plastic

hi akay, not really a crw boogie as such, from 8-12 sept at my home dz (langar) there is a week long boogie ont the first weekend from friday to monday we are going to attempt a 25 way diamond (or bigger) to set a record for the biggest ever crw formation over england. The existing record is still a 24 plane built by the royal marines in the mid 1980's. The group will be made up of brits and europens as we dont have enough brits who are good enough (or who can be bothered) to do this. however any experienced crw dog with his own lightning is welcome to attend. Aircraft line up for the langar boogie will be 2 x cessna grand caravans (permanent at langar), skyvan, and probably a beech 99 and\or let 410. The second weekend they will attempt a 122 way sequential dive (freefall) and also i believe they will be trying a freefly record also during this week. you are welcome to join us if you are around. regards plastic

Collums looks nice, fancy a bi-plane diamond when you come to england in september. you can even pilot if you want! plastic

The problem of showing seperation between points is only really relevant if you are droppnig a grip and taking the same grip again on the same canopy eg wing to wing or centre to centre, you just need to show the judges that you have actually released the grip. I am not an expert on 2-way, it is not my event but i did a lot of 4-way seq, but the speed will come from the ability to do legs takes, picking up a grip without releasing the toggles. Think about it how long do you take to drop a toggle grab a canopy put your foot in pick up your toggle again and regain control of your canopy before you can release for the next point. Learning leg takes will take a little longer but when you can do it you will really notice how much you can speed up the transitions, the main thing is that in order to do a good leg take the dock must be good, be it the lower guy doing a normal dock or the top guy doing a top dock. Hope all this has helped, and good luck. plastic

Akay, I think that grabbing canopies and walking grips would be even slower. When you get this technique right you should be looking at a 5s transition from stack to stack which should be as quick as any other transition. plastic

Exactly, if you show clear blue sky on seperation then you will not get busted, if not you are at the mercy of the judges. plastic

That was what was needed to be shown to be sure of not risking a bust. plastic

Akay, A good way to do this is the top guy to do a quick outside front riser (whichever way you prefer) and then back in on brakes with a little more inside brake. Sometimes the bottom guy may need to use a little inside brake to "open the door" if the top guy goes to far to the side. If the top guy overcooks it and comes back a little low then the bottom guy can jab both front risers to drop the canopy on. When the top guy gets good at this it is a simple swing out swing in. Remember you must show seperation between points. Hope this helps Plastic

Well, you will need at least one buddy anyway. Doing crew on your own gets old really fast. Quote But at least you should be safe! plastic

Craig stuck with the triathlon and did an excellent job helping us take gold in 8-way and silver in rotations. the x-fire stayed where it should have, in the back of his car! cheers craig. plastic

Last year the russian rotation team were jumping triathlon 99's loaded at 2.0 but having seen video of a couple of training jumps on these i did not see much difference from when they were jumping triathlon 120's as they were still hitting the 21/22 mark before. I think they may well be using 120's for sequential and 8-way. plastic

Thanks for the update pete. I am flying home from turkey tonight so hope to talk to maria soon. plastic

I heard the news from my team camerman pd who was in spain with the rest of my 8 way team. I am on vacation in turkey having decided again to pass on empuria. I coached taz from the very beginning of her cf career over 4 years ago along with her partner gav. both became great members of my 8 way team and have seen them both develop into first class cf jumpers both becoming national champions and world record holders as well as great friends. maria also a great firend and team mate for more than 3 years now. Taz will be greatly missed by all of us but my thoughts are with her partner gavin and maria who i hope will make a speedy recovery. this is a devastating blow to myself and the whole team. best wishes to all and blue skies to taz. plastic

I believe that was also marias first jump after having her reserve repacked having just got a new free bag after loosing hers in empuriabrava the previous year where her canopy also spent 2 days floating in the sea until a spanish fisherman found it and brought it to the dz. Every trip is an adventure for maria! plastic

That would be my team mate maria russel on what is left of the yellow canopy. plastic

That would be the old us seq team i suppose, did they know they had built it upside down? I had a calender which had a picture of this but without the top middle canopy, some serious top docking skills required, i am impressed. plastic

Hi tom, In theory i had been told that we were sending teams to russia for all events. However the latest rumour i heard is that this may now only be a 2 way team. I am not sure what the new plan is. We (my 8-way team) did not compete at our nationals last year, mainly because we had 2 people down with injury, so we would not have been allowed to russia in any case. There was 2 seq and 2 rot teams (same team for each event) who then jumped together as the only 8 way team, they were then all invited to go to russia. At the moment we have 2 camps of crw jumpers in england, my 8-way team and another group but we dont really get on with each other so most of what i hear about them is 2nd hand rumour. A pity really as we now have more active crw jumpers in england than we have had since the days of the royal marines in the late 1980's. There were 4 of my 8-way team at the world record, 3 on the 85 way and 1 on the bench. still, lets see what the future holds, nice to see some of the older people coming back, we did an 8-way training camp in russia last year and got coaching from denis dodonov who i had not seen since spain 2001 but i think eloy 1998 was my best memory of competition. plastic

I remember the south africans stuffing the aussies at rots in eloy in 1998, in fact i recall even the brits beat the aussies! plastic

Sounds like a formation i have heard called a double diamond. Seems they had a go at this at the spectakel last year, i heard this from maria russel who was one of the lower wings, she ended up cutting away, but not sure if she took anybody with her. plastic

In response to "after watching this i realize how spoiled i've been having had the opportunity to do Rot's with good people." Remember denis dodonov's russian rotation team have been unbeaten at world meets since 1998. Any team that does a lot of competition training jumps will have a wrap from time to time and eventually amass enough footage for an entertaining video. I have some footage of denis's team at the world cup in russia in 2000 banging out 20\21's on each jump and after a while it does get a little monotonous. This was again a great video to watch, thanks for posting it. plastic

Hi andre, yes i remember manny, i assume he has fully recovered from his accident. I have had a break from jumping through the winter but we have recently started training again for our nationals in july but nothing hardcore just some weekends. plastic

Hans, For interest it was alan fielding piloting. Also the guy on the pink canopy was actually totally clear at one point, alan had dropped him but he was looking at the wrap and not his canopy and managed to dock on the 2 wrap, what a feat. plastic

This is a bit of footage from times gone by that has always entertained people, so i have posted it at the following location. http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=3860 To set the scene, in 1997 we were a newly formed sequential team and went on our first training camp to gap in france. The dz organised multiple times world champion vincent ferrer from the french cf team to coach us. The first morning he said, right as i have no idea of your skill level in order for me to decide where we need to start i want you to just go up and show me what you can do, SO WE DID! enjoy plastic

Hi andre, who is the rest of the team? plastic

What i meant was i dont think we will try that at langar until you come over to jump with us in september hans!

Um, i dont think we will bother trying that at langar! plastic