Demo Training Courses 

Exciting news for those of you that love all things canopy – there are some new courses on the horizon for 2025. We’re bringing you the lowdown, straight from the mouths of Maxine Tate and Kaz Sheekey, professional demo pilots and Flight-1 instructors.

We’ve been seeing more and more demos happening all around the world, our chance to showcase skydiving to the general public and share our passion for what we love. In 2024 a new type of course came out in USA for anyone looking to get into this space. Created and taught by Maxine Tate and Kaz Sheekey of the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team, we sat down with them to find out more about their ‘Intro To Demos’ courses… 

Maxine Tate: I just love demos! It’s some of the most rewarding and purposeful skydiving I have ever done – it’s a privilege to be able to share what we do with a wider audience, and to bring a positive message of joy and empowerment to the general public. It’s not just about putting on a good show for everybody – we feel it’s important to be able to represent the sport in a safe professional manner, and performing in front of a crowd comes with responsibility. It’s a high-pressure environment, one and done, no ‘do-overs’. There’s no room for complacency even for the most experienced canopy pilots, and that’s why we train.

For a lot of skydivers, the first time they ever experience a demo is when they are asked to jump on one. The logistics, risks and consequences aren’t often considered, and training is at best an afterthought. That’s not always the case for sure, but after a particularly bad run of ‘demos gone wrong’ videos appearing on social media, Kaz and I decided to create an opportunity for potential and existing demo jumpers to think ahead, learn, train and be prepared to represent skydiving in the best way possible.

Kaz Sheekey: Whether you’re the jumper or part of the ground crew, there’s so much to learn about putting on a great demo show, from planning and training to identifying risks, managing variables, and connecting with your audience. We designed this course to demystify these components, enabling jumpers to make informed decisions about participating in a demo and preparing for the show.

Drawing from over twenty years of demo experience, including the last few years with the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team, we’ve come to realize that much of our learning has been through word of mouth and trial and error. There has been no single source to gather all the crucial information until now. Over time, we’ve gathered extensive knowledge on how to run spectacularly safe demos for our team. We identified a significant gap in how new demo jumpers can effectively learn and train with equipment and wanted to bridge that gap for those exploring demo jumping.

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Kaz: We’re thrilled to assist jumpers in filling these gaps and building confidence to properly assess any demo they may be asked to join. We understand what makes a great show, emphasizing crucial safety aspects. Executing a safe demo within your skillset is vital, and this course is designed to help jumpers build skills and learn how to assess their readiness for a particular demo. We’ve developed a step-by-step process and experience to help jumpers understand the intricacies involved, providing a clear path to becoming successful and safe demo jumpers. Having a dedicated space where individuals can come and learn all the ins and outs, including equipment jumping, in a safe environment will not only enhance the representation of skydiving but also make it safer for spectators. 

Maxine: We thought there was a need to encourage the mindset of training before ratings, by creating courses with a clear progression from your first demo all the way through to pro ratings and professional level demos. We want to foster the expectation that we deliver exciting safe demos through preparation, training and especially teamwork. It’s a really valuable exercise in communication skills to get a group of skydivers together to become a demo team for the day, not to mention a lot of fun! 

Kaz and Maxine ran a number of these courses in USA in 2024, and will be doing the same in 2025 as well as more advanced courses in the progression to pro demo jumper.

Of course, one of the key requirements for executing a demo is to land safely on target. Yet while running these courses in 2024, it became clear that consistent accuracy with or without the addition of demo equipment was still a challenge to many skydivers. As canopy coaches and Flight-1 veterans of 15 years, Kaz and Maxine both started to brainstorm how to address this gap in what could be considered a fundamental canopy handling skill. 

Maxine: One of the reasons we have our students jump ‘slick’, without equipment first in our demo courses is to demonstrate their ability to fly a comprehensive pattern and land safely close to target without any issues. Many of the folks that joined us through 2024 needed to and were keen to focus on their accuracy skills in more depth. This has also been the sentiment of many of our students that we work with in Flight-1 canopy courses. 

