2009

We're flying the new Sensei!

From now on we're flying the new Aerodyne Sensei as our main canopy. After our first couple of weeks we can say that this cross braced 21 cell feels like an absolute swooping machine with very much power on the rears and gentle openings aswell. We're very excited to get some more experience on this wing!

The Artistic Flight Meet

A lot of flyers, a lot of jumps, fantastic weather and a nice tailgate made this boogie a very pleasant experience! The boogie DVD's have been sent so yours is waiting for you if you haven't already picked it up. The video's will also be online here in a week or so.
For next year we will be focussing on the competition that will proceed the boogie: an artistic freefly competition with expert judges but without compulsories.

The Artistic Flight Meet

The weather forecast for the coming days in Cerfontaine is almost to good to be true. And at the last moment we were able to make the switch back to the airplane that we intended to have in the first place. Instead of the Kingair, we will be running out of the tailgate of the superfast ANTONOV 28!
The Artistic Flight Meet starts tonight!
BOOGIE!!!

ToraTora going strong

After a strange year and not so much activity from our side, Martijn and Jasper have decided to go full throttle again for the coming years. Martijn has quit his regular (boring) job to be able to focus fulltime on the sport and we have loads of events and plans for 2009 and 2010.The 4funsummerboogie in Soulac, The Artisitc Flight Meet in Cerfontaine (our main event this year), Mountain Gravity in Switzerland and our freefly trip to Sevilla in October are just some of them.

As we're writing this, we're in the middle of our In- and Outdoor Freefly Adventure in Kolomna, Russia, going strong with freefly coaching, group jumps, Russian helicopter craziness and fast windtunnelflying. Go to youtube for a short impression.

Etienne ends his skydiving chapter…

Etienne was flying in the Skyventure Arizona tunnel last November and he realized that he didn’t miss it. That old passion must still be laying on that field in Eloy…Of course all that happened this year also didn’t help. But he doesn’t miss it so that makes it easier to move on to new chapters! He is very thankful to everybody he has met during this skydiving period and wishes ToraTora all the best!!!

If you want to read some more about that chapter click here.

Freefly Meet Spa

At the final moment, the Casa has been cancelled for the Freefly Meet. The Skyvan that we hoped to have as an alternative, is not available because of technical problems. Therefore we will not have a tailgate at the boogie this year.

Not to cry though. Instead there will be a very fast Super Twin Otter which - as a compensation - will bring us up to 4500M (more then 14500 ft)!

Check out the flyer.

Etienne back in Belgium

Last weekend Etienne was finally flown back to Belgium. He is now in a Belian hospital and will move to a rehabilitation center soon.

He has absorbed a large part of the crash with his head, resulting in brain injury. Brains heal slow which means his recovery is going to take several months at least. Physically he's doing pretty good already. He's walking around and doesn't have a lot of pain.

He cannot have any visitors for now. If you want to send him a card or something else, you can:
Weverstraat 16
3270 Scherpenheuvel
Belgium

Accident Etienne

On April the 7th, Etienne has had an skydiving accident in Eloy (Arizona) on the second day of our Freefly- and Tunnelcamp. He had a very bad landing under canopy, mostly damaging his chest and head.
After two weeks at intensive care, he is now in rehabilitation in St. Joseph Hospital in Phoenix. He is making progress, though really slow, and Sarah and his mother are with him. It looks like he might be allowed to fly back to Europe in a couple of days, to continue his recovery over here. As soon as it is certain when he's coming back, we will post an adress here where you can send cards to.

For the team it means that we have to cancel all our training and competition plans for 2008. Also the mountainwooping camps have been moved to October and November. We are hoping to be able to continue most of the other events we had planned, although it will be without Etienne for now, which makes us feel very incomplete.

Extra freeflynight march the 26th!

The big attendance on every freeflynight has told us that we should be doing an extra freeflynight this month. And so we will! Wednesday march the 26th  is the date for this extra freeflynight. This is going to be the last one for a couple of weeks due to our Eloy ‘total in- and –outdoor freefly adventure’ and quite some slots have already been taken so act fast if you want to join in!

The next ToraTora generation

Etienne's daughter Zoe has just done her first 7 minutes in the tunnel. A true natural with freestyle ambitions and already backflying at only 4,5 years old! We're probably going to see a lot more of her and for you aff-instructors out there; you should start training for her 16th birthday!

For those that stay...

