The PD Blog

PD Factory Team's, Jay Moledzki, Wins in Torino

Congratulations to Jay Moledzki of the PD Factory Team for his recent victory at the World Air Games in Torino, Italy. Ian Bobo took second place, and Francisco Neri third.

World Record Try Outs

Photographer Brian Buckland captures the exit of a formation load over Skydive Chicago in June 2009 during Try-outs for the the World Record Vertical Formation to be held in late July.  The goal for the new record is a 100 way, the current record is a 69-way. 

Wingsuiting at Soest

While trying out this new crazy sports-camera toy, I had some fun with my

wingsuit and Storm (135), and got some cool angles which I compiled into a video.

Next to being a fun video, its also a nice showcase as to why the

Storm is THE best choice for anyone flying a wingsuit. Always on

heading, fun to fly, and a flare that never ends!!

All the best from the Netherlands!

 

Reported by: Jarno Cordia

PD Sponsored Athlete

 

 

PD Factory Team's, Pablo Hernandez, Wins in Lillo

So, it looks like SkydiveLillo has hosted perfectly one more year of swooping nationals. After 4 long days of long standbys, weather holds and winds over the limits, finally by Saturday 2nd of May the competition was over. That saturday definitely has been one of the most intense days in Swooping and in the Spanish skydiving history. I don´t recall that this year we have had such an important event in the skydiving panorama in this country. For the spectators it has been a delightful event to watch. If swooping is usually impressive, this competition has been specially intense. A big crowd gathered around the pond on saturday evening to experience a competition in it´s highest levels.

Now let´s start from the beginning. Saturday morning started off like one of those perfect days. So we could finish the competition we had still 4 rounds to go. One in speed, 3 in accuracy. Everything was just looking perfect, the less experienced were scoring, and the old dogs were fighting through the gates to make the highest scores. During that morning 3 rounds could be finished, the last one of speed and the first 2 of accuracy. It looked like we had the perfect day for swooping, low winds and clear blue skies. But right when we attempted to start with the final round of accuracy the downwind started to be just too strong. All competitors had to wait for long hours of standby until just before sunset with the cooling afternoon.

Before the last round, the highest positions in the scoring table were carefully kept by the favorites. Mike Vogeleer, Christian Wagner, Pablo Hernandez (PDFT), Gonzalo Sanudo, Brian Vacher (PDFT) were carefully fighting to climb on that scoring table before last round, the round that was going to decide the medals for that whole general classification.

To make it more interesting, judges decided to do reverse order for the exit. Two loads of porter were in charge of making it happen. This way, the best swoopers were being left for the very last moment, right when we were having a beautiful sunset. The winds dropped, and that made it even more special, those who were there know what I´m talking about.

Red Bull´s Hummer was pumping loud on the side of the course making that little corner of the country side in central Spain look like an olympic stadium. The crowd cheered as the swoopers were landing, and more people gathered as the last passes were coming up. Now it was time for the favorites to make the crowd roar. Mike Vogeleer, Christian Wagner and Pablo Hernandez were the last ones to land. Mike, was the first one, and he surprised everybody with an excellent score. But was it going to be enough to catch up with the next 2 swooping pirates ready to make him bite the dust? Christian Wagner just didn´t surprise anybody with a close to perfect accuracy round. Now it was all on the table. Pablo Hernandez just had to do a normal score to keep those old dogs from climbing, it was a big responsibility. But once again Pablo entered the gate, dragged the water and made it to zone 3 cleanly and saving his score, everything was put to rest cause he was the winner.

After this breathtaking final round and once the sun was completely set the party started. The drop zone offered free beer while the prize gift ceremony was taking place. A very emotional ceremony that led to a fiesta that lasted long hours.

It was an honor to have such a great level of skydivers.

We hope to see everybody next year.

Lucía Jauregui, meet director. Photos by Daniel Angulo

These are the results:

Speed:
1. Pablo Hernandez
2.Mark Rabanhi
3.Gonzalo Sanudo

Distance:
1.Mike Vogeleer
2.Pablo Hernandez
3.Christian Wagner

Accuracy:
1.Christian Wagner
2.Brian Vacher
3.Pablo Hernandez

Overall:
1.Pablo Hernandez
2.Christian Wagner
3.Mike Vogeleer

Spanish nationals:
1.Pablo Hernandez
2.Daniel Paredes
3.Pablo Rua

Alberta Provncial Skydiving Championships 2009

From  July 1st to the 6th at the Edmonton Skydive Centre in Alberta, Canada!

Niklas Daniel of Spaceland Blue will be FreeFly Load Organizing and canopy coaching through the entire event. 

