ederen

I'll be here in the Lauterbrunnen/Interlaken area for another 10 days. If you're around, let's get a pint of RugenBrau. -Eric

Apparently my writing skills aren't that great. Let me state it again, the professional jumpers didn't cut the trees, and the trees were not cut based on their conduct. If someone who freelances for a company that is working with the company you've worked for for 5+ years does something you believe to be wrong, do you quit your job in protest? Or do you just raise a verbal protest and then get on with your job? Think about it! I, for one, wish it was about environmentalism. BASE ethics, if there are such things, get redefined depending on who's talking about them, and in my experience they get restructured to please the individual's needs. I will be missing Bridge Day this year but I will respond to your PM. -Eric

Well, there you have it. You figured. Case closed. You've got your names right but your facts wrong. Leave the figuring to the folks who know what's up, and keep your second-hand information to yourself, mr virgin burner. heh, nice username, BTW. :-) -Eric

I was in Lauterbrunnen when the news of the cut trees came in, and the Red Bull guys were just as disappointed as anyone. A lot of the people on this thread love to jump to conclusions... and are reacting as if the jumpers of the RBAF were personally up there with chainsaws. I didn't like hearing about the trees either, but I didn't start wildly making statements about the RBAF or Red Bull. At this point, the trees are cut, and they were cut by locals who help maintain a lot of the BASE sites here. If you don't like it, at least complain about the right folks... yes, the ones who said, "I've been wanting to remove those particular trees for years". Not that it will do much good, because the trees are cut... just like the trees that were cut to build the hundreds of miles of ski lifts, tramways, and rack railroads in this part of the Bernese Alps of Switzerland. I'm not saying this is right, but seriously, it's none of my damn business what the Swiss want to do with their trees. And for those who think the RBAF guys, after years of working to be a part of this movie, should just quit the movie over massive deforestation (sic), you apparently haven't held a job for more than a month or understand what a steady paycheck means for people trying to raise families. "Yes, honey, it would be great if our family could pay our bills, but man, I sure showed those guys for cutting down those trees." Live in reality, folks. This apparently involves jumping out of some airplanes that burn 80 gallons of Jet A per hour and expel enough poisonous gas to fill a blimp hangar with every load, and then coming home to make wild accusations and bitch about stuff you don't know about on DZ.com. And to the person who started this thread on an international newsgroup, you should probably go work for Fox news with your passion for shit-stirring and half-truths about the relationship between Red Bull, the jumpers of the RBAF, and this situation. Hope you're proud. The trees are still cut, but don't you look cool! Come find me in the Horner this week and I'll buy you a beer. :-) -Eric

Yah way ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh ) Yerso Lane (alternatively Wereso Lane) Re Place Civil Trail or Criminal Trail (sorry) IITYWIMWYBMAD Lane (If I tell you what it means will you buy me a drink?) FFC4CCB8EA9AA Way (doesn't stand for crap, but would be fun having people try to guess) -Eric

No, the topmost skydiver is gripping with the wrong hand. Me too. You will have to talk to the judges, they are doing the interpretations of the rules. -Eric

If you are training for VFS, you will want to read this: For the past month, there has been a major international debate regarding the interpretation of formations in VFS. As things would go, the international judging body has finally come to an agreement that, although FS has used their dive pool to define the "intent" of a formation for 30 years (thereby defining slots but allowing cheats), VFS is not subject to those same rules. So the idea of slots as a way of interpreting the dive pool is completely out the window. Don't ask. If I thought I was going to have to define slots in the rules I would have.... it's not defined in FS so why would VFS need it, right? So for nationals and world cup, where the rules say "build the formation", all the judges are going to be looking for is grips and orientation. You can pick whatever slot you want. Yes, this means that there are now about 10 ways to build some formations. Yes, this is a radical shift from everything people have been using to interpret the dive pool for four years. I was under the impression that if you give people a picture and say "build the formation", that would be pretty clear, but evidently, it's not. Here is the original email from Judy Celaya, the chief judge for the US Nationals VFS event: So for those of you oldskool freefliers that don't like this new "structured" vertical discipline, VRW is now closer to a freefly dive than ever, because you can now basically do whatever you want. -Eric

