I began skydiving whilst Studying at the University of Liverpool, after I found out I was able to take a RAPS Solo Skydiving course for free! All I had to do was raise over £500 through sponsorship and charitable donations, and being a Student I was used to scrounging so it was easy :)

My first jump was in July 2003, here is a link to a video of some of my friends who did the same RAPS course a year later...

Unfortunately I struggled with the RAPS course. The weather in the UK makes things difficult, you really need to be jumping every weekend to stay consistent. With gaps of up to a month I kept ending up back at square one.

The solution? AFF in Spain! This is a rapid progression course, where each jump is from full altitude (16000ft), and there are instructors in the air with you telling you what to do...

AFF went very well for me. I passed every level with flying colours :)

Next I decided to do the FS1 course, also in Spain. This teaches you how to freefall with groups of people, and led on to me being able to Skydive with my friends, and my Fiance!

I arrived back in the UK to go jumping at my home Dropzone, but unfortunately the plane had been involved in an accident. It crashed into another plane mid-air, tore of half of its undercarriage, and had to do an emergency landing...

This story has a much sadder side though, as the other plane was completely destroyed killing the pilot and his passenger. Here is a image of the actual aircraft, and you can see in the small embedded image the remains of same the aircraft after the impact.

Whilst our plane was being repaired I visited one of the UK's indoor skydiving centre's, Airkix. Here is a video of me in action, and I'm sorry the footage is a bit choppy! I'd recommend Airkix to anyone, it's not just for Skydivers...