Original article posted on skydivemag.com
Operation Enduring Warrior through Joost’s eyes
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Category Archives: Skyventure Arizona
OEW Skydive student Jonathon Blank receives USPA A-License
We would like to congratulate Jonathon on receiving his USPA A-License. Over the course of several visits, Jonathon has trained with AXIS Flight School at Skydive Arizona. He has been on a custom training program to meet all the USPA standards and we are very proud of him and his success.
OEW Skydive Update: Jonathon Blank
Back in September 2021, Operation Enduring Warrior (OEW Skydive) sent Jonathon to AXIS Flight School at Skydive Arizona to get them ready for their custom Accelerated Freefall (AFF) program. Over the course of three days, Jonathon trained with Brianne Thompson, Niklas Daniel, and Joost Luijsterburg, getting him through his First Jump Course (FJC), flying 15 minutes in the Skyventure Arizona wind tunnel, and completing two succesful skydives.
What follows is a pictoral of Jonathon’s progress.
Unfortunately we got weathered out by strong winds and were unable to continue jumping.
We look forward to flying with Jonathon again in early March, completeing his A-Licesene and beyond.
OEW Wind Tunnel Training 2021
Kevin and Jonathon just completed flying with AXIS Flight School at the Skyventure AZ tunnel. Having flown 3.5 hours each over the course of three days, Kevin and Jonathon are part of the January 2021 Operation Enduring Warrior Skydive class (a veteran-founded nonprofit organization). The goal of this training camp was to best prepare Kevin and Jonathon for eventual AFF and skydive training in the near future; aiming for the beginning of next year. Both excelled at learning body-flight in the tunnel and exceeded their own expectations. Before jump training can commence, there are still a few equipment hurdles that need to be taken care of. AXIS Flight School instructors Brianne and Nik feel confident that Kevin and Jonathon will take to the sky without hesitation and are happy to welcome them to the skydiving community.
During their visit, Todd Love was in town to get recurrent and jump, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. Todd joined the gang in the tunnel and was able to provide some valuable insights to Jonathon via demonstration, since they have a similar body compositions.
Photo by Emily Quinn
AXIS Decennial at Skydive AZ!
November 2020 marks AXIS Flight School‘s 10 year anniversary at Skydive Arizona!
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.
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 2010 – AXIS 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.
The Crucible Indoor Tournament
The Crucible is just over a week away!
This fun event, created and organized by AXIS Flight School®, exposes participants to the challenges of competition, while meeting new likeminded flyers. The Crucible is a great learning opportunity for those who wish to take their flying abilities to the next level.
Bring only yourself — everyone flies with everybody.
September 12, 2020 — 5:00 PM at Skyventure Arizona
Click here to register (Limited to 12 slots)
Competition Format
The competition format is an all-play-all tournament, in which each competitor meets all other competitors in turn. Each participant flies with every other participant once. Athletes try to accumulate wins into a final statistic by collecting as many points as possible in a 35 second working time. The Crucible round-configuring-system is a fair way to determine a winner from amongst all participants. One or two bad performances do not jeopardize a competitor’s chance of ultimate victory. Therefore the Crucible tournament fosters a fun and inclusive environment.
All participants are guaranteed to showcase their skills for the entire duration of the event. Final scores of the competitors represent the results over a longer period against the same opposition.
On average a Crucible Tournament takes four hours to complete from arrival to departure. This includes the competitors brief, prep time, short breaks, flight time, and awards ceremony.
Speed Maze
Each flyer showcases their individual flying skills during two rounds called the Speed Maze. The solo flyer races against the clock in order to collect as many points scattered around the tunnel walls as possible. There will be pads on the tunnel walls, numerically sequenced from 1-10, and the competitors have to tag them with their hands or feet in numerical order. Once a competitor tags number 10, s/he repeats the sequence from number 1 until the end of the 35 seconds working time. The points collected during the speed maze rounds are added up and are part of every athlete’s total score.
Helpful Links:
Register (link to Square online store)
Random Draw Generator (select FS, AXIS, and Open)
Quick Tunnel Edit
Location: Skyventure Arizona
OEW in the Eloy Enterprise
Disabled veterans learn how to skydive
ELOY — Two paraplegic military veterans have taken up a new hobby and recently began their journey of obtaining their skydiving license.
Ryan Newell and Chris Wolff traveled to SkyVenture Arizona from Kansas and Texas for their first training session with AXIS Flight School instructors Brianne Thompson and Niklas Daniel.
Newell and Wolff are part of Operation Enduring Warrior, which is a veteran-founded nonprofit organization that offers various programs including skydiving.
The skydiving program offers an unparalleled sense of freedom of flight and endless mental, physical and emotional rehabilitative solutions in what can feel like a completely new dimension in their lives, often becoming a lifelong hobby, advocates say.
“The concept I tell my children all the time is society says I can’t do this. I can tell them to sit back and watch what’s about to happen,” Wolff said. “It lets them know and understand that the only person that’s going to change you is you, and the only person to hold you back is you. There’s going to be a time when you find a wall that stops you, but what is it? Is it an equipment issue, is it a strength issue? There’s something that goes on that you can break through, but it’s not going to be maybe the way society thinks it’s suppose to be done and that’s the biggest thing we have to look at.”
