Quite a Nationals

[billvon 2,403]

Wow, those were some pretty intense days.

I just got back from 4 and 8 way, and man, there was a lot of competition compressed into a very short time.

On Saturday the skies didn't clear until the afternoon, and then the winds picked up. The open teams managed to do 3 but some intermediate teams only made 1. The next day was clear and a little less windy, and everyone finished. That meant that some intermediate teams had to make 9 jumps.

Years ago there was a rule that 7 jumps a day was the maximum you could ask competitors to do, but that's since been amended to "they can do as many as they want." And for an open class 8 way team that ordinarily does 12-20 training jumps a day that doesn't seem like a big deal at all - but for a less experienced intermediate class team, that could be more jumps than they've ever done in a day before.

Still, it seemed to work out; everyone made it through.

Then 8 way started - and we ended up doing all the open teams in _one_ day! 10 jumps a day. We ran out of daylight and the intermediates only did 9, but they would have continued had there been time.

Bill (meet director) went to all the teams around jump #7 and asked them in a group if they wanted to continue. Everyone said yes, which I think was 80% thoughtful answer, 10% peer pressure and 10% "I just wanna get done!"

Again, our 8-way team had done 10 and 12 jump training days before, and the pace on Monday was much slower than a typical 20-minute-call training day. But I wonder if any of the intermediate teams were pushing their endurance limits.

On the plus side, that let a lot of people get back to work/DZ's a day or two early.

All in all a great job by Skydive Chicago hosting the event and getting so many teams in the air without many hiccups.

[NWFlyer 2]

Quote

Bill (meet director) went to all the teams around jump #7 and asked them in a group if they wanted to continue. Everyone said yes, which I think was 80% thoughtful answer, 10% peer pressure and 10% "I just wanna get done!"

At least two intermediate 8-way teams said they'd like to stop at 8 (which Bill told us was the original plan for the day) and ended up doing 2 yesterday morning. But yeah, because of the bad weather (and threats thereof that didn't come true), the pace did end up being weird - for me doing 4-way and 8-way, my pace was 2, 8, 9, 1 over four days. Would have been nice to spread it out a little, but with the forecasts they were getting, I can also understand the desire to keep it moving (even though it turned out the weatherman was wrong).

My 8-way team trained 8 a day, so pushing to 9 wasn't a huge difference ... the only thing really affecting endurance (at least in my particular case) was that by the end of the day I had a nasty cold coming on. Even though I was tired, I would have loved to do one more because I knew that my sinuses would only get worse overnight ... and they did. It's a day and a half later and my right ear still hasn't cleared from the one jump we did early yesterday.

Though I don't have other events to compare it to, I thought the meet was very well run and well organized, and that the team at SDC did a phenomenal job keeping everything running smoothly. The communication, the calls, the loading, the pilots managing so many planes in the air, the grounds crew picking people up - it all worked together quite well.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke