US Performance Competition - Acro Invitational (November 2011)

[DSE 3]

Lurch,
Nothing was weighted against you, just that nothing was weighted in your favor.

For those that weren't here, we had a lot of problem with GPS units and satellites. About halfway through the day, we discovered that for whatever reason, only two and occasionally three satellites were functioning. Regardless of GPS placement, acquiring signal in aircraft, powering up unit on the ground, powering unit in the aircraft and acquiring in the air...none of it mattered.
Nevertheless, everyone brought in scores, and so we shifted judging per round and best average of multiple jumps to best recorded jump from each competitor.
What we could see with the eye for distance pretty much matched the data GPS' provided. Speed...only GPS could provide that data.

We also changed exit altitude to 11,000 (there were two runs where the pilot mistakenly went to 12,000); by lowering the exit altitude, competitors had a much shorter time to get flying at their best speed. Our feeling was that by lowering exit altitude, it smoothed out advantages of really heavy guys over skinny guys as the competitor is just coming off the hill as he/she enters the gates.

Despite the satellite problems (something we could not control), everyone was a great sport about the problem (although it was incredibly frustrating). Winners of the top three prizes were incredibly gracious in sharing their booty with those that few very well, but didn't achieve a top slot.

This event did not (and could not have) followed the exact PPC rules; like other competitions, we deviated for reasons of time, number of competitors, and eventually, because of satellite issues. Weather played a big role in the unanimous decision to modify the comp rules.

Kudos to Scott Callantine/BSR, Cate Heneghan, Simon Repton/Wickey, and Brian Caldwell/Lurch. Not so much because they took top slots, but because they were incredible sportsmen and made everyone that didn't do quite as well, feel like a million bucks. More than one tear of gratitude was shed by some newer jumpers as an "older" jumper quietly stepped over, shared a prize and said "You did damn well, you deserve this."
Darren Burke spent much of the night drinking beer from his 4-can-capable trophy. Joel Hindman spent most of the night in a stunned smile. Both are newbies.
We had a LOT of new blood wanting to 'test' themselves at this event. It was incredibly inspiring to see Robi, Callantine, Scotty, Zach, Owen, Jojo, Jarno, and a few others 'coaching' some of the newer jumpers. Watching guys like OJTahiti, Rich, Joel, Darren, Omnia, Scott N, Migs, Forrest, increase their performance and excitement was what this event was about.

This set the stage for many future events both here at Elsinore, and some events we have planned around the US in the coming year. Competition, REAL competition where we have numbers and values that may be measured, are an integral part of the growth of our discipline. This first experimental effort in the USA taught us a lot, and showed us the way to move forward.

Gotta send huge props to Klaus @ Paralog, who was available 24 hours a day when we initially thought we had a Paralog problem, props to the satellite experts and then military guys who helped us determine the problem was in space, and not the Flysight units (We did have one malfunctioning flysight out of 33 units), Jarno, Daniella, Natheena, Lisa, Amber, all the office chicks at Elsinore, Karl Gulledge, John Hamilton, Sydney Owen, the packers (Especially Tracy and Chris) Robi, Lob, Tickle, Jason Timm....A lot of people made this event work in spite of the nasty rains we had (and are having right now.

THanks to the Sponsors that either donated product or sold us product at low prices so that we could offer some good stuff; Phoenix-Fly, L&B, Paralog, Square One, Flysight, Gatorz, Skydive Elsinore, David Sanders, and a wingsuiter who wishes to remain an anonymous donor.

Kudos to all the competitors, the new suits, the sportsmanship, good vibes. Pictures and video are forthcoming, I'm sure. Facebook is already pretty active.

One last comment that I feel is noteworthy; there was no politicking, no yelling, no fighting, no egos displayed, no backbiting, no arguing amongst the competitors nor manifest chicks. The worst part of the event (from a personal perspective) was that I was unable to jump due to the business of managing intake, manifest, loads. I truly wish I could have had a fun jump with my friends and fellow wingsuiters. I made a lot of new friends, enjoyed re-meeting old friends, and despite the stresses of weather and satellites...I had a blast.
Thanks to all that cooperated to make it happen. Can't wait for April 2012~!

[lurch 0]

(Big grin) Agreed. It wasn't "against me", it just wasn't as much to my advantage as it might have been. I was really dependent on that extra 2000 feet at the top to get distance.
But what kind of loser would I be if I only competed when things are in my favor? FAR better to step up and do the best I can with what I have to work with and I -Thoroughly- enjoyed the challenge. I don't CARE. Any conditions, any set of rules, throw down the gauntlet and I'll bring the ruckus.
First class event in EVERY way.
I have ZERO complaints... although whoevers on maintenance for satellites needs to get on it cause they fell down on the job bigtime.
It was an honor and privilege to attend.
And we had no backstabbing...no politics... no whining, no lame suit wars... Alien, Tony and PF, all at the same table with a common goal...flying our hearts out.
God, DAMN was it fun!
One of the best most satisfying events I've attended, and thats quite a few by now.
Very happy.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[michalm21 0]

Can we see results? Person/Suit/Score?
Congrats!

