Managed to squeeze in a few jumps before the rain arrived - it's definitely all about the exit for me at the moment :-D First attempt I was a bit slow out of the door but dived down to the base pretty quickly, arriving first as the other member of the base had a 'floating' collision as they left the plane. More practice meant I learned what it was like to lean on the floaters and just fall out as they left - not my most elegant of exits but much quicker. And I can really get some power in my dives when I straighten my legs. In fact, when I think they are straight, the videos prove they rarely are, so with more practice, I should be able to whack on some serious speed :-)
The 'slamming the brakes on' technique that Jeff coached me on worked brilliantly - very very clear on the GoPro video from within the formation :-) I'm tearing in at a 45 degree angle, then just suddenly bam! I've stopped, checked my relative fall rate, then come in for the dock. Was still a little far out when stopping, but my coaches are happy that I've got the technique and just need to refine it. In time, I will be more confident in putting the brakes on closer to the formation, but for now, I'm more than happy than I'm not crashing in and am just flying my slot and gently taking grips. Phil actually teased me because I was so gentle, I literally just picked up his fingertips instead of his wrist :-D
Found some more flat flyers who might be able to hook up for some practice jumps at LPS or Hinton so that's great. I checked out the stats on the FS 4-way Nationals when I got in last night and the team I was going to join is struggling (a 2 point average over 7 rounds!) so I guess they didn't get their exits sorted after all. Was definitely the right decision not to link up with the scratch team!!
Sunday 23 August 2015
Thursday 20 August 2015
My first medal!
Somewhat unexpected but a delightful surprise! We came second and so I had my first experience of standing on a skydiving podium :-)
Turns out our newest exit works ok, though I don't really think it will be quick enough for the Nationals. I have to float back up a long way to meet the second person out and although that isn't slowing down the build of the overall formation, I think it may be more of an issue if we get everyone else out more quickly than we have been doing.
Jeff Chandler was kind enough to give me and one of the other members of our team some coaching on exits the following day (aided by a couple more members) and we improved our formation build massively, with 4 of us getting together on the hill. If we can manage that in our next competition, that would be awesome :-)
The 4-way isn't happening now, they've found someone more experienced than me which is fair enough. I was offered a place on a scratch team but having never met any of them, let alone jumped with them, I'm not keen on spending several hundred pounds on what could end up as a series of zoo dives! It's a long way to travel, there's an entry fee as well as 8 rounds, plus camera flyer fees. Add in training jumps the day before, food, accommodation and beer and we're getting into figures that would be better spent on a few days jumping in Spain or Portugal, lol.
So it's back to the original plan for this weekend of doing two days of big way training, hopefully with more multi-plane loads, though the weather forecast is not looking great. Saturday might work, Sunday is currently looking like a washout. We shall see - last weekend's "cloudy all day" ended up with me having a sunburnt peeling nose and several jumps under blue skies :-)
Turns out our newest exit works ok, though I don't really think it will be quick enough for the Nationals. I have to float back up a long way to meet the second person out and although that isn't slowing down the build of the overall formation, I think it may be more of an issue if we get everyone else out more quickly than we have been doing.
Jeff Chandler was kind enough to give me and one of the other members of our team some coaching on exits the following day (aided by a couple more members) and we improved our formation build massively, with 4 of us getting together on the hill. If we can manage that in our next competition, that would be awesome :-)
The 4-way isn't happening now, they've found someone more experienced than me which is fair enough. I was offered a place on a scratch team but having never met any of them, let alone jumped with them, I'm not keen on spending several hundred pounds on what could end up as a series of zoo dives! It's a long way to travel, there's an entry fee as well as 8 rounds, plus camera flyer fees. Add in training jumps the day before, food, accommodation and beer and we're getting into figures that would be better spent on a few days jumping in Spain or Portugal, lol.
