DZP may [1997] jump report

It got warm and the 'flys came out this month.

The season has flowered.

Practice and organizing for the upcoming 4-way camp got going in earnest in May. I got some posters up on some web sites and got the bullet going in Skydiving and hopefully Parachutist events calender. I started doing some sketches of what I thought might be possible with the expected talent.

It's the same ol' game. Some good flyers, some shaky and lots of fall rate problems. Try to figure out who's going to show up and jump, formations, exit order, the count... slots, aircraft,.... weather...ahhhhh!!!!!

I made 19 skydives all out-of-the-box in May and I took 210 stills on 17 of the runs. I had a dozen or so stunners and 50 odd keepers. I sold a few shots and trashed the rest. I'm trying to shoot everyone who's doing freeflying at GKC. There are 9 people so far who can do some safe and steady 2-way and 3-way VRW and a half a dozen wanna-bees. Totally cool this represents most of the up jumpers on the DZ who aren't staff. We work around the tandems and the IAD and the AF. We go to 105 and open at 2 and get lots of working time, probably I think 4 to 6 points worth for realtime teams. We nap on the way up or watch the teaming metro traffic both below and above us.... I think there are 4 or 5 of people on the DZ who could do 4-way VRW sequential now, but they need 10 jumps together to work out the details. Everyone is blue collar, working 50 hours a week, and married and so personal schedules and weather make practice a party occasion.

Towards the end of May, after a 2 week campaign to beseech everyone to show up on Sat and Sun PM, we got some Omega block weather (a good thing) and it started happening...the freeflyers started coming out. In the last 10 days I have made three 4-way attempts. I'm using a simplistic approach so I can utilize my Intermediate chair flyers as Base people. I'm trying to do a 50/50 round for the first formation. We don't have enough skill to try an all upright or downright round. In the 50/50, 2 flyers in medium fast jumpsuits chair-fly to a toe grip, then stand-it-up and keep their toes together to increase the fall rate, hoping 2 downright flyers can work into the drag bubble and take arm pit grips on them. If they fly this, then maybe the upright flyers can release the toe grip and fly their slot.

I fantasize about breaking into pieces and turning 360 to redock to a 50/50 stairstep and me on the bottom in a nice smooth stand-up shooting up with my wide-angle....maybe cartwheel off the bottom, shot the 3-way, then rotate to the top, redock, and shoot head-down.... blue-sky

look for poster on your attachment files pick-up