[BIRDDOCTOR 0]

http://www.paralog.net/ppc/showevent_compact.php?event=U.S. Performance Cup 2011

Base# 1638

[unclecharlie95 3]

Sounds like you did a stunning job regardless of the weather and tech problems.

BASEstore.it

[pms07 3]

Thank you to DSE, Jarno and all the organizers of the US Performance Cup; what a well organized and executed event, plus great coaching available from some of the best wingsuit flyers in the world. I learned a great deal and had a great time.

Congratulations to Cate, Scott, Simon and all the others that took home hardware. Great flying!

[Butters 0]

Him, Him, F** Him to all that organized this event. It appears that it was safe, fun, and a step in the right direction.

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[omnia 0]

It was a fun event for sure! Congrats to all the winners!

[unclecharlie95 3]

Are the rankings for the individual events online anywhere?

BASEstore.it

[Sam_Adams 0]

they should be up soon i am shure the organizers are already working on it. you always see the final scores and ranking on the ppc website for the individual events and also the results end up being presented in the worlwide ranking for each disciplin.
pretty cool, you can see all the data of the jumps in numbers and graphs, as well as the suits used for it.

here are just the scores so far recorded but in randomly order

http://www.paralog.net/ppc/showevent_compact.php?event=U.S.%20Performance%20Cup%202011

what i can tell you is that in open class simon repton from wickedwingsuits won the event followed by scott callantine both in their s-birds.
robert pecnik in his vampire 4 became third and dave barlia in his apache fourth.

speed in open class was won by scott callantine from seattle in his s-bird followed by tony uragallo wearing an apache and third was jarno cordia in his havok.

in intermediate class (speed) cate heneghan dominated in her phantom2.

and joel hindman flew furthest in intermediate class in his phantom, 2568m!

awesome flying guys, i had a lot of fun just hanging out in elsinore this weekend.

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

[pattersd 0]

First I would like to thank the event organizers, host location, and sponsors for putting on this event. I think this event brought out the best in our competitive nature, everyone was interested in doing their best and in sharing information to help others to do their best.

Everyone did a great job in dealing with the challenges presented during the event from the weather (two out of three rain days in sunny southern California?) to the Satellite/GPS issues. I think it is great that some people are getting recognized for making a great jump in the competition, I also think it is terrible that some people who probably had a great jump in the competition, are not even recognized as having been there. (Personally, I have no doubt that my jumps were not up there with the top performances, but it would have been interesting to see where they ranked.)
The difficulties encountered with the GPS recording of results should be taken as a warning that relying on technology to judge our results will not always work. One third of the people competing in the event had no usable results recorded during the event. (there were 42 competitors, 25 show up on the PPC event page) Everyone (I believe) made a minimum of four jumps and most made more. Even amongst the competitors who were fortunate enough to have at least one usable result recorded, roughly half of their jumps were not recorded. If this event had been a part of the USPA nationals what would have happened? We should be asking do we want to rely on on this much technology for wingsuit competitions?
I am looking forward to the next competition being organized at Elsinore and seeing what form it will take based on the many ideas discussed on Friday. I would vote for a set of 3-way formations with and without docks on our bellies organized into a draw similar to 4-way formation skydiving. And that as wingsuiting progresses in the future add another member and the pool would be expanded to include backflying.

[Migs 0]

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First I would like to thank the event organizers, host location, and sponsors for putting on this event. I think this event brought out the best in our competitive nature, everyone was interested in doing their best and in sharing information to help others to do their best.

Everyone did a great job in dealing with the challenges presented during the event from the weather (two out of three rain days in sunny southern California?) to the Satellite/GPS issues. I think it is great that some people are getting recognized for making a great jump in the competition, I also think it is terrible that some people who probably had a great jump in the competition, are not even recognized as having been there. (Personally, I have no doubt that my jumps were not up there with the top performances, but it would have been interesting to see where they ranked.)
The difficulties encountered with the GPS recording of results should be taken as a warning that relying on technology to judge our results will not always work. One third of the people competing in the event had no usable results recorded during the event. (there were 42 competitors, 25 show up on the PPC event page) Everyone (I believe) made a minimum of four jumps and most made more. Even amongst the competitors who were fortunate enough to have at least one usable result recorded, roughly half of their jumps were not recorded. If this event had been a part of the USPA nationals what would have happened? We should be asking do we want to rely on on this much technology for wingsuit competitions?
I am looking forward to the next competition being organized at Elsinore and seeing what form it will take based on the many ideas discussed on Friday. I would vote for a set of 3-way formations with and without docks on our bellies organized into a draw similar to 4-way formation skydiving. And that as wingsuiting progresses in the future add another member and the pool would be expanded to include backflying.