So it's back to the original plan for this weekend of doing two days of big way training, hopefully with more multi-plane loads, though the weather forecast is not looking great. Saturday might work, Sunday is currently looking like a washout. We shall see - last weekend's "cloudy all day" ended up with me having a sunburnt peeling nose and several jumps under blue skies :-)
Friday 14 August 2015
Speed 8 - Mayhem
After the second big way weekend, I got chatting with some of the guys and some of them are part of a pool of jumpers who form Speed 8 team Mayhem. The team leader invited me to join them for their next training session in August as a couple of the guys were out injured and he wasn't sure how many people he could get together in order to train for their next competition.
In the end, we had 6 people for most of the jumps, then 7 for the final one plus camera. And I had yet another learning curve - this time on how to build a base and a formation when everyone starts inside the plane and exits individually! The rules for the Speed 8 are No Show, No Grips, so the time starts from the moment any part of any member of the team comes past the door frame, whether accidentally or not! So I learned a whole new series of exits as we experimented with the best way to get the entire team out of the door of a Grand Caravan as quickly as possible. Because I am floaty and most of the team are fast fallers, it was decided to put me out early. After the first jump, that moved to putting a load of lead on me, and sending me out first, rofl. The idea being that it's very easy for the second person to catch up with me and for us to form the base for everyone else to dock onto. The points are scored by the number of seconds it takes for everyone to have at least one grip on someone else (so 7 grips), so the lower the score, the better. Bonuses are given for then making formations, though apparently many teams don't get together at all within the time frame allowed to score. Speed 8 is not taken seriously by many people so a lot of the teams are 'scratch teams', put together on the day by people who have never jumped together in that large a formation. And of course, most flat flyers are used to linked exits and being together on a level before trying to turn points. So tomorrow we will see if doing some training jumps, even missing a couple of the regular members, will make enough of a difference for us to be high up in the rankings :-)
It is done over 4 rounds so hopefully will be finished in one day, which will then allow me time to do some fun jumping on Sunday.
And that will go back to yet another learning curve as I am going to be meeting a 4-way team who have just lost their Tail flyer for the Nationals next weekend. I usually fly IC or OC in the tunnel or on fun jumps, so I've now got to relearn all of the Random formations with new grips, plus a different exit. If the weather permits, we'll do some trial jumps on Sunday and decide whether it will work well enough for the team to enter and if we do, I'll be off to Lincolnshire with them on Thursday! Hopefully that will give us Friday for some team training, before the competition starts on Saturday. And if it doesn't work out and they decide not to go, I'll do the next big way training session instead :-)
I also have more Speed 8 training lined up with Mayhem as the Speed 8 Nationals are at Sibson at the end of September. We just need the weather to cooperate a little more than it has done so far - who knows, I may yet make it to my 200th jump by the end of the season in order to collect my C licence :-)
In the end, we had 6 people for most of the jumps, then 7 for the final one plus camera. And I had yet another learning curve - this time on how to build a base and a formation when everyone starts inside the plane and exits individually! The rules for the Speed 8 are No Show, No Grips, so the time starts from the moment any part of any member of the team comes past the door frame, whether accidentally or not! So I learned a whole new series of exits as we experimented with the best way to get the entire team out of the door of a Grand Caravan as quickly as possible. Because I am floaty and most of the team are fast fallers, it was decided to put me out early. After the first jump, that moved to putting a load of lead on me, and sending me out first, rofl. The idea being that it's very easy for the second person to catch up with me and for us to form the base for everyone else to dock onto. The points are scored by the number of seconds it takes for everyone to have at least one grip on someone else (so 7 grips), so the lower the score, the better. Bonuses are given for then making formations, though apparently many teams don't get together at all within the time frame allowed to score. Speed 8 is not taken seriously by many people so a lot of the teams are 'scratch teams', put together on the day by people who have never jumped together in that large a formation. And of course, most flat flyers are used to linked exits and being together on a level before trying to turn points. So tomorrow we will see if doing some training jumps, even missing a couple of the regular members, will make enough of a difference for us to be high up in the rankings :-)
It is done over 4 rounds so hopefully will be finished in one day, which will then allow me time to do some fun jumping on Sunday.
