Babylon Freefly Team led by Steph Fardel, put together an excellent skydiving skill camp. With more than 20 skydivers from Europe participating during a period full of uncertainties. The Spanish government is restricting all of us, and skydiving activities are also suffering a considerable impact. Due to the current situation the skydiving events at Skydive Empuriabrava are being filled up with locals and other skydivers that live nearby. French skydivers were the majority during the Babylon Skydiving Camp.
What is a Skill Camp
A skydiving skill camp is a much more organized event, focusing on progression, learning, and skill development. There are many different levels of skill camps available. The coaches are amazing flyers with heaps of flying experience. Although you often will need to travel to other drop zones to attend these skill camps.
The registration fees are usually relatively a bit higher at skills camps than skydiving boogies because you will be receiving a lot of focused coaching while flying in small groups. However, these events are incredibly worth the investment. If you are serious about skill development and progression in your flying and flying with others. You would be really will be wise to invest in a good skill camp.
Flying with Babylon
Babylon Freefly is a French skydiving team. The founders, Stephane Fardel and Sylvain Turina, created the team in 1996, and two years later, it became an official skydiving school company. Babylon is one of the oldest free flying teams in skydiving history.
Doing my research, I found out that they became famous because of Sylvain’s flying tube invention. They also won the first official FAI Freefly World Cup in Eloy (Arizona, USA) in 2000. The team who pull that out was Nicolas Arnaud and Loic Jean-Albert.
Babylon FreeFly Skill Camp 2020
My experience with the camp was outstanding. I recommend anyone to come to Skydive Empuriabrava and enjoy the events we have here. Both free flying schools, Babylon Freefly and Fly Warriors have what any skydiver needs to improve their skill level and have a great time.
This skydiving camp was terrific. The Babylon crew Steph Fardel, Josh O’Donoghue, Eliot Pothet and, Mickel Lamy divided the groups by skill level. It helps everyone to be challenged and have more fun. Also, the group’s sizes were different.
This event was a little different from what I’m used to. We kept jumping with the same load organizer (Stephane Fardel) for the entire event, but sometimes we had modifications to the group. The first day we were cruising the marvellous Mediterranean sea right over the Empuriabrava’s canals. The focus was on proximity, flying close to each other. The refinement from the first jump to the last one of the day was beautiful.
Wind tunnel time – fuck bad weather
In the next two days, we have had issues with the weather (boooo). However, we have Windoor Wind Tunnel right next door. Indoor skydiving here we go. We did one hour and a half of tunnel coaching (no extra cost) with two wind tunnel world champions, Eliot Pothet and Josh O’Donoghue. Mister Fardel joined us and helped us have even more fun.
Back in the sky
Once the weather was clear, Babylon Freefly Camp got back in the sky. The last two days of the Babylon Camp 2020 was amazing. Our group was focusing on 6-ways round head down exits and VFS formation during the first day. It was interesting to see how a real-world record head down formation exits a plane. As well as to understand the principals and why they do that this way.
Once our group was able to nail the first exit, we started to understand the feeling and the reasons behind it. Honestly, I didn’t know that this was the the best way to keep heading in a head-down exit.
The second day we had a smaller group, so the focus was 4-way head down round exits with VFS points + angles. The feeling of the exit was even more explicit. We were leaving the plane into a gripped angle that eventually would become a head down base (with minimum rotation regarding the jump run).
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