Chris Farina of Perris Fury will be attending as well, offering free coaching and load organizing for teams training or any one interested in having fun!

So if you are in the neighborhood of Alberta, stop on by, eh! 

FLCPA 2009 Season wrap up

We are here at the close of the 2009 regular season.  This year has been quite extraordinary in my opinion.  The league has grown in many ways.  This season we have seen meets ranging in size from 29 to 42 competitors.  We've had meets with as many as 29 amatuer competitors, which is more than US nationals had across the board in 2006. We've had 10-15 regular pro competitors attending the meets this season, honing their skills, and passing along their knowledge to newcomers to the league.  I see the folks in the league as family, and you beat, abuse, and love each other accordingly. 

The league has paid out just shy of 4,000 in prize money over the last 5 meets.  We've also awarded 5 pairs of Liquid sky swoop pants valued over $1,000.  The second place amateur, Micah Couch, will have his comp jumps and registration paid for USPA Nationals at Spaceland Texas, that’s probably worth about $500.  The first place amateur, Curt Bartholomew will have his comp jumps, registration, hotel, and flight covered.  That’s worth about $1,500 bucks.  If its any more, I’m going to have to take out a small loan.

And unless anyone has any objections, I'm planning on doing something similar for 2010.  The top placing amateur, AND the top placing pro will have their registration, competition jumps and hotel covered for 2010 USPA nationals

 This season we've set the state records everywere they didn't exist. The league has covered the filing fees for these athletes who are pushing our discipline to new levels. 

General Speed Florida 3.087 seconds owned by Marat.

General Speed Georgia 2.909 seconds Hans Paulsen

Genera Distance Georgia 119 Meters Ian Drennan.

General Speed North Caroina 2.472 seconds Marat Larias

General Distance North Carolina 115 Meters Marat Larias

General Speed National record 2.472 seconds Marat larias

They will be published on the USPA website in the near future.  Lets look forward to next year, lets break them all.

 Our second major investment was the purchase of 2 new CX100 HD cameras for the league which will be used for primary and back up scoring this year and for our league in the seasons to come.

 I know this gets cheesey sometimes but there are some folks that are pretty important to our league continuing.

First, our Judges, without their devotion and level headedness, we'd be getting judged by my dog, and he can't seem to keep out of the course, so good luck on getting a fair score.  Really, they are second to none.

Second, our host dropzones, without their continued invitation, appreciation, and support I'm not sure where we'd be having these events.

And Last but not least, the supporters of the league, Performance Designs, Liquid Sky, Alti-2, Skysystems, and most recently Paraclete XP who provided 15 minutes of tunnel time for the fastest speed, and longest distance at the Raeford meet.  Those went to Sergei Fedotov and Shane Shaffer.

 

The top 5 amateurs for this season were “graduated” up to the pro ranks for next year. 

Curt Bartholomew

Micah Couch

Jairo Garcia

Shane Shaffer

Kai Sherwood

Congrats to these pilots.  They have each been extended extended invitations to the “Last Big Splash” Pro event being held in September 2009.

 

Keep your eyes peeled to the FLCPA website for the 2010 schedule….

The Velocity of Lightning

In between some CP training two members of HEAT and two members of the Red Devils hooked up for a bit of CF at Netheravon.  The Red Devils were flying Lightning 176 and 160 canopies while HEAT were flying Velocity 103 and 84 canopies.  While the different types of canopies and sizes are not traditionally thought of as being compatible for this type of flying a bit of planning made it work.  There's also a short clip of the video of the jumps.

Sequentials over Sebastian

 
Photographer Brian Buckland captured this shot of a 12-way sequential dive organized by Jim Harris over Skydive Sebastian in March, 2009.

Flying the PD colors

Here's a nice shot of Bo Wienberg of Denmark grinning from ear to ear as he takes a test flight on his brand new Competition Velocity.

It sure looks like he's having fun!

  

The Cats Meow

This weekend we ran into one of our sponsored teams out at the dropzone.  Sebastian Tempest, made up of Chris Ash, Kristina Peterson, Thiago Gomez, Gilles Dutrisac and Patrick Walker, on video cranked out some serious 4 way training on Saturday and Sunday.  They're looking forward to a strong 2008 with many more jumps and plenty of time in the tunnel.  Kris and Gilles(their newest team member) are part of the engineering team here at PD.  They diligently work on creating new canopies, improving existing designs, and testing out crazy ideas during the week; and then rip it up doing 4 way on the weekend(those guys must really love parachutes!). 

Good luck with the upcoming season Tempest!