Well, forget all of that. This issue sparked a major international debate that has been raging for a month. As things would go, the international judging body has finally come to an agreement that, although FS has used their dive pool to define the "intent" of a formation for 30 years (thereby defining slots but allowing cheats), VFS is not subject to those same rules. So the idea of slots as a way of interpreting the dive pool is completely out the window. Don't ask. If I thought I was going to have to define slots in the rules I would have.... it's not defined in FS so why would VFS need it, right? So for nationals and world cup, where the rules say "build the formation", all the judges are going to be looking for is grips and orientation. You can pick whatever slot you want. Yes, this means that there are now about 10 ways to build some formations. Yes, this is a radical shift from everything people have been using to interpret the dive pool for three years. I was under the impression that if you give people a picture and say "build the formation", that would be pretty clear, but evidently, it's not. Here is the original email from Judy Celaya, the chief judge for the US Nationals VFS event: -Eric

That's up to everyone, including you... it's going to be a bit harder to make changes or additions now that the USPA and the IPC have adopted it, which is why I was pushing so hard to add all of the new formations back in 2005 and 2006, before things became "official". Now there are committees in charge, and that means that everything will take 5 to 10 times longer than when it was just one person "in charge". I will probably continue to have an advisory role, but there are plenty of ways to get ideas to the committees other than through me. The only thing that really jumps out at me as needing to be changed is block 11; open class teams are cheating that to the point where it's a pretty lame block... My suggestion would be to define the Open class block 11 where the head down pair turns a 360 during the inter. If this "arms crossing" thing on random "L" starts creating judging issues, that may need to be addressed, too. If the comps start going to more rounds, or more points per round, then blocks and randoms will have to be added to the dive pool. Making sure that all VRW fliers around the world are represented in those additions is going to be quite a process. -Eric

The formations are defined by slots, grips, and orientation. This particular "I" formation is somewhat extended vertically, but slots still matter. Slots are defined as the placement of the jumpers in their quadrants, as viewed from the top down, just as it is in FS. In the case of the "I", if the judges can tell that the top skydiver is in front of the center head-down skydiver instead of behind them, that team should expect to receive an infringement. In reference to your crossing-arms "L" question, I thought of a lot of cheats when I was putting this dive pool together, but that's not one I thought of in 2006. As far as the rules go, that appears to be a reasonable cheat, for now, as long as you make it clear on video what you are doing. I didn't want to get into defining skydiver headings or angles because it would remove some of the fun of coming up with new fun cheats... so in VFS, the rules will probably never define those things as part of the pool. How would you define that point to make people fly it outfacing, rather than cheat it with their arms crossed? The initial reaction would be to just ban arm-crossing, but how do you judge that, and what else does a rule like that screw up? And if it isn't easy to fix arm-crossing with a simple addition to the rules, then that means that "L" should be replaced with some other formation that can be judged within the existing ruleset... ...are you starting to see what I had to go through when putting these rules and formations together? -Eric

Before I get any more emails about this, the VRW/VFS formation that is shown on the cover of Parachutist this month is not correct, but it's a great picture, so that's why it made the cover. If you look closely you can see a bandage on the top skydiver's right hand... he had broken it on a previous jump and so was intentionally taking the wrong grip to bravely continue training through adversity. That's their story, anyway. This was the same skydiver who repeatedly took the wrong grip during block 11 last year at the US Nationals... which created quite a stir... so maybe he just likes making more work for me.

