Freefly 100 — Establish freefly foundations

Application

• Covers the ground knowledge and foundational air skills to enter freefly and to conduct solo freefly practice safely: the freefly gear audit.
• Corking and speed-differential theory.
• Exit order and separation logic.
• Breakoff doctrine.
• The solo protocols (the static-turn protocol, knowledge here, flown and assessed in HU101/HD101, solo position rules, the solo end-of-jump protocol (no tracking on a solo), dual audibles and progressive altitude assurance).
• Tunnel-to-sky transition discipline.
• The freefly incident taxonomy as case studies.
• Back-fly control.
• And the vertical recovery position to reflex standard.

Applies to skydivers entering freefly from belly flying and to tunnel-trained flyers converting to the sky. This is the universal entry unit of the freefly curriculum, every FFP track (Head-Up, Head-Down, Angles, Dynamic) builds on it.

Environment: sky, with tunnel drills as preparation and as an evidence accelerator for the back-fly and recovery skills.

Supervision (scaffold stage): coach-briefed and coach-observed, the flying itself is solo or with a coach as a passive reference; this unit precedes all relative freefly work.

Pre-requisite units

None, FFP-F100 is the on-ramp to the catalog. Entry expectation (guide): a national licence with demonstrated belly competence, tracking and deployment discipline, the “basic survival skills”. RPL route for experienced entrants: see the RPL evidence set below.

Elements and performance criteria

1. Plan the jump

1.1

State the jump's single declared objective and success criteria.

1.2

Plan the working heading 90° to jump run, naming the perpendicular ground references to be used for drift checks.

1.3

Confirm exit order and separation with the load using ground-covered logic (guide: freefly exits after belly groups when jump run is into wind; separation from ground covered by the aircraft, never a fixed second count).

1.4

State the breakoff/end-of-work altitude (guides: ≥5,000 ft up to a 4-way; ≥5,500 ft for 5 or more, most modern jumpers plan 5,500 ft for any freefly group and will generally not accept 4,500 ft), the deployment altitude, and the hard deck.

1.5

Brief the solo protocol for the jump: the positions permitted, the static-turn plan, and the cork-recovery response.

2. Prepare

2.1

Complete the freefly gear audit on own equipment against the published checklist (hand-deploy BOC or pull-out with tight pouch, bridle fully covered, tight riser covers and pin flaps, closing loop condition, secure cutaway and reserve handles, leg-strap bungee, snug harness and chest strap, secured suit not covering handles, hard helmet, goggles, visual altimeter, AAD recommended).

2.2

Confirm two functioning audibles, set to the briefed altitudes, before boarding any solo freefly jump, regarded in this curriculum as mandatory best practice: an audible is a hidden device that can fail silently, a group provides altitude-awareness redundancy, and a soloist has none.

2.3

Rehearse the vertical recovery position on the ground, five repetitions eyes-open and five eyes-closed, without correction on the final set.

2.4

Check own pins, handles and BOC in the aircraft before exit, restating the jump run.

3. Perform

3.1

Exit and establish a stable neutral back-fly within 5 seconds of leaving the aircraft, eyes on the coach (flying belly-down as the visual reference).

3.2

Maintain heading ±45° and level with the coach for 10 seconds in the neutral back-fly.

3.3

Perform a 360° back-fly turn in each direction, stopping on the spot within ±45° of the start heading (finishing in the same quadrant), returning eyes to the coach and maintaining level.

3.4

Barrel roll from the back to belly, keeping the coach in sight on completion.

3.5

Follow the coach through the fall-rate range, the coach moving from belly through fast-knees to sit-fly speeds, staying on level on the back throughout (back-fly is the recovery position for both head-up and head-down, so its usable speed range is deliberately large: there is no net in the sky, and staying on level is how range is proven).

3.6

Adopt the vertical recovery position immediately on the briefed coach signal or on any loss of control, resuming work only when stable.

3.7

Check altitude at least every five seconds and after every manoeuvre.

4. Complete

4.1

Initiate breakoff at the briefed altitude (within −0/+300 ft), ceasing all working manoeuvres.

4.2

End the jump per the briefed protocol: with a coach or on any group jump, transition to a track 90° from jump run, washing off vertical speed before reaching deployment altitude; on a solo jump, end the work without tracking, turn 90°, pause, recover to back-fly, slow down, then transition to a belly orientation, dissipating speed over at least 1,000 ft before deployment (a soloist's movement risks are already the dominant hazard, so adding movement at breakoff is unnecessary risk, movement at breakoff belongs in formation jumps, where it is practised and needed).

