The PD Blog

CRW 100-way - they did it!!!

Well, it seems that our friends at the CRW World Record Attempts in Lake Wales are experiencing some internet issues, so Keith has not been able to get online to post his daily updates. 

But - the good news is that we just heard from Rusty Vest (our Customer Service Manager here at PD and a participant in the record attempts) that they did it - built a 100 way!
Judges are still deliberating so nothing is official yet, but it looks like they pulled it off, what amazing team.  Congratulations everyone!

The picture that goes with this blog was taken by Tuesday evening by Rusty.  PD Blogging headquarters are still trying to determine if the slant is an artistic impression or if this is simply how CRW dogs take photos. 

Bruno Brokken's view of CRW

One of PD's sponsored photographers sent in this picture from the CRW record attempts in Lake Wales - hot from the oven as he said, taken on Tuesday's sunset load.
It's a gorgeous shot of his brand new Spectre 135 (with Dacron lines, a special favorite of many camera jumpers).
Bruno Brokken is a well known photographer, whose photos have been published in magazines world wide. 

Bruno, for sharing your photos with us :)

New Florida 4-way Team - Tempest

Please meet our newest addition to the PD Family - Tempest.   Team members are Chris Ash, Curt Bartholomew, Kristina Byrne, Thiago Muradas and Ari Perelman.  Their home dropzone is Skydive Sebastian in Florida.

Chris Ash and Ari Perelman are both accomplished freeflyers and tunnel coaches. Both Kristina Byrne and Thiago Muradas have competed at the World level in 4 way relative work. Curt Bartholomew is the team videographer. Tempest will be working with coach Gary Smith and has an aggressive training plan to meet its goals. All the team members are excited to be part of the PD family.

Team Tempest is a two year project with plans to compete at the USPA Nationals in 2008 and 2009. Competition goals are to qualify to represent the United States at the FAI World Cup of Formation Skydiving in 2009 and reach a 20 point average. Skydiving community goals are to bring more interest to relative work, raise the overall level of skydivers within this discipline and to make everyone feel like they are involved and a part of this project.

We really look forward to working with those guys and can't wait to see them start competing!
Photos are by Kazuyuki Oyama, please visit his gorgeous website for more great photos!

CRW World Record Attemtpts - Nov 17th

The CRW record attempts in Lake Wales are now in full swing and as promised, here is an update from Keith McBeth, written on Saturday November 17th.

Hello all,

So it's been an exciting few days preparing for the 100-way Record Attempts. After today we have all the people registered and ready to go. This is not only a record event, but is also a skydiving event for CRW dawgs, or people who like to fly their parachutes together to build beautiful diamond formations. There are roughly 140 skydivers here from 15 different countries! Many people have been preparing for this event for 2 years now, some will make the cut and some will learn new things for future formations.
They have been putting together groups of 9, 16, 20 and 25-ways to get everyone in the air. So tomorrow shall be exciting as well. They will be putting together the base 36-way, and maybe even a 49-way, which will require 2 aircrafts. In the first airplane will be the base 9-way, all of whom will have personal oxygen bottles on them. Air gets thinner as you get higher, and the planned altitude necessary for a formation this big means the airplanes have to fly into air with little oxygen.
For the world record attempt, the 9-way formation base will be exiting the airplane from 20,000 feet above the ground (nearly 4 miles!) The next airplane will have 27 people in it exiting at 18,000 feet. The lower altitude in the plane and under canopy means each jumper doesn't need their own personal supply, so they use the system in the airplane instead.

Friday was an exciting day, especially for one participant from Australia! What was supposed to be a 36-way got messy after the first 4 skydivers made a diamond. The fifth jumper joined the formation too hard, and wrapped his canopy around the Ozzie's leg and shoulder. The Australian tried to clear the mess, and reserve parachute started to come out after the entangled mess dislodged it.
Jumper 5 cut-away his main canopy after seeing the reserve canopy start to come out through his parachute lines. At this point, the Ozzie's pretty red reserve parachute came out and pulled him away from the formation, which is the picture you see below. The Australian didn't give up, though, and freed himself from the other jumper's canopy, then cutaway his main canopy and landed without incident. The 5th jumper opened his reserve and landed fine, as well. Wow, what a ride!   There were a few minor injuries from other canopy entanglements,but nothing that a bag of ice won't cure :)

Click here to visit Keith's MySpace page to see more pictures from the event.

