating renewal–$30 (for one or multiple ratings)
New PRO rating–$65
PRO rating renewal–$15/35 (no card/new or replacement card*)

New Group Member Dues
Category 1–$250
Category 2–$375
Category 3–$750

Renewal Group Member Dues
Category 1–$125
Category 2–$250
Category 3–$500

* edited 3/31 to change “PRO rating renewal–$15/35 (one-year/two-year)” to “PRO rating renewal–$15/35 (no card/new or replacement card*)”

Jacques-André Istel Presented with the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award

One of the pleasures of my job is to meet and talk with some of our sport’s luminaries and pioneers. I enjoy history, and I particularly enjoy the history of our sport. So maybe you can imagine how privileged I felt last week when I presented USPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award to Jacques-André Istel, the father of modern skydiving in the U.S. See, Jacques, who had immigrated here from France as a boy and had begun parachuting here in 1950, saw on a visit to France in 1955 that French skydivers had learned techniques of controlled freefall. Until he learned and brought those techniques back to the U.S., parachuting in this country was simply flailing between exit and deployment—no arch, no control, no turns, and no stable deployments. There was no skydiving here until Jacques advanced it. He also coined the term, by the way. But he didn’t stop there. Jacques became a vocal advocate for public acceptance of skydiving as a sport, not a daredevil activity. Here’s an excerpt from an August 1957 issue of Time magazine:

” ‘You just let go of the plane and suddenly you’ve changed elements. You start to drop but you don’t feel anything—only a marvelous sense of control. It’s like being immersed in light water. Then you bring your right arm up and you make a turn, just as simple as that. It’s an incredible sensation.’

Thus runs the evangelical message of Jacques-André Istel, 28, a black-browed ex-Wall Streeter and dedicated prophet of parachuting in the U.S. His gospel: jumping….out of an airplane can be a safe, exhilarating sport, not a devil-daring performance…”

That’s not all he did either. Jacques advanced parachute competition, too, by forming the first U.S. team to compete at the 3rd World Meet in Moscow. With that, parachuting and then skydiving competition began to flourish here as well, with Jacques introducing our collegiate competition as well.

For these reasons, and many more, I was humbled yet proud to be joined last week in Felicity, California, (where Jacques is not only the founder, but the mayor) by board members Larry Hill and Scott Smith, previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Pat Morehead, previous USPA Gold Medal of Meritorious Service recipient Ted Strong, and many, many skydiving friends, in presenting Jacques-Andre Istel with his own engraved and mounted silver bowl. Like a true Frenchman and skydiver, Jacques used the bowl to toast his admirers…

Jacques-André Istel holds the USPA Lifetime Achievement Award surrounded by (from left) Pat Morehead, Larry Hill, Ed Scott, and Scott Smith.