Very well said and outstanding job from the staff at Elsinore! It was an awesome experience and an honor to meet and jump with all of you. I am looking forward to the next wingsuit event.

~Migs~

On Facebook

[piisfish 135]

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jarno cordia in his havok.

pics of the Havok please ?

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[kallend 1,620]

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http://www.paralog.net/ppc/showevent_compact.php?event=U.S. Performance Cup 2011

Clicky

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Zeemax 0]

Hold that excitement for a while yet. This is just a very early prototype to test some various suit elements which could be incorporated in to future suits.

Phoenix Fly - High performance wingsuits for skydiving and BASE
Performance Designs - Simply brilliant canopies

[alx72 0]

impressive that s-birds outflew an apache and a V4. congrats to the winners!
seems like it was a good event!

[Sam_Adams 0]

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I also think it is terrible that some people who probably had a great jump in the competition, are not even recognized as having been there.

in fairness to the organizers and i have a lot of respect for that, the people that didn´t get a single score recorded got their registration money back as omnia told me. well i think that is a great gesture!

still i understand what you are saying....

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

[WickedWingsuits 0]

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impressive that s-birds outflew an apache and a V4. congrats to the winners!
seems like it was a good event!

To be fair there is one Apache we didn't outfly...I know because I saw Tony pass me and I saw the results from his personal flysight...the competition one just didn't seem to have useable data on it.

It was a fun event, I learned a lot and I could see others soaking it all in. The rain also gave us a soaking but the organizers took it all in their stride.

Summer Rental special, 5 weeks for the price of 4! That is $160 a month.

Try before You Buy with Wicked Wingsuits - WingsuitRental.com

[Sam_Adams 0]

only a true champion would admit that simon! applaus!!

still, your win was well deserved!!

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

[kallend 1,620]

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Interesting you make this distinction as heavier pilots have an advantage in the speed round. :)

Only if they know how to use it. Through quite a bit of testing, it's obvious that the weight can help if leveraged properly.

I'm quite sure it would. Would you allow the use of added weights in competition?

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[LouDiamond 1]

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The difficulties encountered with the GPS recording of results should be taken as a warning that relying on technology to judge our results will not always work. ..... If this event had been a part of the USPA nationals what would have happened? We should be asking do we want to rely on on this much technology for wingsuit competitions?

The one thing you can always count on is that the Tech will let you down at some point, it's chances of occuring can be mitigated but it cannot be completely eliminated. With that said, the GPS satellite constalation is a huge machine that is managed and has a very high reliability rating. That doesn't mean there are never glitches or down time due to maintenance but there is a place where it can be planned for and monitored and that is Here among others. And sometimes Murphy simply raises his head and there is no explanation for it. I don't know what all equipment was/wasn't used for this event or what the specific circumstances were but I'm sure that the entire planet had GPS satellites in the sky that were working enough to provide at a minimum location data. If it wasn't it would have made national news and a lot more people would have noticed it as well. For whatever reason, there were issues but I don't think it can be faulted entirely to the 30 satellites in the GPS constellation, it very well could be a combination of several things. The one thing to consider though is that the current method of scoring all disciplines relies on electronics heavily as well, so this is not a deal breaker IMO, its just the way things go sometimes.

As for the scoring and question about Nationals. First, one has to look at the competition manual found on the USPA website under scoring in the specific discipline to see how it is handled. Since we are discussing something that has no defined scoring and there isn't anything in the existing manual that deals with an issue like this you could look at it as either a camera failure. In which case the team would take a zero. Or you can look at it as an aircraft breaking before all the teams had jumped the round. An event cannot proceed to the next round if the previous round hasn't been completed by all the teams and declared closed by the judges. If the teams cannot all complete say round #2 and the scores are incomplete and the event cannot continue due to time,wx, aircraft still broken,etc, then the scores from round one would be used as the basis of determining the winner. There is a huge grey area here in these comparisions as it is not even apples and oranges we are talking about but it is the closest thats related to competition in other disciplines that can be compared and has occured in the past.