Wolff had some previous skydiving experience with four tandem jumps, but Newell had no freefall experience.
At SkyVenture Arizona, the two veterans spent many hours in the wind tunnel learning the basics of how to control their body during freefall.
“It’s amazing,” Newell said. “You’re free. It’s like nothing else in that moment matters, it’s just you and the wind. It’s the most incredible feeling to be in there and be free.”
Wolff pointed out that in the wind tunnel there was a different sense of freedom compared to when he did the tandem jumps.
“You’re defying gravity when you’re in the wind tunnel floating above it, but you’re by yourself; you’re not attached to anybody,” Wolff said. “You’re in control of your turns, your rotations, everything that you’re doing you’re not relying on somebody else. It’s kind of like having training wheels and you kick the training wheels off and you don’t have them anymore.”
Wolff spent 10 years in the Air Force and went to Afghanistan as an aerospace maintenance craftsman to disarm weapons. Everything went smoothly and he returned home, he went through the redeployment line and during the medical portion of the process where he got his vaccines and updates, he got a flu shot.
“Nineteen days later I woke up paralyzed from the neck down from a flu vaccine,” Wolff said. “I laid in a hospital bed for 2½ years as a C5 quadriplegic. All I could do was move my neck side to side, I couldn’t talk, couldn’t function anything on my own.”
Then one day Wolff slightly lifted his arm off the bed and 11 years later he’s able to stand up and walk with forearm crutches.
Newell spent eight years in the Army and was in Afghanistan riding in a Humvee when his accident happened.
“I ended up rolling over 100 pounds of homemade explosives that detonated right underneath the truck and it took my right leg instantly,” Newell said. “It broke my left leg femur in half … I don’t remember anything from that portion of it — just what everybody had told me. I was the only survivor out of the Humvee and that’s actually what drives me to all the stuff that I do, it’s because I live for my teammates.”
Newell and Wolff spent five days in Eloy during the first session of their training before traveling back home. They both enjoyed learning from Thompson and Daniel and pointed out that they enjoyed the experience with their instructors as well as the whole skydiving community in Eloy.
“They take the time and they focus on each individual need and they’ll tell you if you’re doing it wrong,” Newell said. “They had me flying on my own during the first session of being in the tunnel. I’ve talked to three other drop zones and even though they have instructors there, they didn’t want to take the risk of training an amputee and these guys didn’t hesitate one bit. These two just flat out go, it doesn’t matter what the injury is, if it’s amputation or paralysis, they will find ways to make us fly and there’s other drop zones that won’t do that.”
Wolff added that he’s also faced the same obstacles at other drop zones, where they don’t want to take that chance on him.
“In the adaptive world is where we have a lot of roadblocks,” Wolff said. “Finding people that are willing to take what is considered abnormal, but to us is normal life and pushing the limitations of what was considered the norm to this new type of adaptive skydiving, that’s not really adaptive. We’re a skydiver just like everybody else. Adapting is one of the biggest hurdles in trying to find that person that’s willing to just consider.”
Wolff’s end goal is to be able to continue being an example for other people who are trying to break through barriers and to also change the thought process of those who may unintentionally set those barriers. An added bonus is that he has found an activity that he can enjoy with his daughter.
“I always look at what my daughter can do,” Wolff said. “From playing with a soccer ball to riding her bike or something like that and being able to see something that her and I can do together. That my injury isn’t considered the problem of why we can’t do it but the availability to do it or it’s something we have to work together to do. I don’t have to worry about that barrier anymore.”
Newell’s goal is to eventually have enough people go through the training to establish a skydiving demonstration team.
“We want to be able to show not only everybody here in the U.S. but the whole world with a disabled demonstration team,” Newell said. “To show them that we came to AXIS Flight School and they taught us from Day 1, and go all the way to become a demonstration team of wounded warriors or even wounded individuals in general. Show the world, hey. Get out there and do something. It’s not the disability, it’s the ability.”
OEW January Tunnel video recap
OEW tunnel intensive January 2020
Chris Wolff and Ryan Newell just completed flying with AXIS Flight School at the Skyventure AZ tunnel. Having flown 3.5 hours each over the course of four days, Chris and Ryan are part of the January 2020 Operation Enduring Warrior Skydive class. The goal of this training camp was to best prepare Chris and Ryan for eventual AFF and skydive training in the near future; aiming for March. Both excelled at learning body-flight in the tunnel and exceeded their own expectations. Before jump training can commence, there are still a few equipment hurdles that need to be taken care of. AXIS Flight School instructors Brianne and Nik feel confident that Chris and Ryan will take to the sky without hesitation and are happy to welcome them to the skydiving community.
From left to right: Brianne Thompson, Chris Wolff, Ryan Newell, and Niklas Daniel. Photo by Kay Robinson.
Ryan learning to back-fly.
Chris and Ryan flying together in formation.
Chris working on a leg awareness drill.
Chris receiving instructions from Brianne.
Ryan practicing arm movements to deploy a parachute.
AXIS Flight School 