Our Eloy camp in April is fully booked and we even had to disappoint some people. But luckily for those that stay behind, there is an event in the Netherlands that is definitively worth the visit! Click on the flyer for more info.

Jasper out of action...

After Etienne broke his back last year and Martijn already before that, Jasper, of course, couldn't stay behind...

Two months of speedflying in the French Alpes all went great and safe. Then he crashed on ski's in the funpark. Dispite of his backprotection, he ended up with a L1 and L2 fracture and a nice corset. He will hopefully be recovered by the end of March but that means no room for windtunneltraining and therefore we will not be competing at the Worldchallenge in Bedford this year.

Damn... Skiing is not safe!

New ‘look’ for the freeflynights

Nothing heavy, just some small changes. Briefing doesn’t start at 20.00 but around 19.00 o’clock. That means we’ll start flying at 20.00 and so finish our session sooner so we can try to save ourselves from a late night at the bar and a hard day at work the day after…Also all the bookings and payments are done directly through us instead of at the reception of Indoor Skydive Roosendaal.
You can send us an email to do so: freeflynight@toratora.nl or call +32 473415172.
Costs for the freeflynights are 19 euros per minute. Check our windtunnelschool page for more info!

New sponsors !

We are very grateful to welcome two big sponsors to our project: Aerodyne and Argus!

Mountainswooping Switzerland

Jasper is back from a beautiful expedition in Switserland. Sadly the winds were too strong for most of the planned flights, therefore he will go back next month for some more. The images are exceptional and after the next trip, you can expect an astonishing video! Just be patient just a little longer...

PCV stages Belgium

Last weekend the 3rd and last of the PCV freefly stages 2007 was held in Moorsele, Belgium. It was again a great succes! A lot of jumps were made and a lot of progression too. We'd like to thank the PCV, the flamisch federation and ofcourse Mike Vogeleer for inviting us as coaches! It was a great weekend and we'll definitively be back again next year... Cheers to all!

ToraToraMeet Spa 2007

The biggest ToraTora event so far was held this weekend at Skydivecenter Spa in Belgium. The formula: freefly combined with wingsuit, a lot of good organizers, more then enough enthusiastic participants, a perfect dropzone with 2 amazing planes and a party.

The weather forecast wasn’t really promising, but still 65 people showed up for the meet, giving the event a real let’s-go-bigger-next-year boost! For us it was very exciting and we’re thankful to see that so many people that we’ve met during the past 2 years, all showed up at Spa, damn sweeeeet!

Despite the not so perfect weather we still have been able to jump a lot, thanks to the experienced eyes of the Spa-manifest. Even with Friday only doing one load (it was worth the wait though!) we made over a thousand boogie jumps altogether!
 
Jarno and Costijn from Fly Like Brick were there, entertaining the wingsuit flyers and amazing us by shooting up high above the tailgate after exit. Beautiful to watch! Nimmo (BaByLoN), Rob Heron (1st school of modern skyflying), Blokki (Desperados), MarcArnold (Atmonauti Pro) and ourselves were there to entertain the large group of freeflyers and from the reactions we’ve heard we didn’t do a bad job… There were groups of all kinds of different experience levels and a lot of the freeflyers had there ‘first-time-this’ and their ‘first-time-that’. For us it was great to hear the reactions and to see the enthusiasm of all. And then of course there was Martijn, shooting his usual beautiful outside shots and Sarah doing her amazing edits. All together a great team to work with! Sadly Fabian Raidel couldn't make it because of an injury, so we agreed that he cannot miss out next year...

Saturday night was partytime. Sarah showed her day-video, creating the right vibe and DJ’s Baldr and Rocky Pepper knocked the roof off, getting a lot of people moving on the dancefloor untill late and some even untill early…
Not surprisingly sunday started a bit slow and not many people left the dropzone feeling well rested but for sure well entertained!

Thank you to all the participants for the nice atmosphere, jumps and vibes during the meet! And of course a big thanks to everybody from the Skydivecenter Spa staff, Baldr and Rocky Pepper, all the organizers and all who have helped out (thanks Bas!) during the event!

We’ve already been talking about next year and guess what: bigger, better, longer! We’ll keep you posted… See ya’all again at the ToraToraMeetSpa!

