AXIS Decennial at Skydive AZ!

November 2020 marks AXIS Flight School‘s 10 year anniversary at Skydive Arizona!

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In celebration of our ‘tin anniversary‘, we reflect on some of our favorite highlights and exploits over the past decade and give thanks to our Students, Sponsors, Team Mates, and Skydive Arizona. Without you, we would not be living the dream.

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AXIS Flight School® Sponsors

We also want to give a special shout out to the various skydiving magazines who have spent many hours editing and publishing our work with the community.

Here is to the next 10 years of Awesomeness!

November 2010AXIS Flight School® sets up shop at Skydive Arizona.

April 2011 – AXIS published its first Foundations of Flight article in Parachutist Magazine.

July 2011 – Nik performs his first canopy burn for the music video 4 years by Kid Savant.

September 2011 – AXIS organizes at MOAB.

October 2011 – Nik makes an appearance in the ESPN Body issue with his team mates on Arizona Arsenal.

March 2012 – Nik wins the 10th Annual Freefly Money Meet.

April 2012 – AXIS coaches and organizes at the Skydive Expo in Deland Florida.

May 2012 – AXIS offers canopy flocking courses at Skydive Arizona.

August 2012 – AXIS coaches and organizes in Europe during the summer. Several more trips follow in the future.

June 2013 – AXIS trains the first Operation Enduring Warrior AFF student Todd Love. Many more wounded veterans join the program to receive their USPA A-License and go beyond.

July 2013 – AXIS releases its first version of a free online DrawGenerator for formation skydiving disciplines. More performance tools are added over the years.

September 2013 – AXIS Flight School’s swoop and slide footage airs on VH1’s 40 greatest viral videos.

September 2013 – Nik wins his first US National title in 4-way VFS while on Arizona Arsenal.

December 2013 – Nik is the primary videographer for the Women’s Vertical World Record 63-way over Skydive Arizona.

December 2013 – Nik performs “The Huckleberry”.

February 2014 – AXIS jumps with Cory Remsburg during the Tee it up for the Troops golf outing in Scottsdale, Arizona.

June 2014 – AXIS skydiving video is featured on the TV show Jeopardy.

September 2014 – Nik wins silver at the 21st FAI World Formation Skydiving Championships in 4-way VFS while on Arizona Arsenal.

September 2014 – Nik wins his second US National title in 4-way VFS while on Arizona Arsenal.

September 2014 Arizona X-FORCE competes at its first USPA Nationals at Skydive Chicago. The team went on to compete and medal (2 silver, 3 bronze) at five consecutive USPA Nationals, in addition to medaling at several indoor skydiving competitions (bronze at USIS). AZ X-FORCE participated in two FAI World Cups, earning bronze in 2019. Peak performances for outdoor included: 17.8 average, 24points single highest scoring round. Peak performances for indoor included: 26.1 average, 46points single highest scoring round.

March 2015 Brianne receives the Chesley H. Judy USPA Safety Award.

March 2015 – AXIS Swoop ‘N Slide video footage is featured on GoPro, and is featured on 60minutes.

March 2015 – AXIS releases YouTube video “A Case of the Mondays”.

July 2015 – Nik captures epic video footage with a RED camera for Rockhouse Motion.

September 2015 – Ben Lowe joins AXIS Flight School under the label X-Ratings to offer rating courses.

October 2015 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 3rd at the USPA Nationals.

November 2015 Brianne’s burning parachute jump video goes viral, reaching more than 1M views.

April 2016 PD’s the Dream of Flight campaign.

April 2016 First 3-way XRW night jump over Skydive Arizona.

May 2016 Performance Designs releases the one-year anniversary Valkyrie ad featuring Brianne swooping her canopy through a wall of fire.

August 2016 – Brianne receives the USPA Regional Achievement Award for her involvement in Operation Enduring Warrior.

October 2016 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 3rd at the USPA Nationals.

December 2016 – Skydive Mag publishes Nik’s Body-flight Theory paper in four installments.

February 2017 – Nik’s aerial photography is featured on FOX 10 News.

March 2017 – Nik receives the Chesley H. Judy USPA Safety Award.

April 2017 – AXIS installs a personal weather station as Skydive Arizona and broadcast info online for locals.

April 2017 – AXIS coaches placed 3rd with their player coach team X-Defy at the iFly Virginia Beach Indoor Nationals in 4-way Formation Skydiving.

August 2017 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 4th at the 21st FAI World Cup in Germany.

September 2017 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 2nd at the USPA Nationals.

September 2017 – Brianne sets World Female Performance Record, as well as North American Female Competition and Performance Records in Speed Skydiving.

February 2018 – Brianne and Nik receive their pilots license (ASEL).

