Meet the Owner

Bram was born in the Netherlands in 1960 and started jumping at a weekend dropzone near the city of Rotterdam called “the Flying Dutchmen.” What was supposed to be a one-time static-line jump, ended up in a life-changing thing. After being a licensed skydiver, he traveled all over Europe, skydiving in various countries, fun jumping, competing, 4-way, and demos, and soon he traveled to Zephyrhills, FL in the late 1980s. That was the first taste of skydiving in America and it tasted really good.

By now Bram had earned a Belgian AFF-I rating. He continued to get Vector tandem rated in Florida and in 1991 he traveled to California to attend a USPA AFF-I course run by Don Yahrling. In December he met Elly in Zephyrhills and they started dating and that is when the great American adventure began. For more than 13 years they traveled the country working as Instructors/Riggers. Atlanta Skydiving Center in Jenkinsburg, GA (Billy Rhodes) Skydive Palatka, Omro, WI, Sky’s the Limit in NY state at the time, Skydive City, FL, Eloy, AZ, Coolidge, AZ AerOhio in Rittman, OH just to name a few. Usually in the northern part during the summer and down in Arizona, Florida, and California in the winter.

It was early ’90s that Bram pursued becoming an AFF evaluator. AFF was our true passion and he wanted to learn and be involved in the certification process. We continued to work and travel and meet all these nice, fun, interesting, great skydivers. The highlight of our year used to be the World Freefall Convention where Bram worked as a Tandem Instructor. Also, a meeting point to reunite with old friends.

Because we traveled to all these AFF courses where Bram contributed as an evaluator he was appointed as Designated Evaluator after he worked at more than 10 courses. That was a huge accomplishment. There were only a few DE’s in the world at that time.

We continued working at dropzones either as full-time staff or part-time passing through during our travels, Working as an evaluator at AFF certification courses and Bram had started to run Tandem certification courses. In 2003 he was appointed by the USPA Board as AFF Course Director and soon after, in that same year, we started running rating courses. The first instructional rating school in the world. It started small scale and soon we decided to change course and teach rating courses full time. SkydiveRatings was born!

Today we are the largest full-time rating school in the world. Skydivers from all over the world come visit us. SkydiveRatings is our passion. Today we have over 13 years of experience in running a full-time rating school. Every day is still a new challenge of making sure we deliver the best course we can. Teaching is Bram’s passion and he gives the gift of learning every day at Skydive Ratings.