Tracking Camp with Fly Easy from Kyle B on Vimeo.
Have you ever taken a class in tracking? You should.
We all track in order to separate for deployment and a lot can happen in horizontal flight (see this article from Dropzone.com for more information). For the safety of not only yourself but all of the other jumpers in the air, we all need to be able to track proficiently, precisely, and under control. One of the things that happens a lot is new jumpers get really into learning a discipline once they finally get their license. They plan to be in a nasty 4-way belly team for the rookie day at the end of the season, or they want to try to get a stable sitfly by their 100th jump; which is great that they want to excel and have found an outlet of passion in the sport, but it often causes us to push aside learning some skills that we really need in order to be safe once we start adding in more and more complexity to our skydives.
This video is a few clips from taking the Fly Easy Tracking Camp with Eric VanSteenbergen (check out what he’s doing over at FlyEasySkydiving.com). This video is produced in chronological order and you can definitely see the improvement of the group as the jumps go on. We did 7 jumps with Eric leading the group and shooting with double GoPros. After each jump, we debriefed the videos and each got individual advice as to how we could improve our tracking techniques.
Eric and his Fly Easy crew have been teaching these courses all season at Skydive the Ranch and you can definitely see a marked improvement in the abilities of all the jumpers who have taken the classes. It has made our dropzone a safer place for everyone to fly and have fun.
So take a tracking course and get your friends to take one too!