News

October Trip Overview News: results

Posted On 29th Oct 2026
Posted By Skydive
Author Skye Fitzpatrick (President)
Location Gap Tallard, France

This October, Skydive UL hosted our annual beginner's trip to Gap Tallard, France. It was our most successful October trip to date, with incredible students and great weather contributing to the experience. Historically we aim to take 16 people on this trip, however in response to the fantastic interest and sign-ups to the club this year, we increased the number of participants from 16 to 21 people, to include 18 beginners. Students were selected based on attendance and participation in our weekly parachute packing lessons, which meant that everyone was comfortable in packing their own parachutes while on the trip. 
Across 4 days of jumping, we completed a combined over 190 skydives, with beginners averaging more than 8 jumps each. We train students through the Static Line program, where they are dropped at an altitude of 4,000ft and their parachutes are opened automatically via a rope attached to the plane. Notably, we had 4 beginners progress all the way to jumping solo at full altitude (13,000ft), which is phenomenal progression that we have never seen before on such a short trip. We also had 6 beginners that progressed onto "ripcord" where they pull their own parachutes on deployment!One international student celebrated her 22nd birthday while on the trip, and the club gifted her an "AFF jump" (accelerated freefall) where she was able to go up to 13,000ft full altitude with two instructors supervising her, and experience freefall at terminal velocity! Alongside the amazing beginner progression, we had an experienced jumper earn his skydiving B Licence, reaching a total of 50 jumps and completing water landing training.
The success of this trip would not have been possible without our dedicated coaches, Oisín Fitzgibbon (UL Alumnus), and Kevin Hardwick, a British skydiver with almost 29,000 jumps and the highest level of qualification in the field. Kevin told us that we were "the most well-equipped university skydiving club" he had ever encountered, as we own and maintain all of our own parachutes, jumpsuits, and other skydiving gear! The Skydive UL committee are incredibly proud of the club's success and great progress made during this year's October Trip, and hopefully it will inspire many more students to pursue the sport!

Create your account today

Explore everything that UL Wolves has to offer.

UL Wolves does not use any third-party cookies. We only use cookies required for the website to function. No personal data is shared outside of UL Wolves.

By continuing to use this site you are agreeing to the UL Wolves Privacy Notice