Although mainly American, this site has up to date news on what's going on in the skydiving world.

The site has lots of features, news being just one of them. There are also forums, although they aren't booming with writers a fair few contribute, and this is a good place to ask fellow divers questions. Forums are Safety and Training, Skydiving Talk Back, Gear and Rigging, and Photography and Video. Each of these has discussion boards, which can be started by anybody. For example, if you were curious of what mals other visitors to the site have had in their career, start up a discussion board under safety and training with a title, soon your board will be going.

The news is to the point, and is put in very simple terms, which means non-skydivers (or 'whuffos' as they're known as!) can understand most of the news articles. I have seen an article about an FXC 12000 which didn't fire when it should, which said 'the automatic parachute opener the skydiver was wearing failed to go off'. Some may find this annoying.

There are classified ads for those looking to buy 2nd hand gear, I've never bought anything through this site so I can't comment on their reliability.

One feature which can be useful is the DZ (drop zone) listings. The site invites any visitors to join up and list their DZ, it can come in handy should you be going on holiday abroad and looking for the DZ for your jumping, as some of the DZs have been reviewed by visitors to the site, you yourself can review any DZ you've been to, or add your nearest if it isn't there.

One problem with the site is that it tends to focus on the unfortunate news of the sport, which is not good for those considering taking it up. As I look at the 'Latest News' section today, of the ten headlines, here are eight of them:

#'Main Reserve Entanglement Injures Skydiver in Scotland'
#'Inquest told Skydiver Lost Co
ntrol'
#'Skydiver Sues Over Jump that Went Wrong'
#'Plane crash survivor says he's not sure he'll try skydiving again'
#'BASE Fatality in Switzerland - Jumping Suspended'
#'Skydiving Plane Carrying 22 Crashes in Texas'
#'Jan Davis dies at Lodi, California'
#'Fatality at Carolina Sky Sports, Louisburg, NC'

The fact is, skydiving is a dangerous activity, but this site seems to portray it as a lot worse than it really is. There's nothing wrong with encouraging training, training, and more training to prevent incidents, but few lessons are extracted by the site from these stories, they seem to report deaths more than other aspects of the sport. To be fair however, they do have a serious section on Safety which is quite informative and sensible. Under Columns are specific articles, and one of those is also on safety.

The site has a calendar feature, which is easy to navigate. It shows the skydiving events around the world on each date of this year, also you can navigate through the events which relate to specific jumping, such as Freestyle, Skysurfing, Blade Running, CRW, BASE etc.

There is also the option for free e-mail addresses once you have signed up and got your password. There are photographs and galleries.

Overall this is a good site which updates the news very frequently. You can subscirbe to their e-mail newsletter, which basically just e-mails the new headlines every week or two.

Definitely worth a look for skydivers, but those thinking of taking it up beware, the headlines as I've shown above can be misleading of the sport.