March 2018 – AXIS collaborates with the IBA to produce video tutorials.

March 2018 – Nik receives his IBA Trainer Level 4 sign off.

September 2018 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 2nd at the USPA Nationals.

January 2019 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 3rd at the USIS Nationals.

July 2019 – AXIS published its 100th Foundations of Flight in Parachutist Magazine.

August 2019 – AXIS introduces its Merit System.

September 2019 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 2nd at the USPA Nationals.

October 2019 – Brianne is the first American to medal in FS and VFS at the same World level competition.

October 2019 – Arizona X-FORCE takes 3rd at the 22nd FAI World Cup in Eloy.

December 2019 – AXIS collaborates with Good Goblin Games to produce the AXIS Skydiving App.

September 2020 – AXIS hosts its first Crucible Indoor Tournament.

October 2020 – AXIS builds a home studio to produce high quality educational videos.

November 2020 – AXIS continues to support the OEW Skydiving project.

Fly Smart. Train Hard.

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Photo by Samantha Schwann

Being competitors at heart, Niklas and Brianne do their best to improve on a daily basis. This applies not only to competitions, but also their business and life’s work – AXIS Flight School. AXIS has gone through an incredible online transformation, which could be called a “Cyber Grand Re-opening”. These changes have been taking place behind the scenes for over two years.

The AXIS website has always been packed with lots of useful tools and information. In order to make the site more user friendly and to keep up with the times more than a facelift was needed. In fact, we started over. Major improvements include a color coded menu system which is easy to navigate, condensed information on every page, and not to be overlooked – The AXIS Skydiving Repository. Here we developed a digital sorting system that categorizes all or our articles and reference materials for faster recall. Now users can search for categories such as solo skills, canopy, camera, and much more to find what you are looking for.

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In addition, AXIS Flight School now uses sig.ma, a platform on which you can keep track of accomplishments, IDs, licenses, merits, etc. in a digital form. This allows us to send merits to students who have demonstrated their proficiency to our AXIS Coaches™ and acknowledge their achievements. Available Merits are displayed at the top of each web page, and their colors correspond to the new menu system.

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Our online tools are still available to all for free. All AXIS dive pool images, Draw Generator, and ChronoPrism have all been updated with the new 2019 formations.

AZ X-Force takes 3rd at 2019 USIS Nationals!

imagehandlerwithresize.ashximg_5880The 2019 US Indoor Skydiving Open National Championships were held at iFly Virginia Beach on January 11th – 13th. Arizona X-Force attended its first indoor competition with its current line up established early last year. Some of the same teams competed at last year’s USPA Skydiving Nationals: SDC Core, Army Golden Knights, SDMW Chemtrails, and Collective Pitch.

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Arizona X-Force by Ray Kubiak.

 

Arizona X-Force had a strong showing with two new personal bests: Highest indoor average of 26.1 points over 10 rounds, and single highest scoring round of 46 points in 35 seconds. Please click here to view the competition videos.

 

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Results by intimescoring

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Statistics by intimescoring

The team’s next major competitions will be the USPA Skydiving Nationals in Reaford, NC at the end of September, immediately followed by the FAI Skydiving World Cup in Eloy, AZ in early October, which the team qualified for at last year’s nationals.

The USIS draws were powered by the AXIS Flight School Draw Generator, which was used for all disciplines (Vertical Formation Skydiving and Dynamic).

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USIS 4-way VFS Open draw powered by AXIS Flight School Draw Generator

Day 2 Live feed recording / rounds 1-8 (VFS starting at 11:00:00)

Day 3 Live feed recording / rounds 9 and 10 (VFS starting at 2:50:00)

AXIS collaborates with IBA to produce new online instructional videos

AXIS Flight School is excited to announce the release of a new line of online instructional videos. These 19 videos cover the entry levels of the International Body Flight Association‘s flight progression, which can be located on the IBA’s Skills page. Niklas Daniel and Brianne Thompson demonstrate the various body-flight maneuvers at the iFly Austin wind tunnel.

 

The AXIS Flight School Draw Generator 3.5 is online!

Created for competitors by competitors, the AXIS Flight School draw generator isScreen Shot 2017-08-27 at 6.06.48 AM already being utilized by the world’s top competitors and coaches. It is free to use by anyone, no sign up required, and has proven to be a great tool for competitors who wish to create a quick random draw for training purposes, or to visualize.

With competition teams and their coaches in mind, AXIS Flight School has taken the draw generator one step further. In addition to creating randomly generated competition draws for FS, VFS, MFS, XF, and CF*, coaches can now utilize the new «Training Camp» feature. This feature functions like a digital white board and lets coaches create a series of rounds from scratch, using any formation in any combination and as often as they need for a specific training purpose. Manually generated draws, like random competition draws, can be saved as PDF and sent out to team mates or students, for them to prepare for or to visualize.