And that will go back to yet another learning curve as I am going to be meeting a 4-way team who have just lost their Tail flyer for the Nationals next weekend. I usually fly IC or OC in the tunnel or on fun jumps, so I've now got to relearn all of the Random formations with new grips, plus a different exit. If the weather permits, we'll do some trial jumps on Sunday and decide whether it will work well enough for the team to enter and if we do, I'll be off to Lincolnshire with them on Thursday! Hopefully that will give us Friday for some team training, before the competition starts on Saturday. And if it doesn't work out and they decide not to go, I'll do the next big way training session instead :-)
I also have more Speed 8 training lined up with Mayhem as the Speed 8 Nationals are at Sibson at the end of September. We just need the weather to cooperate a little more than it has done so far - who knows, I may yet make it to my 200th jump by the end of the season in order to collect my C licence :-)
More FS training and slowly increasing jump numbers
So very slowly and steadily, my jump numbers have been increasing. I was hoping to get to my 100th jump on the multi-plane lifts but weather holds meant I still had 3 jumps to go for the elusive milestone. A series of bad weather fronts one after another meant that mid-week jumping was also not possible, so it came down to an overcast day at a very small dz to try and manage 3 jumps. Initially I had hoped to do a wingsuit rodeo for the actual 100th, but my 'bird' decided the weather didn't look great so decided to have a lie-in instead :-( I was disappointed but other friends stepped in and met me at the dz and for once, the forecast turned out to be wrong. Manifest was brilliant, squeezing me in on 2-way jumps in spare slots on tandem loads. There was no chance of doing anything fancy or a biggish formation but I still had 3 great 2-ways to get me to the magic number :-) And at the end of the day, once all the tandems were completed, we also did a 4 way tracking dive. So I finished the day on 101 :-)
As we got towards the end of July, the weather finally decided we could have a hint of summer. I managed several mid-week jumps in between weather holds and rainy days and keep looking out on the Facebook groups for any flat flyers who can jump outside of weekends. I went up to Hinton to meet one person and was asked to join an FS1 qualification dive for a fairly new jumper. It went very well and he passed, which was fabulous.
Last week was another 4-way FS training day and suddenly I found myself as one of the more experienced members of the teams as several coaches had dropped out. Our group never managed a stable exit (unless you count launching an E and flipping it, so flying a lovely formation upside down :-D ) and there was lots of chasing each other over the sky to reform, but it was all good stuff and everyone had a great day. We ended it with an attempt at a 12 way. I was in the base and finally was part of a stable exit, ha ha. We had 3 divers who got down to us, forming a 6 way, but the 6th person did a classic 'combat dock' coming in hard and fast, and he took out one of the base members which then exploded the formation, lol. But everyone had got pretty close, it was just that we ran out of altitude to reform. Roll on the next one!!
As we got towards the end of July, the weather finally decided we could have a hint of summer. I managed several mid-week jumps in between weather holds and rainy days and keep looking out on the Facebook groups for any flat flyers who can jump outside of weekends. I went up to Hinton to meet one person and was asked to join an FS1 qualification dive for a fairly new jumper. It went very well and he passed, which was fabulous.
Last week was another 4-way FS training day and suddenly I found myself as one of the more experienced members of the teams as several coaches had dropped out. Our group never managed a stable exit (unless you count launching an E and flipping it, so flying a lovely formation upside down :-D ) and there was lots of chasing each other over the sky to reform, but it was all good stuff and everyone had a great day. We ended it with an attempt at a 12 way. I was in the base and finally was part of a stable exit, ha ha. We had 3 divers who got down to us, forming a 6 way, but the 6th person did a classic 'combat dock' coming in hard and fast, and he took out one of the base members which then exploded the formation, lol. But everyone had got pretty close, it was just that we ran out of altitude to reform. Roll on the next one!!
