Skydivers find friendly skies in Roanoke Valley

Hank Dewald, Herald Staff Writer

ROANOKE RAPIDS — It meant money for local businesses, jump time for skydivers, support in the fight against breast cancer and leads to the ultimate question — Will they come back?

Nearly everyone who took part in the Thanksgiving weekend “Boogie” event at the Halifax County Airport were out-of-towners bringing with them support for their sport as well as the community.

Roanoke Rapids skydiver Pete Luter reports more than 100 people took to the sky during the four day event.

“Seventy-five or 80 would have made me more than happy,” said Luter, who was thrilled to find out the final tally was more than 100 skydivers. He said the final numbers on how much money was raised for Breast Cancer Awareness would not be known until a meeting of the group in a few weeks.

“The majority of that money raised came from a special meal the group had one night, where all proceeds went to the charity,” Luter said. “Plus any donations people wanted to make in addition to the meal,” he added. “We’ll know that in a few weeks.”

Luter also reported there were no injuries during the event and only one scary incident that involved a skydiver who had to cut away her main chute and deploy her reserve chute.

She later told Luter she had made an error in judgment, and never really needed to cut away her chute. “She couldn’t un-stow her right steering handle and that put her into a spin. She realized later she could have reached in and pulled the handle out, but she did the proper thing when you go into a spin. It was a big learning experience and now she knows what to do next time something like that happens,” Luter said.

 The only other incident during the first day of the event involved jumpers being turned loose too early, which caused them to land out from the airport. “There were only three of them that didn’t make it back to the airport and that was due to leaving the airplane too soon. There were 35 to 40 mph winds aloft, so the plane should have held them until they were well past the airport,” Luter said. “Once they figured that out, there were no more problems.”

Wingsuit flyers      loved the Valley

Luter has always been a bit of a daredevil and his latest hobby involves a new variation of skydiving called wingsuit flying. Even though he was the man in charge of the event, Luter did take every opportunity to fly with the five other wingsuit flyers who attended.

Wingsuit flying is the art of flying the human body through the air using a special jumpsuit, called a wingsuit, it shapes the human body into an airfoil which can create lift. The wingsuit creates the airfoil shape with fabric sewn between the legs and under the arms, and acts much like a flying squirrel, to slow the vertical descent and allow forward motion.

The suits look loose and floppy on the flyers as they walk to the plane, but once the flyer jumps, high speed air enters special chambers sewn into the suit that inflate and form the human body into a wing.

 “I was pretty busy the entire weekend, but I did get to make five flights,” Luter said. That was his only regret for the entire weekend, that he didn’t get to fly more. “On any normal boogie weekend, I’d fly probably 12 to 15 times, so I was a little disappointed about that, but it was more than worth it to hear my friends talking about how beautiful it was seeing the lakes and the city around my town.”

Luter said wingsuit flying is in a “tremendous state of evolution,” with new suits being designed and tested almost monthly. He is on his fourth suit now, and hasn’t even had a chance to try his newest, which is the latest and most high performance on the market presently. “The new one will out-fly anything on the market, but I haven’t even tried it yet.”

Will the             skydivers return?

If the group has their say, they will come back. Everyone polled said they loved jumping here in the Valley. “The lakes were just beautiful and everyone I’ve met has been wonderful,” said one jumper from Raleigh. “I’d love to make this our new home. It’s just as close as Louisburg was.” (Louisburg was the groups previous home “drop zone”).

Luter agreed that the old airport would make a perfect permanent drop zone if an airplane could be arranged. “With a group this large, you really need a large airplane to make it worthwhile, and that is the problem,” said Luter. “Big airplanes aren’t cheap.”

The CASA C-212 airplane the group leased for the event is owned by the group that bought the Louisburg operation. “I’ve been talking to them about using the plane here again, but they are not sure this area could support it and, since they lease their planes to the military, he couldn’t always guarantee an airplane. The military comes first,” said Luter.

“I do feel strongly it will happen again, but I’m not sure about making it a permanent thing here. We will have a post-event committee meeting to discuss everything and I’m sure that will come up,” he said.

“I have spent the better part of today gathering information. I’ve talked to a lot of people, so I’ll just say the jury is still out. I do know that we at least broke even this weekend and I’d say we actually made a little money, but we won’t know for sure until the committee meets in a few weeks,” Luter said with a smile.