The CRW record attempts in Lake Wales are now in full swing and as promised, here is an update from Keith McBeth, written on Saturday November 17th.
Hello all,
So it's been an exciting few days preparing for the 100-way Record
Attempts. After today we have all the people registered and ready to
go. This is not only a record event, but is also a skydiving event for
CRW dawgs, or people who like to fly their parachutes together to build
beautiful diamond formations. There are roughly 140 skydivers here from
15 different countries! Many people have been preparing for this event for
2 years now, some will make the cut and some will learn new things for
future formations.
They have been putting together groups of 9, 16, 20 and 25-ways to
get everyone in the air. So tomorrow shall be exciting as well. They
will be putting together the base 36-way, and maybe even a 49-way,
which will require 2 aircrafts. In the first airplane will be the base
9-way, all of whom will have personal oxygen bottles on them. Air gets
thinner as you get higher, and the planned altitude necessary for a
formation this big means the airplanes have to fly into air with little
oxygen.
For the world record attempt, the 9-way formation base will be
exiting the airplane from 20,000 feet above the ground (nearly 4
miles!) The next airplane will have 27 people in it exiting at 18,000
feet. The lower altitude in the plane and under canopy means each
jumper doesn't need their own personal supply, so they use the system
in the airplane instead.
Friday was an exciting day, especially for one participant from
Australia! What was supposed to be a 36-way got messy after the first 4
skydivers made a diamond. The fifth jumper joined the formation too
hard, and wrapped his canopy around the Ozzie's leg and shoulder. The
Australian tried to clear the mess, and reserve parachute started to come out after the entangled mess
dislodged it.
Jumper 5 cut-away his main canopy after seeing the reserve canopy
start to come out through his parachute lines. At this point, the
Ozzie's pretty red reserve parachute came out and pulled him away from
the formation, which is the picture you see below. The Australian
didn't give up, though, and freed himself from the other jumper's
canopy, then cutaway his main canopy and landed without incident. The
5th jumper opened his reserve and landed fine, as well. Wow, what a
ride! There were a few minor injuries from other canopy entanglements,but nothing that a bag of ice won't cure :)
Click here to visit Keith's MySpace page to see more pictures from the event.