Dynamic 6 way in the tunnel
Having failed miserably to get a 4-way team together and actually jump or train in the tunnel, I was curious to find out more when Brian Cumming created a group dedicated to a different type of tunnel flying. Instead of taking grips and turning points, the idea would be to keep moving, to make dynamic patterns in various sequences and then start linking the sequences together.
I did a lot of tunnel time when training for the World Challenge as the costs came down drastically when split between 4 people, so splitting the costs even further made this seem like a great way of improving my flying skills whilst the weather was still hampering my jumping so badly.
I have never laughed so much during tunnel training, even during scrambles!! It was amazing, so much fun and again, so much more relaxed than 4-way and trying to turn points. We did moves with names like Washing Machine and Weave, and we renamed one move to Goldfish Bowl as we took it in turns flying round the tunnel walls, like goldfish circling :-D It's a lot trickier than 4-way in that we have to fly over and under each other a lot (instead of keeping pretty much on the same level) and sets of people are moving all the time unless we are at the Home position. I had one spectacular crash trying to side slide over 2 people at once (hit the tunnel wall headfirst :-( ) but apart from that, it wasn't too daunting. We all improved a lot over the 30 minutes (15 x 2 minute sessions) and were able to link several moves together by the end.
The second session a month later was with different people but it was just as much fun. Another 30 minutes in the tunnel and I was feeling much more confident with my ability to side slide, scoot forward and back under and over someone's burble and to carve my way around the outside of the tunnel. Brian doesn't have enough time in his calendar for more sessions at the moment but as soon as he does, I'll be back :-)
I did a lot of tunnel time when training for the World Challenge as the costs came down drastically when split between 4 people, so splitting the costs even further made this seem like a great way of improving my flying skills whilst the weather was still hampering my jumping so badly.
I have never laughed so much during tunnel training, even during scrambles!! It was amazing, so much fun and again, so much more relaxed than 4-way and trying to turn points. We did moves with names like Washing Machine and Weave, and we renamed one move to Goldfish Bowl as we took it in turns flying round the tunnel walls, like goldfish circling :-D It's a lot trickier than 4-way in that we have to fly over and under each other a lot (instead of keeping pretty much on the same level) and sets of people are moving all the time unless we are at the Home position. I had one spectacular crash trying to side slide over 2 people at once (hit the tunnel wall headfirst :-( ) but apart from that, it wasn't too daunting. We all improved a lot over the 30 minutes (15 x 2 minute sessions) and were able to link several moves together by the end.
The second session a month later was with different people but it was just as much fun. Another 30 minutes in the tunnel and I was feeling much more confident with my ability to side slide, scoot forward and back under and over someone's burble and to carve my way around the outside of the tunnel. Brian doesn't have enough time in his calendar for more sessions at the moment but as soon as he does, I'll be back :-)
Big way training days June & July
So nothing has really changed with regards to me continuing beyond the end of this season, but have been managing a lot more fun in the meantime :-)
Still had lots of frustrating days with weather holds and have countered that with more mid-week jumping whenever possible. Hinton now looks like it will be a good option, as I've met more people there now and have more people who can jump during the week without having to drag myself all the way up to Sibson.
Didn't manage to get a team together for the UKSL at Nethers in the end, so I joined a novice FS big way coaching day instead. I didn't have nearly enough jump numbers for the entry criteria but Rich vouched for me (and several hours of tunnel helped) and the organiser agreed to let me try, with the caveat that I would be taken out of the group if I wasn't good enough yet. And we had the most amazing time! Such fun and so much more relaxed than 4-way :-) There were 10 of us, so not a massive group but obviously a lot more people in the air than I'm used to. We managed to make several formations with all but one person getting into the formation each time. I learned loads about building larger formations, exit order, how to dive to the base, flat tracking etc and all the experienced guys were really friendly and helpful.