Dutch nationals freefly

Last weekend the Dutch nationals were held at Paracentrum Texel.
Just like last year we were the only freefly team ‘competing’… A shame of course and we definitively missed some of the motivating competition tension! After the tight competition in Russia this one didn’t feel or look like anything like that.
We had major difficulties concentrating and focusing on nice jumps. Only the last 2 jumps showed a little bit of that ‘russia-thing’…

Anyway, let’s hope that next year there will be more teams! Especially with the introduction of the national category in freefly. The main difference with the international category is that there will be no head-down elements within the compulsories.
We already heard about 3 teams that have the ambition of competing, any more?

4th place WorldCup freefly!

We just got back from the WorldCup at Stupino, Russia and WOW what a week!
We ended 4th in our first ever international competition and even got the chance, after round 1, to feel what it’s like to be on first place. That’s THE feeling!
In the end there was only 0.1 point difference between us and the Norwegians on 3rd place…That small difference does hurt a little bit, but in the end, that’s competition right!?

And for sure it was a nice and tight competition with our friends from France, the UK and Norway. Nice routines and some really wicked flying!
Also very nice vibes on the ground between all of the teams. We got the chance, thanks to Tommy Hillfiger, Indoor Skydive Roosendaal and De Kabath Vastgoed, to give away a longsleeve to all the freefly participants and thereby meet all the competitors before the competition even started.

Overall we know now that we have to train harder on the compulsories and put more time in our routine, but our scores for technical tell us that we have quite some potential to get on that podium next year. But we will need sponsoring for that extra training so we're working on that now...

For now we would like to thank Indoor Skydive Roosendaal, the KNVvL, Sonic, Gath, café Odessa, Thing.nl, Tommy Hillfiger, De Kabath Vastgoed and Go Fast for all their help and support!

Click here for the results or here to view our first competition jump. A complete compilation of the Worldmeet 2007 will follow soon.

New dates Freefly Nights

The coming Freefly Nights will be held on:
Wednesday the 18th of July.
Wednesday the 15th of August.
Wednesday the 5th of September.

Spasibo DZ Stupino!

We just got back from Russia, where we trained for the European Championships and Worldcup in freefly next august. Together with a new dutch freefly team, Los Chicos Malos, the fantastic help of Sarah, some vodka and the input and efforts of our camera flyer Martijn, we had a great and satisfying training period. Thanks to the help of the very friendly and professional staff of Stupino we were able to make 180 trainingjumps and a nice base for the competition has been set. We’ll be making another 60 trainingjumps the next period and hopefully that will be enough to show a nice routine!

A special thought goes out to our friend Alex, his family and friends. He was the owner of the dropzone restaurant and a very nice person but sadly he died in a car accident while we were there.

New sponsor: Gath helmets

We are proud to announce that yet another great manufacturer in skydive equipment has agreed in supporting our project: Gath helmets.

Freefly Night

Once again a very nice evening with all the usual ingredients and a lot of different nationalities as well! We had flyers over from Germany, Portugal, the UK, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Mokum.
Not bad for a night in the Roosendaal Temple! See you all again the 9th of may!

5th place at the Worldchallenge!

Wow, what a weekend!
We were very impressed by all the tremendous flyers who were competing at the Bodyflight Bedford Worldchallenge this year. Our scores, resulting in a 5th place out of 15, were far beyond our own expectations. Our most important lesson at what was our first real competition were the compulsory rounds where we probably lost our chance for a 4th place on a major brainlock. We will definitively start working on that!

For now we still have to get used to the idea that we got into the top 5 at such a high level competition. A big thanks goes out to Indoorskydive Roosendaal, André & Corrie (for building a tunnel in Holland), and Fabian Raidel, our all time coach, even still helping us at the competition itself!

click here for all the scores

A special on ToraTora at RTL4

Friday the 6th of April, a crew from "4 in het land" a program for RTL4 national television, came to Roosendaal to interview and film us training for the Worldchallenge. It will be broadcasted on monday the 9th of April around 22:30. If we're able to get a copy we'll put that on our site immediately.

Tunnelcamp Bedford

Seven tunneljunkies got their shot during a 3-day freefly camp at Bodyflight Bedford this week. Tremendous progression and all the usual fun, pleasure, British food and pints of lager. The next camp will be held at Indoorskydive Roosendaal somewhere in September. See ya'all there!

Freeflynight 21st of March

Once again a great evening with a lot of flyers and enthousiasm. It is nice to see the progression everyone is making, especially when looking back at the first nights we organised. A big motivation for us to continue along this road!
In the mean time we’re training hard for the worldchallenge which will take place the 7th & 8th of april. Here's a little picture (thanks Ferry!) of one of the moves we are training.
After the Worldchallenge we’ll pick up the freeflynights again, starting on the 11th of april, hope to see you then!