New Sponsored Instructors

Some of you might know that PD does not only support teams & individuals in the sport, but also has a special category for for instructors.   Skydiving instructors are pretty important people because without them we wouldn't see any new jumpers!
The instructors we work with are carefully selected, just like our sponsored athletes - and we are proud to work with some of the finest in the sport.  You might be able to spot those people in the sky by their good looking canopies, sporting the PD Instructor pattern as seen here to the left (with or without artwork).  Please meet the 2 newest additions to the family of PD instructors:

Brian Erler is a well known figure in the sport, accomplished photographer and now a dropzone owner & operator a.  We have worked with Brian for several years and are happy to have just renewed our agreement once again with him.  Brian has put in hours in just about every corner of the sport, worked as a packer, in gear sales, done video & photography and now lastly as a dropzone owner & manager at Long Island Skydving Center.  Back in the day, Brian competed in freeflying and did the pro tour of skysurfing, and with that experience Brian has done jobs working for ESPN at the X-games - not too shabby!
Brian's canopy of choice is a Katana 107, but he has thousands of jumps on Stilettos (and said giggling that he was swooping his 120 back when Shannon Pilcher was still trying to figure out how to pack zero-p - but then added very sternly that it was not because he was old, he just started jumping young).

Aaron Okken is an instructor at Mile-Hi Skydiving Center in Colorado.  He grew up at small DZ in Southern CO and became immersed in skydiving at a young age.  After slaving away as a packer for a couple of years he started jumping and soon began to film tandems.  From there it was on to AFF rating.  For a couple of years Aaron has been balancing a life as a professional instructor at Mile-Hi with working towards a degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder. 

He is jumping a teeny little Velocity 79 and does not mind having one of the nicest swoop ponds in the US in his back yard!

We look forward to working with those 2 guys and will be introducing more instructors & athletes to you soon!

CRW World Record Attempt: 100!

As you might have heard, CRW dogs from around the world are gathering in Lake Wales as we type this, to prepare for yet another world record attempt. 
Keith McBeth is one of the participants, and he plans on sending out daily blogs via his MySpace page.  He has graciously allowed us to pass on his posts and pictures for the readers of the PD Blog to enjoy (especially those that are not a part of the MySpace craze).   
Here comes the first one - enjoy the read :)

Hello all!

November 17th, 2007 at Lake Wales, Florida will be the first day of an 8 day event where CRW Dogs from all over the world will attempt to break a current World Record!  In 1996,  a canopy world record formation was completed in Germany. Which was a 53way!  In 2002 we set an official USA record of 49 people , then we went bigger and set an unofficial world record of 56 people!  The formation was not official because we were not attempting to break a world record, so we did not have the official judges to make it a world record. Once we built the 56 way, there was no question we could go bigger!!

  In 2003, we went for a world record!  Sucessfully we completed a 64way, 65 way and on the final day, we wanted to see if we could go bigger, so we added a few more, and the record stood high with 70 people!!

After a few years of training and selecting, in 2005 the CRW committe wanted to go bigger and attempt an 81 way formation.  We completed the 81 way at sunset!  The next morning they wanted to see if they could add row 10? Row 10 would be 10 people across from left to right, which would make the formation an 85 way!  They completed it on the first jump!  From that formation, they new we could go bigger!

So November 17th to 25th 2007 CRW Dogs from all over the world will gather in Lake Wales in attempt to make a 100way formation!!   This will surely be one of the last big way camps the world will see for a while if the formation is built successfully. The action and tension is going to be non-stop and you wont have to miss one heart beat of it!!

Keith is also an amazing photographer and will have pictures of the event available for sale after the event - please let us know if you need his contact details.
   

Student Olympics at Skydive Twin Cities

One of our sponsored teams - Team Flew-id (freestylists) put on a fantastic event for their local jumpers recently and were kind enough to share some stories and photos with us.  The team consists of Karl and Merriah Eakins, Merriah is the event coordinator of Skydive Twin Cities.

Skydive Twin Cities was blessed with a remarkably busy student season in 2007.  This gave rise to some new ideas culminating in a new event for the drop zone, aiming to involve the newer jumpers.  Thus, the Student Olympics were created and held on October 20th, 2007.