4.3

Deploy at the planned altitude after checking airspace above, below and behind.

4.4

Fly the agreed canopy separation plan.

5. Review

5.1

Debrief against the declared objective using video.

5.2

Identify one fault and its correction for the next jump.

5.3

Log the jump with a reflection on what was learned, naming the unit and skills assessed (e.g. "FFP-F100 skills assessment"), plus criteria results and equipment serviceability notes, including both audibles.

Bold criteria are safety-critical. The Freefly Project writes education, not regulation, bold marks the criteria where the risk case is strongest, and within FFP-assessed courses they are held as strongly recommended best-practice standards: a coach should not sign the unit off while a bold criterion sits at Not Yet Satisfactory, however good the rest of the flying.

Foundation skills

• Briefing and load-negotiation communication (exit order, separation, opening areas).
• Altitude, speed-differential and separation numeracy.
• Planning and organising (jump plan, gear audit sequence).
• Self-management under stress (reflexive recovery, altitude discipline after tunnel blocks).
• Technology management (audible configuration, altimeter cross-checks).
• Video self-review.

Performance evidence (suggested sufficiency — adjust locally)

Ability evidenced across at least 6 sky jumps applying this unit’s full plan–prepare–perform–complete–review cycle, of which at least 4 include the back-fly air-skill criteria (3.1–3.7).

Tunnel time (suggested guide: 10+ minutes of back-fly covering the same standard, neutral, fall-rate range, heading control, plus the recovery-position drill) may substitute for up to 2 of the skill-development jumps, but not the assessment jumps.

Evidence should span at least two different days/conditions, include at least 2 consecutive jumps meeting all criteria without coach assistance or prompts, include one unassisted freefly gear audit on a rig seeded with at least one discrepancy which the candidate identifies, and show the vertical recovery position demonstrated on every assessment jump, all within a recommended 6-month currency window.

These numbers are a guide to how long it might take, not a gate, competency over numbers (Mason Corby’s mantra): sign off when the flying meets the standard, and adjust for the individual and local conditions.

Knowledge evidence

Verbs scaled to the 100 (Stability) tier (state / describe / explain / identify):

• Gear: state the items of the freefly gear audit and explain why each matters at freefly speeds, including that a leg-strap-mounted pilot chute is an extreme hazard (SIM 5-2.C), that “freefly friendly” is not enough and the BOC must be genuinely tight (premature head-up pilot-chute deployments happen fast, ASM 96 p.33), and that most manufacturers do not rate containers for deployment at freefly speeds (ASM 96 p.33).

  • The premature-deployment failure mode is the single most repeated freefly gear failure on the Australian record, and it recurs across a decade with a consistent pattern: a worn or loose BOC / spandex pouch, a hackey or pud dislodged during dynamic body positions, a closing loop left too long, a Velcro failure on the cutaway handle during vertical body positions, and a bridle snag during a linked climb-out:
  • ASM 55 p.30.
  • 57 p.61–62.
  • 74 p.65.
  • 77 p.33.
  • 78 p.34–35.
  • 81 p.30.
  • 83 p.25.
  • The coaching takeaway: sit and head-down orientations load the container differently than belly does, so a retainer that is invisibly worn on belly jumps fails on freefly jumps, and hire, borrowed, or worn gear (particularly a tired spandex pouch) is the recurring root cause, so a gear audit that would pass a belly jumper is not sufficient for a freeflyer.

• Corking and speed differentials: explain corking as a sudden decrease in velocity relative to others (typically ~280 km/h / 175 mph vertical to ~190 km/h / 120 mph belly, SIM 5-2.E), state typical head-up speeds (220–260 km/h and beyond, APF006 6.1), and explain why contact at that speed differential can be catastrophic and why cork-proofing precedes any group freefly (APF006 Part 4).

  • This hazard has a long, dated Australian pedigree: corking was named as a specific freefly danger in the APF member magazine’s safety column as early as 2009, “a sudden reversion to a flat position and loss of vertical speed,” with the note that freefly collisions can be fatal or leave a jumper unable to deploy (ASM 45 p.63), so this is settled long-standing doctrine, not a modern assertion.

• Recovery position: describe the vertical recovery position and explain why it makes head-up the recommended first vertical orientation.

  • Back-to-earth, feet close together, knees toward chest, arms out to the sides and slightly back, APF006 4.2.

• Breakoff doctrine: state the breakoff guides, ≥5,000 ft up to a 4-way and ≥5,500 ft for 5 or more, noting that most modern jumpers plan 5,500 ft for any freefly group and will generally not accept 4,500 ft.

