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Returning to the beauty of Austria!

…And to badass sequential bigway training, because we need it…

Magic Hohenems
Photo by Jürgen Klaus

A very happy group invaded Hohenems, from 21 to 25 June,  hungry for the high quality jumps and training that we missed since the whole C-f-k situation started.

Elite skydivers from 12 countries, led by Patrick Passe, Marco Arrigo and Dario Jotti, met in Hohenems, Austria, ready to take the rust off their skills, and return  to what they do best – bigway sequentials.

Back to training 🙂
Photo by Jürgen Klaus

Challenges    

From many points of view it was an unusual bigway training event. As Austria had quite strict travel measures in place, the initial 96-person team had to be cut in half and only 48 lucky skydivers could participate. The plan of 2-plane formations changed to single-plane formations doing 16-ways from a Cessna Caravan. We were happy to train in any form, but we greatly missed our friends from the UK, Russia and Scandinavia who could not join the party.

The weather didn’t cooperate fully, but as the prognosis was bad from the start we felt lucky to jump as much as we could, doing 12 jumps of the planned 18. The team was patient during the many stand-by periods and did their absolute best jumping through holes in the clouds and landing like pros. The record of “zero” injuries was well earned 🙂. 

The clouds were our constant companions during this event
Photo by Ralph Wilhelm

Training 

The three 16-way groups had lots of fun, changing participants and coaches every day. The jumps got better and better. Although most of us battled with the rust we had from not jumping a lot in the last period we were happy to get back in the air with our favorite gang. 

Complicated 16-way sequential jumps were prepared by Patrick, Marco and Dario, all under the lens of our camera team who did an awesome job for us. Thank you Jürgen Klaus, Anjte Grube and Ralph Wilhelm!

After the first jumps it was evident that our general skills took a bit of a hit in the last period due to the lack of training. We were almost all uncurrent, with few lucky exceptions. We lost track of the list of schoolboy errors that you almost never see with this team: people going under the formation, hard docks, brain locks, wrong grips… Without giving us a lot of grief our LOs stayed on the positive side and enjoyed the free drinks that were paid by the culprits, although the message was clear: “We know it’s been tough not jumping much, but you need to get your shit together!”     

The participants pushed their limits, changing slots and exit positions as much as possible to make the training count. Every jump was treasured and the feeling of “we know how to do this stuff” soon returned. Phew!  

This event is famous for providing a little more than a normal skydiving event –  early evening ‘innhopp’ jumps to the Kanisfluh Mountain and Lake Constance, weather permitting. We were lucky enough to do the innhopp jump in the mountains at the end of the first day. We all hope that this format will be kept forever because those jumps are simply magical. Being in freefall beside the mountain top and flying our canopies near them is amazing to say the least. The barbeque organized at the landing site was the perfect setup for our sky family to reconnect and enjoy this special place. Although we didn’t have the chance to jump at the lake this year, it’s ok. One more reason to go back next time 🙂.       

Innhopp jump at Kanisfluh Mountain
Photo by Anjte Grube

After a complicated year in 2020, what a joy to be present in Austria this June. And even though the weather played with us, we had a lot of fun getting together!

Rénald Louchart, France

Skydive Hohenems  

If you’ve never had the chance to jump at UPCS – Skydive Hohenems you really need to put it on the list. The dropzone is located in a spectacular location, with the mountains on one side and Lake Constance on another. The ride to altitude is “charging” in the best possible way – I could happily stay in the plane and watch the vista forever 🙂.

We are very grateful to Markus Kordesch, our main host at Skydive Hohenems, for all the efforts done every year for us to have a high quality jumping event, also mixed with the Hohenems special kind of magic. With the current situation organizing an event is challenging to say the least. Changes are on every day’s menu and the work done by the organizers never ends. So, many many thanks from a happy team to Markus and everyone at the dropzone! Least, but not last, thank you to the event’s sponsors, Cypres and Aerodyne, who are always there with us!

We cannot do anything about the weather, but the event was great, people had a lot of fun, especially after this long period of Covid restrictions. Everybody was happy to be back to do good skydives. We tried to also organize good evenings so the people enjoyed their time here at Hohenems. We all deserved it very much, it was good to be back to some kind of “normal”!” 

Markus Kordesch
The organizing team – Markus Kordesch, Patrick Passe, Dario Jotti and Marco Arrigo
Photo by Ralph Wilhelm

What’s next?

As the situation slowly, slowly goes back to “normal”, the Sequential Gang organizers are busy making plans in Europe and US for 2021 and 2022 and reorganizing the events that were cancelled in the last two years. We are looking forward to the moment when the whole sequential gang will be able to be together for the BIG challenges that are prepared for us. We can hardly bear to wait!

It was really good to see everyone here after this strange period even if we missed a lot of people but we managed to have a great time together anyway. The weather didn’t help but we shared good jumps, we mixed the groups to avoid difference in level skills. It worked good and we hope the people were happy to do it. The atmosphere during the evenings was great, Markus outdid himself in his efforts for us to feel good at Hohenems. We hope next year will be back to normal and a full team of three 32-ways.”

Patrick Passe 

And because pictures can talk a thousand words I hope you’ll enjoy the awesome photos that were taken during this super-special event! 

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Meet: Andreea Pistea

Andreea started skydiving at 16 years old and the step between hobby and passion was almost immediately made. Nothing changed in the years that passed.

She is a USPA coach, AFF Instructor, Multiple World Record holder in big-ways, former captain of TNT 4-way team and a Romanian Airclub athlete.

Andreea enjoys FS, wingsuiting and freefly. She flyes Sun Path, Aerodyne, Squirrel, Cookie Helmets and Cypres.

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