A cited history
Australian freefly: three decades of scene, records and rules
Australian freefly went from a tutor’s approval in the mid-1990s to an angle event at the National Championships in 2026. This page follows that path through the published record, with a source for each step.
The longest continuous record of the Australian freefly scene is Australian Skydiver Magazine, the national member magazine. It reports on the rules, so the rule documents themselves are the primary source. Everything below is cited to the magazine, or to the published rule book or article, by issue and year. People are named only where the published record names them.
How the rules developed
It took about thirty years. First came the tutor’s approval in 1996, then a single, scarce crest that decided who could fly in groups larger than three. In 2014 the crest became a coach prerequisite. In 2015 the community agreed to split it and to write angle guidelines, and in 2016 separate head-up and head-down crests went live. Angles took another decade to reach competition.
c. 1996
The first tutor era
Jumpers’ recollections date the first formal Australian freefly requirement to around 1996, when head-down flying arrived in Western Australia from the United States. Before you could freefly, a tutor had to approve you. No written standard sat behind that approval.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 75 (2015)
2009
Vertical formation flying enters formal competition
The inaugural national 4-way Vertical Formation Skydiving and Artistic Freefly Championships ran at Sydney Skydivers. Freefly now had its own national competition.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 45 (2009)
2010 to 2013
The single Freefly Crest
Ratings lists from these years show two freefly credentials in use: a Freefly Crest for jumpers and a Tutor Freefly rating for coaches. Few crests were awarded. In 2011 the magazine described the crest as what let its holder jump in freefly groups of more than three.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 55 and 64 (2011 to 2013)
May 2014
The crest becomes a coach prerequisite
Freefly jumpers without a crest were limited to groups of three, so the crest now decided group size. A Freefly Crest became a stated prerequisite for the coach rating, "Tutor" was renamed "Coach", and the freefly training table gained separate head-up and head-down stages. That table led directly to today’s national guide.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 70 (2014)
2015
The crest split, agreed in principle
At the 2015 national conference, the freefly workshop broadly agreed to split the crest into a head-up part and a head-down part. It also agreed that angles, atmonauti and tracking needed national guidelines, starting with a definition of each jump type. The workshop preferred guidelines to a formal rule.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 76 (2015)
October 2015
Minimum requirements for crest and coach
For the first time, the regulations and their schedules set out minimum requirements for both the Freefly Crest and the Freefly Coach rating. Today’s coach pathway grew from them.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 77 (2015)
2016
The head-up and head-down crest split goes live
By mid-2016 the ratings lists showed three crests in use: a general Freefly Crest, a Freefly Crest Head-Down and a Freefly Crest Head-Up. A national train-the-trainer tour ran the first modern community-wide review of the freefly training table. It set the 5,500 ft head-up angle breakoff recommendation still used today.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 78 to 83 (2015 to 2016)
2018 to 2019
Angles enter the framework
A technical directive in December 2018 set out new regulations for tracking and angle jumps. The national beginner freefly guide was rewritten with a new section on tracking and angles. At the 2019 conference, a workshop judged the new arrangements not fully effective and proposed a two-level angle crest. That idea was not adopted, and neither was the 2015 proposal for a leader crest.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 94 and 96 (2019)
March 2026
Angle flying enters the National Championships
Angle flying made its debut at the 2026 Australian Skydiving Championships at Moruya. Teams flew a published dive pool under rules written for modern movement flying, and the judges scored navigation and how well each team held its line of flight.
APF Angle Flying Competition Rule Book (2026); Skydivemag, "Angle flying enters Australian Nationals" (2026)
Records and milestones
Australians appear throughout the world-record lists, and the national scene has set its own firsts. Here is a selection, each reported in the magazine.
2011
A 33-way Australian head-down record was set at Picton on 29 December 2011, the first fully documented national head-down record. The account includes notes on the oxygen system and on how the debriefs were run.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 59 (2012)
2014
The team Focus equalled the Australian 4-way Vertical Formation Skydiving record at the New South Wales State Championships held at Moruya.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 73 (2014)
2015
Nine Australians took part in the 164-way head-down world record at Skydive Chicago.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 77 (2015)
2019
The first Australian head-up formation record, a 16-way, was set at Moruya over the Australia Day long weekend, organised by Focus with national funding.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 96 (2019)
2022
Focus won Vertical Formation Skydiving silver at the World Parachuting Championships in Eloy, Arizona, the best Australian result in the event at the time.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 110 (2022)
2022
Ten Australian women flew on the 72-way and then 80-way women’s vertical world records set at Skydive Arizona in November 2022.
Australian Skydiver Magazine, issue 111 (2023)
People who shaped the scene
Each person here is named for something in the published record: a record, a rating or an article they wrote. The list is in no particular order, and it is far from complete.
- Kim "Scatty" Hopwood organised Australian freefly big-ways through the 2010s, including the 33-way head-down record, and wrote the account of the first Australian head-up formation record in 2019 (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 59 and 96).
- Team Focus (including Kim Hopwood, Tim Golsby-Smith, Kyle Chick and Jimmy Cooper) carried Australian Vertical Formation Skydiving to a world silver medal in 2022 and organised the 2019 head-up record (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 96 and 110).
- Mason Corby ran the national freefly train-the-trainer tour in 2015 and 2016, published a discipline-first approach to progression, and later designed the angle competition dive pool for the discipline’s 2026 National Championships debut (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 80 and 82; APF Angle Flying Competition Rule Book, 2026).
- Cath Comyns and Erica Tadokoro feature repeatedly in the women’s vertical record lists across more than a decade, from a 41-way world record in 2010 to the 80-way in 2022 (Australian Skydiver Magazine, issues 54 and 111).
- Jake Carlton wrote about head-up angle flying and breakoff, using GPS data on separation. Much of the current breakoff guidance draws on those figures (Skydivemag).
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