German Nationals 2011

[StefB 0]

Hello CRW-Dogs

last week there was the German Nationals in Skydiving and one part was the CF 2-way sequential competition. I'll try to give you a short report from the event.

The event took place in Kassel/Germany. The DZ has a Twin Otter and a (short) Cessna Caravan C208. The CF teams used both aircrafts for the jumps. In the Twin Otter there was mostly two 8-way FS teams for the high pass (4000m) and one CF team for the low pass (1800m). In the C208 were either 4-way FS teams or Freestyle teams or Freefly teams for the high pass and 1-2 CF teams for the low pass.

There were only three CF teams in the competition, two less than DM 2009. The teams were: Airstep (Tom, Viktor and Video Peter), Team Berlin (Peti, Ralf and Video Seele) and Stack Attack (Peter, Björn and Video Volker). Volker is new to real skydiving - in former life he was freeflyer :-)

Airstep had an unlucky start. In the original team Armin is the partner of Tom, but Armin drives motorcycle as well and... he left the bike during the ride and has some injuries now. They will heal but not in time for the nationals. But Airstep had some luck too - Viktor from Berlin was available as alternate jumper beginning with the second day of the competition. All CF teams agreed that Airstep can wait for Viktor and then start the competition one day later than the other teams.

Meanwhile Stack Attack and Team Berlin jumped 5 rounds each on the first day. Stack Attack had a very good start with a new team record: 8 pts. This improvement is due to some 90 training jumps this year on DZ Schweighofen/Germany. And these training jumps are mostly done from 4000m (DZs standard drop altitude for the Porter) so the effective training time is increased.

And Team Berlin had a new team - negative - record too: They briefed the wrong sequence in round 5 and got only one point, because the starting formation was correct.

Next day Airstep started with its jumps and the first jump showed already some problems. Normally Tom and Armin jump PD Storms (107), but not Viktor. So they took PD Lightnings as well as the two other teams). Without training and unfamiliar canopy the building time for the first formation was longer than 30s from the rules and 5-10s working time was spend. But in the following jumps Airstep could speed up and improve.

Stack Attack had an unlucky day as well - Peters canopy opened with a malfunction and he had to chop and draw silver. Short discussion with the judges... reserve ride is no cause for a rejump: 0 pts. Meanwhile the main canopy was found by a local truck driver but could be recovered from him after an intense discussion with the DZ manager Mausi.

Last round Airstep could catch up to Team Berlin, but not to Stack Attack. First there was an option of a jump-off between rank 2 and 3, but then the highest score in previous rounds gave the result.

1. Stack Attack
2. Team Berlin
3. Airstep

All teams are looking now forward to next nationals, which will be in northern Germany near Itzehoe in August 2012.

CU
Stefan

[CReW 0]

Good meet. I can see why your proud of your teams.