  • For head-up groups ≥5,500 ft minimum and ≥6,000 ft for 6 or more, with 10+ being advanced flying where breakoff altitude is the leader’s risk decision and higher should be considered, because head-up breakoff is measurably inefficient: less horizontal power, no glide-ratio gain moving into breakoff, and altitude lost transitioning to head-down, and note the orientation rule that data actually drives.
  • Distinct from the altitude floor: a head-up breakoff cannot buy separation in a group of 6 or more, so flyers should be head-first by ~6,500–7,000 ft (taught and applied in FFP-AN202).
  • Separation at least 1,000 ft above planned deployment.
  • Explain the practice and why it works: track 90° to jump run, progressive track, wash off vertical speed before deployment, clear airspace above/below/behind, barrel-roll airspace check only if smooth and reliable, and if directly above someone at breakoff height and safe to deploy, pull, do not try to out-track them (APF006 3.3; SIM 5-2.E).
  • Jake Carlton’s GPS data, skydivemag 2026: ~268 ft/1.4 s head-up slow and ~392 ft/2.7 s head-up fast vs 690–1,165 ft head-down in a 6-way model.

• Exit order and separation: explain why faster-falling freefly groups exit after slower belly groups when jump run is into wind, why separation is based on ground covered rather than a fixed count, and why freefall time is ~20 s shorter from 13,000 ft.

  • Note that movement groups (tracking and angle jumps) do not slot into the belly-then-freefly ladder but follow their own exit-order ladder based on lane geometry, covered in the movement-jump units (APF006 3.2; SIM 5-2.E).

• Solo protocols (the two solo risks and their treatments, the project’s coaching doctrine):.

  • Risk 1, drifting into the next group’s column. Describe the treatment ladder: a partner reference is only partially effective (both can drift together).
    • Facing off jump run is only partially effective (jump-run awareness in a freefly orientation is an advanced skill).
    • A consistent slow static turn is the most effective treatment.
    • Explain the load-bearing rationale, containment: a drive input is body-fixed, so a held heading points any residual drive the same way all jump and drift accumulates without bound (into the next column), whereas a continuous closed turn points that same drive through every direction so it integrates to roughly zero net displacement.
    • Geometrically bounding drift to about one carve-circle and keeping the soloist in their own column.
    • Note the turn must be continuous, a paused or uneven turn reopens the circle.
    • Define “static” by ground track: the flyer’s track over the jump should trace a small circle or tight cluster, not a straight line walking off in one direction.
    • State the cork response: return to back-fly → rotate 90° → transition again → resume the turn.
    • Wind caution: a ground reference shows common-mode wind drift plus the flyer’s own drive combined, the whole airmass (and every group) drifts downwind together, so common-mode wind drift is not to be “corrected”.
    • Correcting it forces real drive into the airmass toward the next group.
    • The static turn is safe because it references the airmass, not the ground.
    • (The static turn itself is flown and assessed in HU101/HD101, knowledge-only at F100.).
    • Secondary, not the main reason it works: a drive can also become more noticeable during a turn, a small centripetal effect and a changing sight-picture, but this is weak at the slow rates prescribed, so treat it as a detection bonus, not the argument.
  • Solo position rules: describe the three head-down positions, straddle, shelf and daffy, all acceptable within the HD curriculum.
    • Explain why solo head-down should be flown daffy, framed as FFP a considered project position.
    • The argument: (a) a shelf has both legs behind with nothing staged to arrest a forward drive, so a bump or input builds a large forward runaway into a back angle.
    • Daffy stages a front leg as a built-in backstop the flyer can load to stop that runaway.
    • (b) straddle is fore/aft drive-neutral by symmetry, but its stated recovery from any disturbance is a transient uncontrolled moment that resolves into daffy, and on an unmonitored solo that transit is the cork risk, so gating to daffy gates to the position straddle already falls into under load.
    • (c) one known position simplifies solo self-monitoring (the soloist is their own only reference).
    • Concede daffy’s limits honestly: it is too powerful near the envelope edge (straddle gives finer high-speed control, mastery is all three), and its front leg is itself the turn generator (APF006 §7.5.3), so the honest claim is concentrated, consciously-commanded single-surface authority with a staged backstop, not that daffy passively “resists carving”.
    • Before a first solo head-down jump the flyer should demonstrate daffy ability, evidenced by tunnel video of a stable head-down daffy with turns, or a coach-observed stable static daffy hold and a slow static turn.
    • State that solo head-up is sit or recovery position with a turn only, no standing solo (a stand can generate large drive).
    • Not an APF rule, APF006 does not gate solo head-down by position and its own beginner guidance is straddle-shaped, so this is a conscious, argued divergence.
    • The tunnel is an accelerator, not a requirement: head-down can be learned entirely in the sky.
  • Solo end-of-jump protocol (no tracking on a solo, orientation-generic): explain why a soloist ends the jump without tracking, turn 90°, pause, recover to back-fly, slow down, transition to belly, deploy, regardless of head-up or head-down orientation: a solo’s movement risks are already the dominant hazard, so introducing movement at breakoff is unnecessary risk.
    • Actual movement at breakoff is practised in formation jumps, where it is needed.
    • Note the 90°-turn-before-re-establishing rule is solo-only doctrine, distinct from a group breakoff track (flown and assessed in HU101/HD101).
  • Risk 2, audible failure (low-probability, silent, unsurvivable tail). Characterise the risk honestly: an audible failure is low-probability, what earns it a doctrine is its shape, not its frequency: it is silent (no warning it has happened) and its tail is unsurvivable.
    • Explain that a group provides an inherent altitude-awareness backstop (one audible fails, the flyer sees the others break off and follows) and that a soloist loses it and is down to a single device, but fence that argument: it explains why the solo case removes a backstop, it is not a licence to rely on other people’s devices.
    • Every flyer runs and checks their own audibles to the full standard, and offloading altitude awareness onto “someone will break off and I’ll follow” is a diffusion-of-responsibility hazard where no one is actually the reference.
    • State the treatments: two functioning audibles should be regarded as mandatory best practice before any solo freefly, and, where practical, two different models (or at least different battery states/ages) so a single common-mode cause (shared firmware quirk, shared battery-life curve, cold-soak) is less likely to silence both.
    • tone discipline, know each alarm’s tone cold and confirm against visual altitude before any unplanned deployment, because two audibles do nothing for the corpus’s own live failure, alarm misidentification (the ASM 111 case in the incident taxonomy below), and more devices means more tone-confusion surface unless each tone is known.
    • And progressive altitude assurance throughout freefall is recommended (e.g. a colour-cue visual altimeter or spoken-altitude device).
    • A missed breakoff at head-down speeds can end in an AAD fire beyond the reserve’s flight envelope.

• Tunnel-to-sky (Boag six-point doctrine, ASM 96 p.33): describe all six points, (1) keep the regular annual skydive count alongside tunnel time.

  • (2) expect altitude-awareness decay on the first jumps back from long tunnel rotations, and step the intensity back down (belly jumps, pull higher, fly the canopy).
  • (3) run double audibles plus visual checks.
  • (4) learn traffic in a structured way before big vertical jumps.
  • (5) on exit think gear, pins and jump run, not tunnel moves.
  • (6) genuinely tight BOC, repeated pin checks, and no reliance on container ratings at freefly deployment speeds.

• Incident taxonomy (case studies, for each, identify the hazard chain and state the prevention):.

  Case study	What happened	Prevention theme
  Handle dislodgement on gripped exits	A grip taken on a 4-way head-down exit pulled a jumper’s cutaway handle (main released at deployment; MARD fired the reserve) — ASM 110 p.87; a cutaway handle dislodged on a 2-way head-down exit, jumper deployed the reserve at 5,000 ft with the main still packed — ASM 111 p.74 (the mechanism in the ASM 111 case is not documented as a grip)	Handle protection and grip placement briefed on every linked/gripped freefly exit
  Premature deployment (multi-issue pattern)	The most repeated freefly gear failure on the Australian record across a decade: worn/loose BOC or spandex pouch, hackey or pud dislodged in dynamic positions, closing loop too long, Velcro failure on the cutaway handle in vertical body positions, and a bridle snag on a linked climb-out — ASM 55 p.30; 57 p.61–62; 74 p.65; 77 p.33; 78 p.34–35; 81 p.30; 83 p.25	Retainers invisible on belly jumps fail on freefly jumps because sit/head-down load the container differently; hire/borrowed/worn gear (especially a tired spandex pouch) is the recurring root cause — a belly-standard gear audit is not sufficient for a freeflyer
  Train-exit horseshoe	2-way sit-fly train exit: rig contact with the aircraft lifted J1’s bag off; J2 saw a bag, assumed it was their own premature deployment, cut away and deployed the reserve at ~11,000 ft; J1 rode out the horseshoe — ASM 96 p.30	Exit spacing/door craft so no rig contacts the aircraft; identify whose equipment before acting
  Hybrid harness-stretch reserve fire	At 6,000 ft breakoff a stinger still gripped the chest strap; harness distortion deployed the reserve — ASM 112 p.88	Release grips before breakoff; never load another flyer’s harness near breakoff
  Audible misidentification	A flyer believed their 2,000 ft hard-deck alarm had sounded at ~8,000 ft, front-flipped and deployed immediately; another jumper very close by and slightly above took evasive action — ASM 111 p.74	Know each alarm’s tone; confirm with visual altitude before an unplanned deployment
  Camera wrap	A camera flyer deployed “off the top” of a formation at breakoff; a student also dumped in place → two-canopy wrap and entanglement — ASM 112 p.88	Never deploy above a populated formation; breakoff and tracking discipline applies to camera flyers