Groundlaunching expedition March

Jasper went on an expedition to the french alpes, flying new routes and especially a lot of different canopies while shooting some very hot images! A short, must-see-movie will follow soon!
Special thanks go out to Henny Wiggers, Erwin van Hooydonk and Hans van Marrewijk for there help with equipment!

Freestyle training Eloy

Sarah and Etienne went to Eloy to find out about the basics of freestyle and of course to enjoy the nice climate, atmosphere and, again, the tunnel. And even after a couple of days Sarah dared to wear a tight suit! A nice base has been set and like Omar says: "there is nothing a couple of thousand jumps can't do"! So still a lot of work to do in this extremely difficult but very interesting and high fun factor-discipline. A short compilation of this trip is to be expected very soon!

Etienne flying again!

The photo speaks for itself... A fast recovery indeed. So we'll be training again next week.

First Freefly Night

A lot of different levels of experience met in Roosendaal yesterday but all with the same enthousiasm! Everyone showed heaps of progression and the excitement afterwards kept people at the bar until two o'clock at night (not for everyone though...). The next morning some got up early, just in time to book the last minutes on the next freefly night, that of February the 7th. Don't worry, there are more to come and otherwise you can allways book us for 1-on-1 coaching!
As you can see Etienne is not flying yet but he will be shortly, and luckily he was there for a short debrief after every minute flown!

Last ToraToraMeet of 2006

BSU/PCT hosted the last Meet of this nice season in a very professional and helpfull way. Unfortunately the weather didn't really help out but then of course we still had DJ Baldr to back things up! With him playing in the hangar, the airportrestaurant and later on in "the Kievit" the right atmosphere was set, despite the clouds that were storming Texel. In this atmosphere Roel Roellofzen was the lucky winner of a real "ToraTora-tombola"! He won a free half hour of tunnelcoaching by ToraTora, congrats!
ToraTora would like to say thanks to all the participants of this years Meets and we hope to see ya'all next year when we're going to grow and redecorate things a little bit! Keep your eyes open for the 2007 calendar and cya all then!

Windtunnel Camps at Bodyflight Bedford

The're finaly coming! As soon as we set the first date in December, the camp was immediately fully booked so we planned a second and a third camp in January and February. You have to be fast though, because the available flying time at the tunnel is filling up fast.

Check out the prices and specs at the windtunnel school section. A must for anyone who enjoys flying!

ToraToraMeet a BIG succes!

Thanks everyone for a fantastic weekend! Because of the smooth coorperation of the Skydive Teuge manifest, everyone was able to make a very large amount of jumps this weekend. Headdowm, headup, Atmonauti, tracking, tracing and tubedives, it was all there! Even some flat exits (which weren't always flat...).
We hope to see you all soon again, at the AIRBOSS 4 fun summer boogie at Soulac for instance (don't forget your suncream & bikini) or else at the BSU freefly jam, or at the special 1on1 ToraToraMeet at Teuge!

Check out the 3 day video's here.

Dutch Nationals

Sadly no other freefly team entered the Dutch national championchips this year. We decided to compete anyway, even with no one to compete against, just for the experience. We're hoping for more enthousiastic freeflyers next year!

Check out 2 of our free routines by clicking on this photo:

Windtunnel skill camps

The first ToraTora windtunnel camps will be held before the end of this year. You can expect the exact dates and skydiver-friendly prices very soon on this website and by means of a newsletter.

Bodyflight Windtunnel Bedford

A fantastic 10 day training session in the windtunnel in Bedford (UK) made us realise that of all 5 tunnels we've flown in (Perris, Orlando, Eloy, Airkix, Bedford), this is by far the best windtunnel when it comes to freeflying! A video compilation of these training days is coming soon...

Sadly these were the predictions for our first ToraToraMeet this year. Together with the rergistered participants we decided to save our money and energy for the next one, and make that one an even bigger party... Thanks for the understanding everyone!

Groundlaunching trips 2007

are being planned together with a French school for parapente instruction. As soon as the exact structure, dates and prices are determined, we will send out a mailing to let you know. So get on our mailinglist if you're interested!

A lot of new pics and video footage!

Etienne's tunnel adventure in Eloy

freefly pics from Sevilla