Douglas Smith is CEO/President, and Guest Relations Associate at Chicagoland Skydiving Center. He has owned and operated the business since 2000. He has been skydiving since 1994, and in addition to leading the CSC Team, is currently an instructor, videographer and pilot for CSC.
There isn’t a skydiver out there who hasn’t watched a competition of some type and wondered what it would be like to stand on the podium or train and compete alongside the best of the best.
Tis almost the season… already? Yup, that’s right. It’s almost time to start planning that last minute Halloween costume and carving pumpkins, and next thing you know it’ll be sleigh bells ringing. Along with the kids on Christmas night, those babies that we call our rigs will be lovingly tucked away for at least some, if not all of the winter. Inevitably for many of us, that means that the beginning of next season starts off with dusting off unused skills, recurrency jumps, and paperwork; but thankfully there’s a way around some of that!
Bottom line, there simply aren’t too many things you can do that are more spectacular than your first skydive. For most people the entire experience, from the time you’ve made the decision to make that first tandem skydive to the booking process and then the waiting… awesome! It’s a sense of excitement that you can’t really put your finger on because up until that point all you’ve ever seen of skydiving has been on video. Video you say? Oh yeah… There’s just no way around it. This is one experience worth the video!
So you’ve taken on the challenge of skydiving. You had an amazing first experience with a great instructor, there’s a really great vibe on the dropzone and couldn’t think of anything you’d like to do more. Your ground school made perfect sense and you finished the day feeling ready to tackle the incredibly rewarding experience to come.
You may have asked yourself this before - do I really need to take a canopy course? No matter where you are in your skydiving progression, it's likely the answer is yes! It’s one of the fundamental keys to our sport, you never EVER stop learning. Without question, the biggest aspect of safety and currency in modern skydiving is becoming and remaining a proficient canopy pilot. Your approach to learning these skills is just as important as the skills themselves.