Draw Generator 3.5 is mobile friendly and can be accessed at http://drawgenerator.axis.tools/.

Other features include:

–       Updated formation images for all freefall, tunnel, and canopy disciplines.

–       Easy access to the current competition rules and images.

–       FAI:IPC / USPA, IBA, NSL, CISM, USPA** collegiate disciplines which require a random draw generator (sky and tunnel).

–       Selecting different skill levels (e.g. open, advanced, etc.; when available).

–       Selecting different tunnel sizes (12, 14, or 16 feet; where applicable).

–       Saving any draw as PDFs (a detailed and a summary version are available).

*           FS = Formation Skydiving, VFS = Vertical Formation Skydiving, MFS = Mixed Formation Skydiving, XF = Cross Formation Skydiving (Canopy and Wingsuit; by AXIS), CF = Canopy Formation
**           FAI:IPC = International Parachuting Commission of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, USPA = United States Parachute Association, IBA = International Bodyflight Association, NSL = National Skydiving League, CISM = Conseil International du Sport Militaire

2017 iFly Virginia Beach competition

On April 22-23rd, iFLY Virginia Beach hosted the first meet of the 2017 IBA series. This competition acted as the US Team Qualifier for the World Championships in Montreal in October. AXIS Flight School‘s Brianne Thompson and Niklas Daniel took part in the event, competing in both the 4-way FS and 4-way VFS categories in the open class.

4-way FS: Competing under the name “X-Defy”, which is a combination of two team names: X-Force and Defiance, Nik and Brianne competed with local Arizona skydivers Cris and Joe Howard.

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With only 3 hours of tunnel training over the past few weeks, the team finishing the meet with a 18.3 average over 10 rounds, placing 3rd.

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iFLY VB 2017 4-way FS open podium

4-way FS open scores:

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17990906_1367386066664417_6862929016996842220_n.jpg4-way VFS: Arizona X-FORCE managed to increase its competition average considerably since the XP Championships, just two month earlier – jumping from 21.3 to 23.7.

Unfortunately the team took a severe blow in round 3, loosing its 2nd place standing and dropping to 4th, which it could not recover from. In the end, Arizona X-FORCE lost the podium by 1 point to team Arsenal.

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4-way VFS open scores:

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VFS Rounds 1 and 2

FS rounds 5 -10, VFS round 3 starts at 1:14:55

 

 

Awards

Congratulations to all the teams that took part in this awesome event, and thanks to all of our sponsors for their continued support! Our next two major competitions will be the Skydiving World Cup (7-13 Aug) in Saarlouis Germany, followed by the USPA Nationals (20-23 Sep) at Skydive Perris California.

 

 

Battle of the Blades at iFly Seattle

dbXpXtpuQKuGuOF8Nbs1qg.jpgOn December 8-9, AXIS Flight School and Arizona X-Force attended the indoor skydiving competition “Battle of the Blades” at iFly Seattle, Washington.

 

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Nik and Brianne (AXIS) during the 2-way VFS competition.

This was the the 3rd and final stop of the 2016 IBA (international body flight association) competition tour. The event was streamed live online where anyone could watch the athletes compete in their respective events.

Disciplines included: 2way FS, 4way FS, 2way VFS ,4way VFS, D2W, D4W, Freestyle, and Freestyle Junior.

The following words are by the IBA.

2way FS

The meet kicked off Thursday afternoon with 2way FS, with 4 teams in the #battleoftheblades – from professional skydivers Axis to pick-up team 11-year-old Elijah and Sally. Axis ultimately scored the gold medal, whereupon they decided to kindly donate their winnings to second place winners, Team Squared, a pair of teenage twins out of iFLY Sacramento.

2way VFS

2way VFS, the 3-time most popular event at IBA meets, where 17 teams competed across all 4 classes. Team Blue Knees won Rookie with a 16.5 average, Intermediate gold was captured by Brad & Stryker with a 15-point lead, Advanced was won by Natalie & Leecoming in with exactly 100 points after 6 rounds, and Open was nabbed by the indisputable champs Josh & Mikey of CollectiveCollective also took gold at the Rosemont meet, however their total increased by an impressive 42 points in Seattle.

4way VFS

4way VFS also featured 4 teams, with Arizona XForcegrabbing the gold with a total of 166 points, 41 more points than 2nd place team Pantene Cartel and exactly 100 points over third place team Kill Bill.

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AXIS completed the 2-way VFS discipline with a 23.5 average, while Arizona X-Force finished the 4-way VFS category with a 20.75 average.

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For all competition scores, please visit the In time scoring website.

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