Lloyd1983

Cliquey, elitist unfriendly to outsiders newbies. I visited Hib sometime ago to use the good unseasonably good weather we were having. I was wary after hearing some awful stories of Hib from other experienced skydivers. Truly awful stories I generally didn't believe them until I saw it for myself. Everybody from students to D certs to CCIs had bad things to say about Hib. So so spotting, Tiny bad landing area, Bad attitudes Cliquey skygods The sky gods being particularly insidious in pointing our their superiority and belittling others. There are horror stories of people asked to do 20-30 consol jumps or taking 60 jumps to complete their AFF courses.....the reason suspected was £££ I thought this is impossible how can this be? I mean its a massive DZ it should be good. I wanted to see for myself if this reputation was justified or not. It really didn't make any sense tbh as on paper it should be a very good DZ, a dornier jump ship. A boat load of instructors for formation and free fly work. Everything you'd want.... Unfortunately it wasn't so... Firstly there stinks of an air of elitism, not a little but the place drips with elitism and cliquey tendencies. I visited with two friends who were A and B certs, I'm a new C cert. Although I was treated ok, my friends were not, the CCI took every opportunity to belittle my friends knock their experience and FF FS coaches they trained under. They will gladly point this out not in a constructive manner but in a overt and barbed manner. Which smacked of a look how good I am, you're nothing. This started the day off pretty badly as it put them in a bad mood. And they waited for several hours for their check out jumps. Before finally being cleared to jump around the end of the day. Which was pointless we might as well have jumped from our home DZ instead. The cliquey nature of the DZ meant my friends spoke to almost nobody at the DZ as the skygods all kept to themselves and looked down their noses at us. I've never experienced this anywhere else other than Nethers that is understandable as they are split between civvies and military. Extreme amounts of Hubris coupled with the way that we were only put on lifts when all the skygods had been manifested and they had a spare slot meant none of us got to jump together. They were concerned about putting all the tandems up without regard to other people. When we did jump twice the spotting wasn't great, and being one of the last out required a lot of riser work to get anywhere near the landing area. About the landing area, the landing area is a small triangle strip of land in a vague triangle shape with a cross and an arrow, you need to be bussed back from this area. The landing area is pretty small and gets filled with traffic because it is so small and the drop loads are big. This IMO is dangerous. Oddly the pros as they call themselves have a much bigger landing area considerably bigger than the beginners field as they put it. The night life is a bit better as they happen to have many events on, however the beer is overpriced and comes right from supermarket multipack cans. Again people stuck around in their small groups without really approaching anybody else. Any attempt to talk to others was generally shunned. Deeply Disappointed, I think I'll stay at Langar thank you very much, even if Dave Hickling has a horrible temper. Even though at Hib Dave is considered an old man stuck in the past thank you very much.

It is said familiarity breeds contempt and I've visited this place a few more times and getting to know the place I have changed my mind about this place. The honeymoon period is over and I saw things properly. The good points I initially mentioned in my review still stand. The Porter is extremely fast and it is turned around extremely quickly a cycle is 4 back to back lifts. The landing area is still huge. The kit for hire is still about the same. They still go up to 14K most of the time anyway. All good things, but this is overshadowed by the negatives. Good things yes but a couple of good things don't make a great DZ. As I realised over the three weekends I spent here. Simply this DZ isn't much fun and I drove away at the end of the weekend feeling unhappy and annoyed. Which isn't the way it is supposed to be at DZs. Its supposed to be something you enjoy and something that makes you happy and feel good. But this place left a bitter taste in my mouth. The reasons for this is that this DZ is spookily quiet, not in terms of numbers but the fact that people tend not to talk to each other much. Initially I thought it might be a bit cliquey since there were obvious groups. People in their own jump suits with 100s of jumps. People in borrowed jump suits hanging together. But lots of people sitting alone not chatting to others and being ignored by others. I reckond cliquey but it's not it's something worse. It's the backstabbers, the haters and the politics. All which make for an unhappy experience so there is a tense feeling around and that for such a DZ they have very very few regulars. Maybe the management will change things but visiting some of their rivals this has been their reputation for a while. It was OK while it lasted.