At the end of the weekend, I saw a poster for a more advanced group in July and asked if it would be possible for me to join that one. He needed to check with the other organiser since my jump numbers were even further off the basic requirements and we hadn't managed to build a 10 way so my formation size didn't meet the basics either, lol. However, the other organiser also agreed to let me try, given my performance on the first weekend so things suddenly got a lot more exciting. It's not many people who can say they did their first big way multi-plane dives with less than 100 jumps in total!
If I thought it was a steep learning curve for the novice weekend, the intermediate weekend came close to frying my brain, ha ha. So much to remember, though I wasn't the only newbie to big way so everything was explained very carefully several times. And in the end, the weather slowed our jump rate down as we kept being put on wind and cloud holds. So I Iearned about multi-plane lifts taking off in formation (very freaky seeing another plane so close all the way up to altitude!), how to do the first part of tracking off in groups before splitting away from each other, how to look for the exit from the lead plane to know when to leave the trail plane, and how to find my slot in the formation. I didn't quite make it down for the first jump, so just hovered above my slot until it was time to break off (so other people knew where I was). All the of the rest of the jumps were fine and I made it comfortably, having discovered I'm pretty good at diving down to a rapidly departing base, lol. It helps that I am quite floaty so there was never any time when I was likely to drop low, unlike many of the other guys who then struggled to get back up to the base.
I definitely want to do more and had signed up for the next training weekend but that may now get nudged to one side in favour of competing at the FS 4-way Nationals. More exciting news but need to wait a couple of days to find out whether that is going ahead.
Still had lots of frustrating days with weather holds and have countered that with more mid-week jumping whenever possible. Hinton now looks like it will be a good option, as I've met more people there now and have more people who can jump during the week without having to drag myself all the way up to Sibson.
Didn't manage to get a team together for the UKSL at Nethers in the end, so I joined a novice FS big way coaching day instead. I didn't have nearly enough jump numbers for the entry criteria but Rich vouched for me (and several hours of tunnel helped) and the organiser agreed to let me try, with the caveat that I would be taken out of the group if I wasn't good enough yet. And we had the most amazing time! Such fun and so much more relaxed than 4-way :-) There were 10 of us, so not a massive group but obviously a lot more people in the air than I'm used to. We managed to make several formations with all but one person getting into the formation each time. I learned loads about building larger formations, exit order, how to dive to the base, flat tracking etc and all the experienced guys were really friendly and helpful.
At the end of the weekend, I saw a poster for a more advanced group in July and asked if it would be possible for me to join that one. He needed to check with the other organiser since my jump numbers were even further off the basic requirements and we hadn't managed to build a 10 way so my formation size didn't meet the basics either, lol. However, the other organiser also agreed to let me try, given my performance on the first weekend so things suddenly got a lot more exciting. It's not many people who can say they did their first big way multi-plane dives with less than 100 jumps in total!
If I thought it was a steep learning curve for the novice weekend, the intermediate weekend came close to frying my brain, ha ha. So much to remember, though I wasn't the only newbie to big way so everything was explained very carefully several times. And in the end, the weather slowed our jump rate down as we kept being put on wind and cloud holds. So I Iearned about multi-plane lifts taking off in formation (very freaky seeing another plane so close all the way up to altitude!), how to do the first part of tracking off in groups before splitting away from each other, how to look for the exit from the lead plane to know when to leave the trail plane, and how to find my slot in the formation. I didn't quite make it down for the first jump, so just hovered above my slot until it was time to break off (so other people knew where I was). All the of the rest of the jumps were fine and I made it comfortably, having discovered I'm pretty good at diving down to a rapidly departing base, lol. It helps that I am quite floaty so there was never any time when I was likely to drop low, unlike many of the other guys who then struggled to get back up to the base.
I definitely want to do more and had signed up for the next training weekend but that may now get nudged to one side in favour of competing at the FS 4-way Nationals. More exciting news but need to wait a couple of days to find out whether that is going ahead.
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