• Deployment at freefly speeds: explain why the flyer washes off speed and gets symmetrical before pitching (hard openings and diving line twists; line twists were >40% of malfunctions in one 2022 quarter, ASM 109 p.69).

• Altitude architecture: describe the ground-up method for setting personal altitudes, planned deployment, minimum deployment, minimum cutaway, minimum reserve/AAD activation (Bill Coe, ASM 111 pp.72–73), as the basis for the hard deck stated in criterion 1.4.

Assessment conditions

Sky jumps from a recommended 10,000 ft minimum (APF006 3.2 guide); tunnel evidence is an acceptable route for the back-fly and recovery-position skill criteria where genuinely equivalent to this unit’s criteria, but the assessment jumps, including breakoff, track and deployment criteria, are flown in the sky.

• Video of assessment jumps is required for a valid assessment (coach-flown or outside/ground-to-air video; candidate identifiable). Required equipment: gear passing this unit’s own freefly audit.
• Visual altimeter.
• Functioning audible (two functioning audibles for any solo assessment jump).
• AAD recommended. Conditions within the candidate’s cleared limits for a valid assessment.

Assessor: a freefly coach current in foundational freefly coaching, using the published FFP-F100 checklist with each criterion marked Satisfactory / Not Yet Satisfactory. Knowledge evidence is assessed by structured oral or written questioning against the published case-study set, before the assessment jumps.

Coaching priorities

Deliver in the project’s priority order: Safety → Fun → Learning (curriculum Part A0). Bold safety criteria are held to the best-practice standard described above; the session is designed to be enjoyable, participants choose this expensive hobby, and enjoyment sustains both the student and the sport; debriefs end on a win with one improvement focus.

Deliver ground and air together as one unit, theory in the morning, then structured air work (the flight-101 course pattern). Encourage students to write coach jumps up in their logbook with a reflection on what was learned, naming the unit and skills assessed (e.g. “FFP-F100 skills assessment”), the curriculum gives log entries meaning.

The solo-protocols module is delivered as harm reduction: solo freefly is not encouraged, and coached progression remains the recommended path, the protocols exist for flyers who will jump solo regardless.

Progression doctrine (Mason Corby, discipline-first). From here the flyer branches into a track, and the period coaching wisdom is consistent: choose either the vertical path (head-up/head-down) or the angles/tracking path as your first direction, both reach the same end, and commit to it before switching, doing at least 8 consecutive jumps of the same type before changing discipline so a skill has room to assimilate.

Practise what you cannot do rather than repeating what you already fly well; treat body mechanics and aerodynamics as equally important; and pick one coach and stick with them rather than collecting conflicting inputs. The mark of the right coach is that “a good coach explains why, a bad coach just says ‘this is how it is done’”, the reasoning-first delivery this curriculum is built on (ASM 82 pp.21–22).

RPL evidence set

For experienced entrants (e.g. crested/graded freeflyers or tunnel-trained flyers converting to sky), the following alternative evidence satisfies the same criteria:

• Logbook evidence of freefly jumps (solo and/or coached), showing breakoff/deployment discipline.
• Tunnel records, back-fly sign-off to the IBA Level 2 standard or school equivalent, plus (where the entrant intends solo head-down) evidence of daffy ability: tunnel video of a stable head-down daffy with turns, or a coach-observed stable static position and slow static turn (see the solo position rules).
• Video portfolio, back-fly control and the vertical recovery position, candidate identifiable.
• Challenge assessment, one video-recorded jump against Elements 1–4, plus an unassisted freefly gear audit (with a seeded discrepancy), plus the oral knowledge check on the solo protocols and the incident case studies.
• Holders of a national freefly crest or grade (e.g. Australia the head-up crest/HD; UK FF1/FF2) may credit the air-skill criteria and complete only the gear audit, the solo-protocols knowledge check and the planning criteria, the two-functioning-audibles check for solo jumps should never be skipped: an experienced entrant is just as exposed to a silent audible failure as a novice.

Sources