If anything, it sounds like this was a good learning experience on many levels for all involved.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[DSE 3]

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Interesting you make this distinction as heavier pilots have an advantage in the speed round. :)

Only if they know how to use it. Through quite a bit of testing, it's obvious that the weight can help if leveraged properly.

I'm quite sure it would. Would you allow the use of added weights in competition?

Nope.
The ENTIRE point of the competition is to level the playing field as much as possible so that lightweight competitors don't hold a hard edge over heavy competitors and vice-versa. The 11K exit point only 1K above the competition window also goes a long way to eliminating real benefit to the heavier competitors.

This is a unilaterally agreed-upon approach. Weights allow too many variables to be introduced and until this discipline has more momentum, it's already pandemonium for judges. KISS.

We learned a lot. One thing that I definitely appreciated; whether one won, lost, drew zeros...people showed up to test their skills. That says a lot about their character vs the guys that say "I'm the most bad-ass flyer in the wingsuit world, even though I've never flocked nor competed in anything."
Kudos to those that put their asses against the clock.

[tvandijck 0]

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The one thing you can always count on is that the Tech will let you down at some point, it's chances of occuring can be mitigated but it cannot be completely eliminated.

Murphies first law says, if it can break, it will...

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I don't know what all equipment was/wasn't used for this event or what the specific circumstances were but I'm sure that the entire planet had GPS satellites in the sky that were working enough to provide at a minimum location data. If it wasn't it would have made national news and a lot more people would have noticed it as well. For whatever reason, there were issues but I don't think it can be faulted entirely to the 30 satellites in the GPS constellation, it very well could be a combination of several things.

Indeed, we were all using FlySight devices, so maybe something is wrong there, who knows, I for sure am running tests to figure things out a bit, and in the process I'm writing a competition specific firmware to fix a few of the problems I saw myself...

In addition to there being 30 satellites, they are also not geostationary, and move along the sky pretty quickly, in about 12 minutes they move from horizon to horizon I believe so over the course of the day we should have had visibility on all of them at one point.

The problems with the flysight not recording, or getting spiky data must have been some other condition. signal jamming or weather conditions. Fact is, almost all units out of the 34 we had, had these issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ConstellationGPS.gif

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The one thing to consider though is that the current method of scoring all disciplines relies on electronics heavily as well, so this is not a deal breaker IMO, its just the way things go sometimes.

Not entirely accurate.. scoring in all other disciplines relies on camera and camera footage alone, a technology that has been around since the early 1900's. While it is technology for sure, I wouldn't really call it sophisticated, but even there camera people jump with two cameras most of the time because things go wrong sometimes...

Thing is here though, these cameras are not from the USPA so if you have a camera bust of any kind it wasn't the USPA that did anything wrong, hence the 0 points. In this event, to prevent cheating etc the flysights where provided by the organization, and hence giving a 0 for no data or inaccurate data is a little harsh in my opinion..

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If anything, it sounds like this was a good learning experience on many levels for all involved.

heck yes, and a lot of fun too... thank you for the write up, great stuff, and thanks to the organizers for setting up the event...

[lurch 0]

"In this event, to prevent cheating etc the flysights where provided by the organization, and hence giving a 0 for no data or inaccurate data is a little harsh in my opinion.. "

Why so? What else could they possibly do, cancel the whole thing?

My first runs were my best. I didn't start getting useful GPS tracks till I'd splashed off all my energy and started feeling beat. One in Distance I was neck and neck with Tony, the only two to make it as far as the road. I'll never know which of us rocked that round...both our data were lost. I think all my first four runs were lost. It sucked, but I just kept banging out the jumps hoping if its a satellite issue we'll get new ones over horizon soon, and holding GPS against the window on the ride up hoping to score in what jumps I could get by sunset. Half the competitors' jumps were lost. What number should they replace the zero with, 50%?

I have some ideas about why we might have had these issues, stuff I noticed was done differently here... The reduced altitude part of that, a few other details I'll discuss with Spot later. I also noticed which side of the plane the GPS was on mattered...one side kept lock, one side lost it while I was trying to figure out why my own kept cutting out before exit. Thanks to Joel for contributing the spare device he was packing when mine got funky, allowing me to compare the behavior of two of them in realtime in the plane in the last few minutes before exit. I used em to take some observations.

GPS worked fine in Gransee, I think theres some procedures we can implement here that can help, or at least cut the odds of data loss, control for a few things.

The event had its major glitches, but I think everyone involved did a spectacular job doing the best possible under the conditions. I didn't even get judged on what I think were my best runs and I'm ok with that. Everyone else was working under the same random-zero handicap I was.
-B

Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

[piisfish 135]

was there a GPS repetitor inside the plane (like a relay antenna) ?
we had that even in the Porter for the trackingderby competitions

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM