Our Mission

Para Concepts is the Pro Shop, located in the Skydive Chicago main hangar. We are not a subsidiary of Skydive Chicago. Instead, we are an independent business that can offer you much more than a drop zone owner’s side thought. In our store, we can help you purchase everything from sunglasses to your first rig, or any skydiving related product at the industry's best prices while providing excellent service. In our state of the art rigging loft, we can maintain your equipment to the highest industry standards. We design and build custom parachute equipment for your exact needs, keeping up with the latest trends in skydiving. Check out our latest swoop accessories. We may not carry every product from every brand. Instead, we carefully evaluate the market and carry the best products from the best brands in skydiving.

We are one of the few Argus Service Centers in North America. We can provide 4 year checks and other service for the Argus AAD. Para Concepts is the only official Icarus US Support Center, providing Linesets & Relines, Sliders, Repairs, and even Demos.

We are now one of the largest Cookie Composites dealers in North America. We stock most of the Cookie products, including the very popular Black Boxes. We are doing our best to keep stock of new Ozone , Gas , and Atomic helmets, and we are keeping our web site updated to reflect our current stock. Of course, you can always order directly from Cookie in Australia. But, with our local stock, North American customers can usually get prompt shipping, while saving significantly on shipment costs.

Recently, due to popular demand, we have geared up with GoPro products. Their cameras are less expensive than alternatives from Sony or elsewhere, don't offer the greatest number of video options, and yet they can be easily mounted to all sorts of places without too much additional cost. This makes them attractive to the beginning camera flyer with a much smaller investment. We now carry Standard and Hi Definition GoPro Cameras, and associated memory cards, at the same prices as the GoPro web site. If you visit Skydive Chicago, you can purchase these products without the normal shipping costs from GoPro. Otherwise, you can be sure that you are purchasing a product that is intended to be used by skydivers, with sales staff knowledgeable about your needs.

We have shown that we can coordinate the most complex aerial displays, for everything from company events to worldwide marketing campaigns. Whatever your needs, take advantage of our experience and innovative ideas. Our recent client, Clear!Blue won the Global Marketer Diamond Award for Best PR Marketing Campaign in the World for 2005. Despite other companies, including Skydive Chicago, trying to take credit, it was Para Concepts that engineered and coordinated the aerial parachute display, actually dropping a Jeep Commander from 1200 feet for a live marketing campain. ESPN credited us as one of the “Top Ten Plays of the Day”. The exit weight of the brand new Jeep and platform turned out to be, a staggering, 8000 pounds. When you need a complex, technically challenging event, come to Para Concepts. Despite what others might claim to offer, we have proven that we can deliver. We have the engineering and skydiving team to design the most complex aerial displays, and make your event successful, without question.

Last Updated - 4 Sep 2010

News and Events

With your help, we have been able to stop the high tension tranmission lines, slated to be routed directly through the Skydive Chicago landing area. Check out the Fox River Alliance website for more information. Thanks to all the many people that contributed time, effort, and cash. Every individual that made an effort, together made the difference. We cannot adequately express our thanks.

Check out our new AAD Service Calculator to see when your next service is due.

Para Concepts Store Summer Hours:

Mo - Th 10AM - 5PM
Fr 10AM - last load
Weekends 9AM - last load

Upcoming 2010 Rigging Course dates:

This is the week after Nationals, which has already been deemed a convenient time for some traveller’s schedules.

Congratulations to Nick Batsch for his continuing success at swooping competitions. Nick has used our RDS slider since it was introduced in 2006. In 2008, we updated our RDS rings. We are quite happy with the current version, as are our customers. The rings are now precision machined from a lightweight alloy with hardness like stainless steel and mass like aluminum, and then polished to become the highest qualty RDS rings on the market. RDS rings have a significant effect on wear to lines, and ultimately the life of a lineset. Our customers are raving about the the Para Concepts RDS. We have heard about some swoopers making large numbers of jumps on our rings, and occasionally, there starts to be some normal wear and grooving in the metal. This is no different than the wear that happens with stainless steel grommets. We offer a repolishing service to return the rings to their original smoothness.

We now have more local phone numbers. you can now call us without the cost of international dialing to the US. Please try our new local Mexico City number +52 (55) 85 25 11 96. ¡Cielos azules! Now, more than a few years ago, our fax number changed to +1 815 313 6483. Please make sure your records are up to date.

More products available in our Online Store all the time! We now have Icarus spare parts & service, state of the art RDS sliders. altimeters, AADs, SDC merchandise, a few cool toys for kids (and pets), cool videos, helmets, camera helmet accessories, goggles & sunglasses, rigging tools, rigging courses, stickers, and more. More products are being added all the time, but if you don't see it in our catalog, give us a call or email us at Sales@Para-Concepts.COM