The service will be in Omaha, Nebraska on Saturday May 31, 2008. There will be a viewing Friday night. Sorry that no further funeral info is available at this time, I will update here once the exact details are released. In lieu of flowers the family would like her friends to make a donation to the Susan B. Kohlman Breast Cancer Foundation. Kelley's mother died of breast cancer when Kelley was 20 years old. -Eric

I couldn't identify a better forum to put this in, but I just wanted to let concerned folks know that Kelley Fredrickson passed (I hate that word) in her sleep last night. Nothing else is really known yet, pending an autopsy, which will probably reveal some physical condition she didn't know she had. She was in great health and had routine flight physicals as part of her naval flight career. She will be loved and missed by all who knew her. Please send your thoughts and prayers to her family, her brother John (of couchfreaks), and to the members of her team, Fastrax Blue, who were training for the upcoming world meet in France. -Eric

Nice job, y'all! -E

It's up there... I've had about 1400 complete downloads of it. Sometimes, if there is a problem with an internet connection, the download will stop and then just the partial file will be cached... then any subsequent download attempts will only get the partial cache (in this case 23.3mb). Try clearing your cache (in IE it's tools->internet options->delete files) and re-initiating the download. If that doesn't work, try a different computer.

U23D was cool! But, in an attempt to push this thread back into the skydiving realm, I thought I'd mention that I shot some skydives in 3D last summer. Hopefully this won't be seen as ridiculous self-promotion : http://www.dzignlight.com/stereo/skydiving.shtml (this piece was just featured on the PD blog: http://pdblog.typepad.com/pdblog/) No Bono or the Edge, but the skydives are fun. -Eric

Now here's something you don't see every day: http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/Go_Sports_Skydiving Press release: Go! Sports Skydiving™ is a skydiving simulator that uses the SIXAXIS™ wireless controller to twist, turn and pull off tricks. The easy and intuitive motion control allows you to move through the skies into various skydiving team formations or solo tricks with the greatest of ease. Did anyone we know work on this thing? -Eric

I guess this adds one more name to the "good die young" roster. Lee was an unbelievably warm-hearted guy, he will be greatly missed by all that knew him well. -Eric

The September 2006 VRW 4-Way FAX meet scores are up! Congratulations to Arizona Arsenal for rocking the house with a 9 POINT AVERAGE! Everyone who participated should be really proud, this was not an easy draw! For a link to a previous thread regarding VRW 4-Way, please see here. Please visit the VRW 4-Way Website for more information about VRW! -Eric

The September 2006 VRW 4-Way FAX meet scores are up! Congratulations to Arizona Arsenal for rocking the house with a 9 POINT AVERAGE! Everyone who participated should be really proud, this was not an easy draw! For a link to a previous thread regarding VRW 4-Way, please see here. Please visit the VRW 4-Way Website for more information about VRW! -Eric

How do you define point (and/or other slots) in VRW 4-way? Good question. My answer would be that VRW 4-way is not a *new* discipline. I mean, technically it is, but we're just doing the same thing as 4-way FS has been doing for 30 years. 'Point' means the same thing as it does in FS, the only difference is that what 'point' means once you leave the airplane is not as solidly defined in VRW (yet) as it is in FS. Practically speaking, it means that Jon is the front-most person on exit, and once the formation is on the hill, with VRW, he's the closest person to the plane, usually until we execute the inter of the first block. -Eric (outside center)

Glad you dig it. We didn't get any coaching, but most of us have been involved with FS training to some degree over the years. Kyle actually won Gold at Nationals in 4-Way FS Intermediate back in 2000, on Rage with Eliana Rodriguez, Thomas Hughes, and Glen Mendez, so I personally try to learn from Kyle's experience whenever possible. -Eric

Our helmets are matte black Skysystems Factory Divers: http://www.skysystemsusa.com/news/ I think it's fantastic that this thread is actually growing here on the relative work forum and the same exact post has ZERO replies on the freeflying forum! I've been saying all along that VRW was probably going to end up attracting more competitive RW skydivers than classic "freefliers". It's no big secret why. -Eric

The results, scores, and video from this weekend's VRW 4-Way competition (Comp#5) are now posted at http://www.vrw4way.com/comp5.html. -Eric

The results, scores, and video from this weekend's VRW 4-Way competition (Comp#5) are now posted at http://www.vrw4way.com/comp5.html. -Eric