As instructors we are always asking the question – ‘What skillsets are lacking and how can we address them in the future?’ It’s not just potential demo jumpers that need the requisite skills to fly a good pattern and land safely close to target – every sport jumper should feel confident in their ability to fly the conditions and land in a clear area. 

Maxine:  It’s vitally important to avoid incidents. Alongside running these demo courses with Kaz, I did a deep dive into the canopy-related incident reports for 2022 and was surprised to see the same root cause coming up in a significant number of instances for licensed skydivers – landing accidents caused by the inability to fly a suitable pattern given the conditions at the time.  Almost half of the canopy related accidents for A to C licensed skydivers in 2022 can be attributed to poor pattern work. Here are a few common examples:

Winds pick up significantly, jumper doesn’t notice until after entering downwind leg, turns onto base too far downwind, resulting in a final leg into a congested area, hits an obstacle, or makes a low turn to avoid an obstacle. 

Jumper lands off the dropzone, but is unable to fly a pattern to land accurately in an unknown or tight area, either hitting an obstacle or making last minute adjustments to avoid an obstacle.

The majority of these incidents demonstrated

1. A lack of awareness of the current weather conditions
2. A lack of action to adjust for current weather conditions
3. A lack of familiarity with the glide slope of the canopy and how to manipulate it to achieve the most effective glide from the system
4. Not sticking to the fundamentals in times of stress and/or under duress, ie, not following the landing priorities. 

These types of incidents generally show a lack of situational awareness and alertness to real time conditions, and a lack of response once the potential danger becomes clear. It should be a fundamental part of every canopy ride for the canopy pilot to assess conditions and expect to make adjustments as necessary. We should strive to be proactive canopy pilots making decisions in real time to ensure we continue to fly in clear airspace and land in a clear area. We can make a solid plan on the ground, but conditions (be that weather or congested airspace) are rarely the same as planned. 

How did we get here? How are we developing other skills under canopy from A to D license, but missing some of the basics on safety? Every jump we make is an opportunity to work on good pattern skills. In a normal weekend of jumps, most folks are only focused on their freefall discipline and whether they have a good landing. I would suggest that very few include detailed pattern planning with a specific target in mind. Ask yourself, when you plan your pattern, are you just aiming to land in the ‘landing area’ or do you have a designated target in mind that challenges your accuracy skills? 

Are you just aiming for the ‘landing area’ or do you have a designated target in mind?

Granted it’s harder to run accuracy in a busy environment with more crowded skies BUT you can and should be making adjustments on downwind and base to improve your positioning until you turn onto your final leg. 

• Do you have a standard protocol for checking conditions under canopy before you enter the pattern?
• Do you follow it every time? 

If you find yourself surprised by the winds as you fly your pattern, then clearly the answer to the above questions is ‘no’. 

Angel City FC & Highlight Skydiving blaze a trail in front of 20K fans at Banc of California Stadium

Maxine: We are asked this countless times when we do demos with the Highlight Pro Skydiving Team. The answer lies in following our Accuracy Protocol: planning for forecasted conditions, expecting those conditions to change, assessing the conditions in real time and adjusting throughout the descent as needed. 

We feel strongly that this is an area that requires more focus in our sport, not just to help jumpers land on target in demos or otherwise, but to ensure that all jumpers give themselves the best chance of landing safely when flying in any conditions during normal jump operations.  

So, Kaz and I created a new course for Flight-1: 103 The Modern Accuracy Jumper, where we share our Accuracy Protocol.

We delve deeper into the skills needed to make those necessary adjustments throughout the descent using modern techniques and technology. The course also covers planning from Spot to Landing, as well as manipulating the final approach for pinpoint accuracy. We ran several beta tests in 2024 and we’re excited to see this rolled out in 2025. The course is now available from most Flight-1 instructors. 

If you’d like more information about hosting Demo courses and/or accuracy courses at your dropzone, reach out to Kaz or Maxine on socials or by email Kaz@flight-1.com and Maxine@flight-1.com   You can also contact your local Flight-1 instructor to run the new Flight-1 103 course for the modern accuracy jumper. 

This reel, from one of the Flight-1 Demo courses, gives a flavour of what to expect

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Read more by Maxine Tate … Landing Priorities

Landing Priorities