Skydive
Oke, no where near complete, but these were the last skydiving adventures:
After a year long break from competition skydiving, in 2011 it's back on again. This time 8-way in team M8trix.
Next up is 4-way, in team NRG. What can I say? Good times. Starting with a tryout at the end of 2006, we started training in
2007 and worked our way up to the top in 2009. There we averaged 16.0 at the Dutch Nationals and went to the World Cup.
I started 2006 with a blast: 400-way world record freefall formation skydive
over Udon Thani, Thailand, and a 960-way world record mass drop on the new Suvarnabhumi international
airport of Bangkok, Thailand. You can read all about it in
my blog and jump from there to other World Team related sites.
The 2005 edition was a bit different from other years. Since they organization didn't
succeed in getting the Big Jet, they opted to stay at their home
dropzone La Palisse. Also focussing on flat flying
there was enough lift capacity provided by two Skyvans and a Caravan.
Since being bumped up to Patrick Passe's group last year, he was glad to take me again this
time. And we make some cool jumps. Complex round and diamond things, impossible 8-way
hopeless diamond combinations, loopy worldteam jumps, you name it. Check out the September
2005 front cover of Skydiving magazine and you know what I mean.
After a week living in a tent, making about 30 great jumps and demoing an unnamed canopy
now known as the Mamba it was good to go home.
Something new is here:
I've been looking for a new canopy to replace my Stiletto 135 for a while now, researching
various options, comparing different canopies. I looked for a non-cross brased canopy I would
be loading at about 1.5 and which would have a nice swoop. I also liked the airlock idea,
witnessing it in action on a windy day in Vichy, France. All canopies were muchy, while one
flew sold as a rock. It was Willy Boeykens' Rage, build by Paratec.
So with these ideas in my head I read numerous comparisons written up by people jumping and
comparing various types of canopies. Looking for an airlocked canopy, fun to fly, not too
ground hungry I came to the description of the Samurai. I liked what I read, so I tried to
find one second hand. That wasn't easy, people tend to hang on to them once they have one.
Finally at the end of 2004 three came available and after quite some emails I finally
secured one.
Once I got it, I fully inspected it, hooked it up to my rig and on a calm day gave it a go.
What a blast! Nice forward speed, very responsive to both toggles and harnas input. Packing
was a bit of a search though. The best way to handle the slider and the nose took some
getting used to, now I just line them up nicely.
Still it tended to turn to the right on opening, which was odd. It had to be something I
did wrong. The canopy checked out oke, all lines were of right length. Still I had to put
my left leg down after opening to make it go straight. Now I turned my attention to the
legstraps. Me, being a skinny guy, pull them tight so the elastic bands are between the
connector and where the padding is sewn to the webbing. One of these stiches had been worn
out before and redone. But it was besides the original stiching, leaving less room for the
elastic band. This made the right leg strap slightly longer and making a difference now.
After adjusting this situation openings were on heading all the time, except when I wasn't
paying enough attention on keeping the shoulders level!
Having over a hunderd jumps on it this year all I can say is: I love it. Try one if you can.
Next up the Canopy-Formation Seminar 2004 in Empuriabrava, Spain.
What? Me CReW? No, not me, Wendy. She's totally into it and will join the
women's European record attempt. So I'll go to support her (and jump a little of course!).
Take a peak at the Empuria website.
It turned out to be a great event. People from all over Europe and US came
over and enjoyed the learning and company of new found friends. Especially
Chris Gay and Dave Richardson gave tons of information about bigway CRW.
Even I found similarities with bigway freefall skydiving.
I did a couple of video jumps, both freefall and CRW, but most of the time
I just stayed out in the sun, packed a chute or listened to the briefings.
All in all a fine relaxing week, thanks to the great organizers and DZ staff.
Right after a week in sunny Spain it's back to Holland to have a go at the
Dutch Freefall Formation record!
We just missed the target :/ (which was scaled back due to lack of aircraft).
Still a good experience for a lot of people, and in perfect cooperation with
the Airforce this event created a
solid basis for future attempts.
It was a blast. Returning to the location south of the terminal building the
boogie got back to its orignal success formula. With the AN-72 as main lift
capacity (70+) and a Beech 99 and SkyVan as additional capacity.
Joel and crew were there to make thing smoothly. Jumps were great, thanks to
the top organizers (Olav and Eli etc. for Freefly, Patrick, Dave and Milko
etc. for FS). I jumped with Dave Morris for the first couple of days, after
which he transferred me to Patrick Passe, with whom I jumped the last two
days.
The North Face Skydiving Team.
This was to be the next level team. An angreement for two years was to make
of these 'young' skydivers a well performing team. After investing a year with
them it was decided to kick me out.
Sigh.
It has been a busy end of the millenium. It had to be, since the year
before was a true disaster. First of all poor weather all year, except for
a couple of weeks in May, second since I broke my leg in the middle of the
season. Luckily I didn't miss out on anything because of that same poor
summer.
The closure of the millenium was so different. First of all I joined
two teams: a 4way team we founded at the end of the previous year and a
16way team which is the continuation of long standing tradition.
Mysterious
We started out rather late this year with our first training, but soon
found that we could get along quit well. We decided to train at
Teuge since this was easily
reachable for everyone, we could get a reasonable deal and the
Cessna Caravan is a fine aircraft. Video and coaching was more of a
problem. Finally we managed to get a good videoman, but coaching was still
a problem. Even though we hadn't had much coaching we signed up for the
Hoogeveen club competition and trained the jumps, which were published
beforehand, the week before the event. The competition was a blast
and we jumped to victory with an avarage of 14.3.
This tasted like more, but for the real stuff, the Nationals, we felt
just not prepared, especially on the blocks. But to miss the event, no
way. So why not enter the 8way event, just for fun. So, after a lot of
phonecalls, we finally managed to get four extra people in to form 'Two
Mysterious'. A mystic name in itself and it proved to be true as well.
Since we brought only our skills and had no idea about what to do with
these blocks and randoms we hired Mike Brooke, who was coaching Dutch
Flight on the event, to help us out. The exit we could figure out
ourselfs, just using our 4way positions. A bit suprised about out lack of
knowledge he put each of us in place on the first point and told us the
moves we had to make. First round we finished with 5 points and star,
since we didn't brief any further. This was at 5000ft. On the next round
our luck had run out: nill.
But our luck returned. We managed to get the exit right and started to
collect our point, one more each round. The first day consisted of six
rounds, so everyone grew increasingly tired, resulting in funneled exists.
But that didn't keep us from getting the points in, though second place
was out of reach, so it seemed....
To be continued...
The result was good enough to hit the local paper...
(Sorry, in Dutch only, but take a look at the photo anyway)
This is the photo
and the article
published in the "NoordHollands Dagblad" after the Dutch Nationals.
News Flash
The only Dutch league event this year was won by Mysterious, our second
first place in the first year of our existance.
Click here to read about running Skydiving 1.0
16MB
Full story will come, but here are the pictures of a friendshipdive we
made with the British team (Mixteen) after we beat them at the competition
at Brienne-Le-Chateau. Yes this was one smoking 32way three pointer!
Latest update: They beat us at the Texel international 16way competition
fair and square, but another friendshipdive, from a Let410 and a C208 over
the beautiful island Texel, made up for all of it.
Pictures taken by Ronald Walraven
Written by my own two hands and an ASCII editor.
Problems? write me
Last updated March 24, 2005
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