Irish Parachute Club

Clonbullogue Airfield
Irish Parachute Club
IATA: noneICAO: EICL
Summary
Airport type Private
Serves Edenderry, Portarlington, Rathangan, Kildare
Elevation AMSL 190 ft / 58 m
Coordinates 53°14′58″N 7°7′24″W / 53.24944°N 7.12333°W / 53.24944; -7.12333
Website http://www.skydive.ie/
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
09/27 2,526 770 Grass
No lighting, no fuel

The Irish Parachute Club (IPC) is located in Clonbullogue, County Offaly, in Ireland. It was founded in 1956 by wartime paratrooper Freddie Bond and began operations at Weston airfield in Leixlip, training several teams for international competition. During the harsh winter of 1962, the IPC parachuted emergency supplies to snowbound farms in the Wicklow Mountains.

The club later operated from a number of locations before establishing a drop zone in 1974 at Tokn Grass, west of Edenderry. The first club aircraft, a Cessna 172, was bought in the same year. In 1983, a Cessna 206 was bought and, in 1988, the club moved to its current location at Clonbullogue Airfield.

There have been important developments more recently including the construction of hangars and other buildings, the purchase of a Pilatus PC-6 Porter turbine aircraft, and the setting of several Irish skydiving records including a 51 person formation in July 2008. The IPC operates on weekends and bank holidays, and offers tandem skydiving, accelerated freefall, and static line parachuting training programmes.

Airfield

Clonbullogue Airfield has one grass strip runway running east-west which is 770 m long and 18 m wide.[1]

References

External links

Photographs and video

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/25/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.