The First South African Aerobatic Wingsuit Competition

[xwind 0]

The First South African Aerobatic Wingsuit Competition was held on 1 May 2007 at Pretoria Skydiving Club. The competition rules can be obtained here: www.wingsuitsa.za.net The competition was included as a demo event as part of our National Skydiving competition. The aim of the competition was to test the viability of including an official Wingsuit Competition in our nationals.

Competition
-The competition was held over 4 rounds.
-The competition rounds only focused on simple aerobatic moves.
-Three teams entered.
-The jump ship was a King Air B90.
-Judging was done by a team of local judges.

Results
-The competition went well.
-No safety issues besides a couple of very long spots.
-It was possible to judge the footage and score teams.
-The event was a success.
-Wingsuiting in South Africa was promoted by the event

Things to improve
-Competition rules must be modified to define a dock as a stable grip or something similar.
-We need to work on our barrel rolls.
-Experiment with camera flying position to improve footage.
-Try and do the competition from a Porter next time.
-Ask for a separate run-in, flying the pattern back to the dz makes it difficult to focus on the routine.
-Competition routines can be made more complicated as the skill of the pilots improve.
-We welcome your suggestions to improve the competition.

Video
Video available at:
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=5685
File name: SA_ws_comp_May07_xvid.avi
The video shows some of the competition rounds.
The video is encoded with xvid (get it here http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/)

Wingsuit South Africa

[badenhop 0]

That is awesome! Right on birdz.

Quote

Things to improve
-Experiment with camera flying position to improve footage.
-We welcome your suggestions to improve the competition.

Please call me next time, I'll come over and volunteer to be designated air-to-air video.

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I've got all I need, Jesus and gravity. Dolly Parton

http://www.AveryBadenhop.com

[LouDiamond 1]

Good to see others getting involved with the competition format. I'm sure we will have time in Germany to talk more about this over a few beers

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[pierre3636 0]

nice one putting it all together x-wind.

we are stoked with the way it went.

sitting with the judges going through the process we LEARNED alot and we have some great improvements coming up to improve the format.

BUT most of all - it was SOOOO much fun doing the competition - you guys should try it

~ time is ~ time was ~ times past ~

[pierre3636 0]

Quote

That is awesome! Right on birdz.

Quote

Things to improve
-Experiment with camera flying position to improve footage.
-We welcome your suggestions to improve the competition.

Please call me next time, I'll come over and volunteer to be designated air-to-air video.

hehe you do realise we live in SOUTH AFRICA! quite a long trip

~ time is ~ time was ~ times past ~

[bergh 0]

Personally I think it went exceptional well for a first time. I enjoyed every moment of every dive even when I had another wingsuiter ridding me like cheap carnival ride
. We all learnt a hell of a lot.

I am looking forward to next years competition.

_______________________________________
You are unique, just like everybody else ...

[badenhop 0]

Hello,
Distance is relative.
South Africa is just around the coner.
My offer stands.
Avery

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I've got all I need, Jesus and gravity. Dolly Parton

http://www.AveryBadenhop.com

[xwind 0]

Thanks for the offer!
It would be very cool to have some external input to our competition. As you can see we are still very new at ws camera flying, so any help would be appreciated.

Wingsuit South Africa

[OSOK 0]

Are you planning on having a freestyle round? From the video it seemed like everyone was following a certain routine of sorts... and yea, I can tell what you mean when you say you need to redefine what a "dock" would be

[mccordia 74]

a 3 second grip is what we defined as a 'dock' though the handslapping (I think) worked well for this one...The contest definately looked like a lot of fun!

JC
FlyLikeBrick
I'm an Athlete?

[pierre3636 0]

as mentioned we tried to keep it very simple for judges and some of the beginner dudes.

its a draw 3 rounds and 1 free round.
we mixed the skills up so it does look a bit bouncy on the free round but thats the one with the back flying and backfly barrel rolls ect...
we tried to put one less experieced pilot with one experieced pilot so that its a fair comp and everyone feels like they have achieved something.

UNRELATED - i know its been mentioned before but check how my tail wing curve downwards when iim flying dirty. its quite cool and defies logic ... maybe its because the cells are so thin on the wing and the downwards speed so high thus forcing the cells very hard - dunno

~ time is ~ time was ~ times past ~