Look what we found in our drafts! August 2025 we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dave Worman to talk about his skydiving and adventure journeys.
Some people ease into adventure. Dave Worman — better known around the drop zone as “Red” — seems to collect it.
This week’s Feature Friday at Skydive Arizona highlights a jumper who recently hit 700 skydives, has worked on NASA and military defense projects, snowboards, rides motorcycles, works on classic cars, and has taken on adventure races across Morocco, the Amazon, Turkey, Japan, Greece, Croatia, and beyond.
Red started his skydiving journey in 2017 while living in Florida. One day, he saw canopies coming down overhead and had the thought many skydivers can relate to:
“I want to do that.”
He began working toward his A license in Florida and eventually completed it in Utah in 2023. Since then, he has become a familiar face at Skydive Arizona, recently celebrating his 500-jump milestone with the time-honored tradition of getting covered in shaving cream.
For new skydivers, Red’s advice is simple: take it at your own pace.
“Everybody progresses at different rates,” he said. “It’s supposed to be fun. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
That advice comes from experience. When Red first came to Skydive Arizona, he did not know many people. Like many newer jumpers, he was nervous about asking others to jump. He saw experienced skydivers with thousands of jumps, in full suits and in established groups, and he found himself doing a few solos while he got his footing.
At the time of this interview, one of his goals was to become a belly load organizer. Red has now been organizing at SDAZ for several months.
“I want to be one of those people who go find those new people and just be like, ‘Come with me,’” he said.
That attitude says a lot about what makes the Skydive Arizona community special. The aircraft, the weather, the facilities, and the desert views all matter, but the people are what keep jumpers coming back. Red describes the friends he has made at the drop zone as “a bunch of psychopaths,” but the caring kind.
Outside of skydiving, Red’s background is just as interesting. He spent years working with NASA and military defense companies on projects involving lunar space station technology, lunar rovers, lunar landers, deep space technology, and satellites.
As he put it, there may be some fingerprints in space one day.
His helmet even carries a NASA sticker, which he admits can be both a flex and a little nerdy, depending on the audience.
Red’s adventure list does not stop there. He has jumped from helicopters and hot air balloons, ridden camels out to the pyramids, taken four-wheelers through Cappadocia, snowmobiled in Japan, raced a KTM 450 through Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and into the Sahara, and completed the Monkey Run — an 850-kilometer adventure race through the Amazon on tiny monkey bikes.
“It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “But I would absolutely do it again.”
That mindset fits right in at Skydive Arizona.
For Red, the throughline is simple: find something wild and go for it. Whether that means learning to skydive, joining a group at the drop zone, signing up for an adventure race, or chasing a story worth telling, he is the kind of person who does more than talk about it.
He shows up.
We’re stoked to have Red as part of the Skydive Arizona community.