Brent Findlay is a laid-back Kiwi who started skydiving in 1982. Since then, he’s become an iconic member of the New Zealand skydiving scene. He met his wife skydiving and raised a family around the sport. (His son, Dale, is also a skydiver.) Today, Findlay is an active formation skydiver who continues to set records, the most recent the 2018 New Zealand Competition Record for Most Points on a 4-Way Formation Skydive. By all accounts, Findlay is just getting better with age!

I was sitting in my easy chair after work watching the local news when I saw an alert on the screen reporting a small plane crash at a local airport. My two business partners, who were brothers, had planned to pilot a small plane to pick up a customer that afternoon, so I was immediately concerned. Later that night, I learned that it was their plane that crashed and that they both had been killed.

I am very concerned about the conclusions stated in “Incident Reports” in the February issue of Parachutist. Although I agree that nobody should skydive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, I find it concerning that so much of the conclusion was dedicated to the issue of the THC content in the jumper’s body when the death was officially ruled a suicide.

The January issue of Parachutist made a big deal about celebrating 100 years of freefall skydiving and Leslie Irvin’s key role in it. I’m not saying he didn’t play a key role, but a recent article in AOPA Pilot and a letter to the editor in its February issue by Bruce Smith, grandson of James Floyd Smith, suggests there is more to the story.

We all know how rigid most organizations and corporations are. Although they say, “We value your feedback,” individual comments rarely go anywhere, and a satisfaction rating just gets tossed into an average for some corporate board meeting. Recently, I wanted to see how USPA reacted to feedback and if it would even change something based on it.