Merriah came up with several competitions appropriate for students of all skill levels, involving many experienced jumpers along the way. 
Saturday morning began with the return of the very popular "Keep it Up" Canopy Contest.  The unseasonably warm and clear weather gave everyone several chances to grab prizes from the many sponsors of the event (ParaGear, Airtec, Performance Designs, Mirage Systems, Parachute Magic, and Skydive Twin Cities).
By mid-morning, the "Radio Controlled People" event began, where instructors and experienced jumpers found themselves donning the student radio receivers prior to jumping!  Students then took turns manning the transmitters, aiming their experienced jumper partners toward the target. 
Dave Juntunen won the event, placing his partner just 15 feet past the target.  Christina Colvin, a student who made her first jump that day placed her partner just 20 yards from the target, after landing off the DZ herself that morning.  Thad Ingersoll, a student who graduated that day said of the radio competition, “That is way scarier than skydiving!”.  Experienced jumper Mike Livieri won the "Taking One for the Team" award after allowing his partner to land him downwind into a muddy corn field.

Team Flew-id took several students up to altitude for mini-tracking contests.  Andrew Clements and Dave Zierott took top honors for this event, showing very impressive skills with less than 50 jumps each.  When the students weren’t competing, they spent their time finishing their license card, packing, and mingling with their new competition teammates. Everyone gathered in the evening for Soup Supper, an STC potluck tradition.  Once refueled, it was time for the competitions to continue.

First up, the "Two-Headed Packing" competition.  The students found an experienced partner and stood before an unpacked rig.  The experienced jumpers stood on the left of the students, and the pair put their close arms around each other.  One the mark, all teams began frantically packing their rigs, using only one arm each.  One of the DZOs, Kerry McCauley and his partner Dave Juntunen quickly pulled ahead, but were soon thwarted by some extremely friendly interference  Byron Stuart, a packer at the DZ and his partner, John Kretzschmar, took the lead and never looked back.  The winners packed their rig in less than 20 minutes, but the results were less than perfect.

The final event of the day was the "Dirt Diving" competition.  Students were divided into teams of two and shown a standing two-way dirt dive by the experienced jumpers.  The experienced jumpers got on the creepers and the students had 60 seconds to make them get as many points as possible.  The Pink Mafia girls proved to be popular creepers, since they were easy to move on the concrete.  The competition was fierce, and Protecs were soon donned for safety.  Teams were posting scores as high as 34 points per round, and the experienced jumpers found themselves a bit dizzy.  Ken Hagen and Ryan Nordell won the event followed by Meghan Peden and Shane Marshal.
The evening concluded with a drawing from names collected throughout the day.  The grand prize was a free altimeter donated by Skydive Twin Cities, and Meghan Peden took it home with a grin from ear to ear. 

The Student Olympics was a huge success in many ways.  It brought many young jumpers to the DZ, and and in a fun but safe environment, a lot of learning took place.
In addition, it gave students and experienced jumpers a great opportunity to meet and mingle.  Each event was as entertaining to watch as it was to participate in.

Thank you Karl & Merriah for your tireless work of introducing new people to the sport of skydiving - we are extremely proud to have you as a part of our family of sponsored athletes!
Anyone interested in holding a Student Olympics at their DZ can obtain a copy of tips and rules for each competition event!  Email Team Flew-id and reference Student Olympics.

Hog Flop at Skydive Palatka

Hey everyone, Junior here.  I just got back into the office after a perfect weekend at Skydive Palatka.  For those of you that aren't from Florida, Palatka is located a little over an hour north of Deland.  This weekend was the 12th annual Hog Flop Boogie.  Having grown up in Iowa I was very excited about an event that had the word "Hog" in it.  I was expecting to see a pig being cooked all day long but was let down, I was very sad.  Although I was pleased to hear that the Hog Flop event involved 4-way.  Hog Flop is a one jump competition of which a scrammbles team has to build a 4-way star, also known as a round, do a backloop and rebuild the star.  Of course the team that does it the fastest wins.  I am proud to say that the team I was on, Team Apex, won the gold with a time of 5.78 seconds, great work guys!  The weather was perfect, sunny and blue skies and I don't think the wind blew over 15 MPH.  The DZ had a very successful weekend, a lot of jumps and obviously a great party.  A big thanks goes out to the manifesters, your hard work made things run so smoothly, you did a great job.  Skydive Palatka was a great time and I am looking forward to going back.  Well I should probably start doing some real work, I hope to see you guys at Zhills for the turkey meet, I will be there 23-25.  In the mean time, stay safe.

Talk to you later,

Nick Grillet   

World cup banquet 07

Jay, Scott, and Isaiah at the awards banquet Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

World Cup 07 Results

Here's the top slots(unofficial).  It literally came down to the last round to decide these places.

1st-Jay Moledsky- Canada

2nd Jonathan Tagle- USA

3rd Ian Bobo- USA

4th Brian McNenny- USA

5th Isaiah McCauliffe- USA

6th Shannon Pilcher- USA

7th Pablo Hernandez- Spain