bomb420 1 #1 July 18, 2008 This is from the local Arizona Republic about Skydive Arizona's Swoop club. -Trunk Swoop Club Sport hones fast-landing skydivers' skills on obstacle course by Mary Beth Faller - Jul. 18, 2008 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic When falling 13,000 feet from a plane is no longer exciting, there's always swooping. Also called canopy piloting, swooping is a skydiving discipline that tests a jumper's accuracy skills. Seconds after jumping, the swooper opens his or her parachute, or canopy, then turns into a rotating dive, picking up speed. Just feet from the ground, the swooper levels off, skimming along the Earth at 80 mph and entering a course to navigate various challenges. Once through the course, the competitor must stop inside a target. The sport is difficult even for experienced skydivers. At a recent competition at Skydive Arizona in Eloy, no one in the Swoop Club landed perfectly in the target. But the challenge has a purpose. "It's difficult and fun, but it also trains people to be more precise and handle obstacles," says Amy Chmelecki, who runs the club at Skydive Arizona and serves as a competition judge. "It works on mental sharpness." The Swoop Club, first active a few years ago, recently resumed and held a competition June 22. Three more are scheduled through the year. "The kind of competition we do is geared toward every canopy skill level, and the way the course is set up is to involve everyone, no matter what kind of parachute they use," says Chmelecki, a world-class skydiver who rarely competes in swooping. "This is geared toward helping their skills and getting them to be safer and more proficient skydivers." The swoop course at Skydive Arizona is 150 feet long, 35 feet wide and lined with 10-foot-tall markers (flexible poles sporting fabric fins). Swoopers must fly between the markers, kick two teed-up soccer balls and land in the 15-square-foot target painted on the grass. The courses will be more difficult in the next competitions, with additional soccer balls, including two next to each other so that swoopers have to use both feet. Swoopers also will aim for a smaller triangular target. No one knows just when the sport was invented, but it likely was about 15 years ago, according to most swooping Web sites, which are informally maintained by enthusiasts. There are several national and world swooping competitions, with some focusing on speed and others on distance. Freestyle competitions involve swooping over water. A national competition, Swoop Week, will be held in August at a Denver skydiving park featuring a 370-foot-long manmade swoop pond. Swoopers jump from about 4,500 feet above the ground (rather than 13,000 feet for skydivers) and freefall just five to 10 seconds before pulling their canopies. Canopies evolved as the sport caught on, with the chutes now a rigid, rectangular shape, which is much faster and easier to manipulate. High-performance canopies can cost $3,000. At the June event, most of the Swoop Club jumpers wore only shorts, T-shirts and sneakers. Jumpsuits are stiflingly hot and create drag, which swoopers dislike. Shortly after jumping, there's a loud "whoosh" as the swooper turns into the course. The contestant pulls the canopy handles to speed up, slow down or turn. Swoopers use their bodies as well, swiveling hips or raising legs. Divers jump into the wind, which helps to control the landing. But on this windless day, the still air makes landings more difficult. Nearly everyone goes too fast to stop cleanly inside the target. Most lurch a few steps beyond the box. Some skid on their butts, short of the target, and a few land with enough force to tumble in the grass, bringing laughter from their competitors. "You're going 80 miles an hour, and you've got about 4 1/2 seconds to stop," says Steve Robertson, 63, of Avondale. "There's a lot of things happening really quickly." Jumpers often fixate on the first set of markers or soccer ball, and they must train themselves to look at the entire course while falling, Chmelecki says. Jumpers score two points for hitting a ball and four for landing in the target. Points are deducted should they miss a ball, hit a marker or swoop outside the course, and fail to land in the target. The winners this day - Dusty Smith and Steve Curtis, both instructors at the facility - tied at six points each, tallied through three rounds. Chmelecki says no one has been injured while swooping at Skydive Arizona. Swooping Web sites report that broken ankles and legs are the most common injuries (and happen often enough to have earned the nickname "femuring"). Swoopers are subject to the same potentially fatal dangers as any skydiver, especially midair collisions. The best swoopers have done at least 1,000 jumps, Chmelecki says, but even those with as few as 30 jumps can try swooping. The minimum requirement for swooping is a Class A skydiving license. Paul Hardin, 34, of Gilbert, explains the appeal for him of swooping: "I liked Superman when I was little. This is the closest thing to actual human flying you can get." On his second jump, Hardin hops a bit short of the target. He pulls his canopy off and heads toward the hangar to repack. "I lived again."HYPOXIC Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
