Choosing gifts for a skydiver can be difficult if you're not familiar with the sport or the equipment. The specialist nature of the kit, and the fact that certain experience levels are required for some equipment make it difficult to surprise your loved one with a present for their favourite sport. This article aims to provide the non-skydiver with some insight to help you purchase something that will be suitable and useful at any budget.

The table below gives an overview of our suggestions for each budget and each experience level.

Under 50 Jumps

Until a skydiver gets their 'A' licence, they typically rent most of the equipment they use from the DZ, and it's standard for this equipment to be included in the training package. The first items a new skydiver will usually purchase are their own gloves and goggles, and a logbook if one wasn't included in their training course. These are a great choice for a gift, if you know that they haven't purchased these for themselves already.

Once a skydiver achieves their 'A' licence, they will generally want to purchase their own visual altimeter, and will need to start jumping with a small safety knife called a hook knife. Visual altimeters can have analogue or digital displays - most centres train using analogue displays, and it can be a good idea to demo a digital altimeter before choosing to make the switch. If in doubt, stick with an analogue face design, such as the Alti-2 Galaxy, which is the most common analogue altimeter in the UK.

Until 'B' licence (requires 50+ jumps and additional training), skydivers in the UK can only wear an open face style helmet. Some will opt to purchase an open face helmet, whilst others will continue to borrow centre provided helmets until they can buy and wear a full face helmet.

50 - 200 Jumps

The intermediate skydiver can be slightly more difficult to buy for, as they will probably have acquired a certain amount of equipment already, and may be starting to choose specific disciplines within skydiving.

Most initial logbooks hold fewer than 200 jumps, so this can be a good time to get a new logbook. Experienced style logbooks have a little less space for writing each jump, but can log many more jumps on each page. For example, our experienced style logbook holds 10 jumps per page, with 50 double-sided pages - space for the next 1000 jumps!

Protective bags for helmets or other gear they have already purchased can be a good idea, and some of these bags, such as the Cookie Flight Bag, also serve well as general purpose bags, such as for carry on luggage on airlines.

Otherwise, if they don't already own a full face helmet (such as a Kiss or a G4), or an audible altimeter, these are generally very good choices for higher budget gifts.

200+ Jumps

At this stage, skydivers often have specific requirements, desires and brand loyalties, so buying a surprise gift can be especially difficult. Our recommendation would be to ask them what they would like, even if it's at the expense of making it a surprise.

Most skydivers wear gloves (for warmth, grip and protection) which will wear out over time, so they can be a good product to renew if theirs are getting old. Alternatively, something like anti-fog wipes for helmet visors (and goggles) make a great stocking filler at Christmas at a low cost.

If you're looking for something on the higher end, the Dekunu Smart Alti would be the ideal top end gift for a high experience skydiver, with a large visual altitude readout, along with a host of cutting edge GPS and logging features.

Still not sure?

If you want to cover all bases, we offer gift cards which are redeemable against any product or service that we offer - and you can choose any value you'd like from £5 and up.

We also have an easy 14 day returns policy for stock* goods (subject to the usual conditions), which we extend over the Christmas period, to allow any purchases made in December to be returned until 15th January, for store credit or a full refund (less postage).

*If you're not sure of the correct size helmet, we advise purchasing a black (stock) one, which can be returned if it doesn't fit. Other coloured helmets are usually custom items, which fall outside our returns policy.

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We're here to help, so if you've got any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.