The Royal Artillery Parachute Display Team, as well as providing displays that demonstrate skills, attributes and excellence of the Royal Artillery to the general public, is this year providing the opportunity for members of the regiment as well as to civilians to participate in the sport of parachuting. The courses are open to Regular and TA Regiments of the Royal Artillery including dependants. The courses run at Netheravon from Mondays to Fridays and consist of one day of ground training followed by 5 static line jumps over the rest of the week. Due to current operations, all courses are heavily subsidized by the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon to help get as many people onto an adventure training course as possible.

If you would prefer the adrenaline-rush of freefall then the Team are able to offer either Tandem or Accelerated Freefall courses. For the Tandem you will receive a 20 minute brief and then will be on the plane for your jump. For the Accelerated Freefall you will receive the same amount of ground training as you would for the Static Line jump and then( weather permitting) carry out the jump before the end of the day.

During the months of July and August 07, The Royal Artillery Parachute Display Team held 6 Ram Air Progression System Static Line courses during the working week. These all are a 1 week course where the incentive was to do 5 jumps depending on good weather and the students abilities. If however this was not possible due to bad weather, the students were taken to a vertical wind tunnel, which simulates the feeling and sensation of free fall but only a few feet from the ground. This is also a very good training aid not only for beginners in skydiving but also experienced skydivers to practise and train, be it improving their body position or their Formation Skydiving skills.

  During the weekends and week days that the team weren’t doing displays and taking Static Line courses, the team had 50 Tandems booked in for different charities and functions. So, as well as the displays, we took 40 Tandems, 56 AFF students and 150 Static Line students with 100% pass rate on the Tandems, 95% pass with the Static Line students and 90% pass rate with the AFF students.