How I started Skydiving

When I started skydiving in May 2002 I had no idea what to expect about jumping out of a fully functional plane. At this time I was completly new in this sport, I did not even have a Tandem jump. I was so enthusiastic about it, that I decided to sign up for the course without any prior experience.

I started to collect as much information about it as possible and I found out about a club (Union Linz) which was one driving hour away from my hometown. I called them up and asked them about their course prices.

They told me, that the course costs around 2000 Euro for my 8 AFF jumps (including one Tandem and Level 1-7) and around 23 Euro for my Solo Jumps as a lisence holder. My mom always supported my crazy plans, so she sponsored 50% of my lisence without letting my father know about it. I had to raise the other 50% myself and for this reason I had to do some part time work. Niko, who went with me in the Kindergarden had his lisence already and showed me everything he knew about this sport.

To make it short: I made the course, learned for the exam and got my lisence ;-) At this time I experienced the craziest 2 years of my life. I was very chaotic and I wanted to try everything out which is dangerous combination.

The luck was on my side and I became the chance to work for the Ballon company ballon1.at and heli-salzkammergut.at. It was a fantastic thing, but I had to get up early every weekend ;-)
The Ballon company offered me a free jump at every ballon trip, I just had to jump off after the start (sometimes a bit low) to be able to land back to the car to be able to pick them up. Sometimes I did not make it back to the car, so I had to hitchhike ☺
The helicopter company always needed support on their transport flights in the Austrian Alps, sometimes we also had some crazy parties with their VIP Flight passengers, I had the time of my life!

My friend Niko then started to Skydive in Klatovy, Czech Republic. On this camp we had so much fun, that it would take me a long time to tell you everything what happened.

I am very happy that I made the decision to do my skydiving lisence, otherwise I wouldn´t be able to tell my kids about the time of my life in future!