The PD Blog

Swoop Shoes - Results

Faces to match the swoop shoes competition are shown below.  It was a tight competition but the winner has to be Nick.  He got both Bobo and Pilcher.  He made the link with Shannon saying that the shoes were "Old school, just like the way he flies"!  Nick- come pick your free pull up cord from me at the DZ in Pretoria anytime before the end of the weekend.

Bad Weather Activities

The weather in South Africa has sucked for the first day.  Competitors hung out for most of the day before finally being released.  This is the most dangerous time- bored skydivers are a recipe for disaster.  Fortunately there were no injuries but we thought we'd post a few pictures of some of the people hanging around the DZ.

Smorgasbord of skydiving!

Today is officially the first day of competition at the Canopy Piloting World Meet in South Africa.  Since that place is far away from the PD headquarters we aren't able to pop over and watch in person, so we are relying on a few PD Blog News Reporters to keep us up to speed.  Alastair, Stu, Jonathan Tagle and a few Aussies will post updates and pictures as much as their competition duties allow.
We are of course always interested in results, but to make it a little bit more interesting Nick someone (who shall remain nameless) organized an office bet uhh, game of statistics, so each one of us wrote down the names of those we think take 1st through 5th place and handed in the ballot.
There are a few coins in the pot, especially since we allowed Engineering to take part this year (sort of like taking candy from a baby, yes, but candy isn't good for babies anyway).
I'll let you know who wins, last year for the world cup it was Demo Queen Kim who took home the cash!

For the Facebook addicts out there (yes, I'm one), Mike Eitniear of the Golden Knights is also posting updates and tons of pictures to a Facebook group dedicated to the World Meet, check that one out. .
Photo of Jay Moledzki courtesy of Michael Eitniear

But, it's not just all about swooping, as this weekend right here in little DeLand we have the Kaleidoscope dives (big-ways) and also the NSL championships as a part of the 2008 Sky Quest.
World Team Captain and Organizer BJ Worth has a few good formations planned for the Kaleidoscope jumpers, building up to a 100-way round!

Best of luck to all the competitors in South Africa & DeLand!!

2008 World Championships of Canopy Piloting

The World Championships of Canopy Piloting are officially under way in Pretoria, South Africa.

Sixty-nine competitors from 19 countries have gathered here to compete for the title of World Champion. Some have traveled over 27 hours and dealt with lost luggage, airline strikes, and flight delays.

Over the past few days competitors have been training in tricky conditions. Make no mistake, the wind, temperature, and field elevation (4200 feet) will be a huge factor in this meet. Conditions have varied from 14 mph head winds to 14 mph tail winds and everything in between. Most of the pilots here have had the opportunity to practice in every condition, so they should be ready.

The current distance and speed records have been unofficially surpassed on many practice runs from the top pilots. The skill level here is very impressive and will make for a very tight race.

The opening ceremonies were held this afternoon, and the real action begins tomorrow with three rounds of accuracy.

More to come...
-jt

1 day to go

So with only one more training day left until the World Championships of Canopy Piloting everything is in full swing. Today another truck load of sand was layed out on the distance course to help cushion the impacts a lot of us are taking when practicing, and while that course was temporarily out of commission many of us decided to take on the speed course. Today we had a pretty stiff down wind component that was right on the bubble of breaking the 7m/s limit and sometimes going over that limit, but many pilots decided to jump anyway and were throwing down some of the fastest speed times ever recorded. Pilots were going through the 70meter speed course in 2.4, 2.35, 2.25, 2.1, and even a whopping 2.05, unofficially breaking the current world record of 2.44 second that was set just a few months ago in Colorado.

There is little doubt that this competition will most likely break records in the distance and speed event (the only two events that currently have recorded records), but what is for sure is that this will be the largest Canopy Piloting event...EVER. Rumor has now spread that nearly 82 competitors will seek to become the next World Champion of Canopy Piloting and should turn out to be a monumentous event for our sport. However, we do still have one more day of practice tomorrow until this monsterous event gets underway, so until then here are a few pictures from just a handful of the competitors that are attending.

         

Swoop Shoes

Most competitors at the CP World Championships are flying the same canopies and have similar containers but pretty much everyone has different swoop shoes.  So the PD Blog is going interactive and running a competition to see if you can put a face to the shoes.  Click on the images to enlarge them and then leave a comment with your answers.  We'll post the results in a couple of days.  The winner will receive a free pull up (which must be collected in South Africa by the end of the week!!!).

There's more than just training in South Africa

It’s not all been work, work, work for those of us in South Africa.  In between jumping we all need a bit of a break and with some bad weather earlier in the week there was a bit of time to kill as well.  The DZ staff and locals have been really helpful and making everyone feel super welcome.  Most of us have now been on a bit of a safari to one of the game reserves seeing a variety of wildlife.  Others took the opportunity to jump a legal 500’ building in Jo’burg.  The most hardcore though took a wrong turn in Pretoria and ended up mixing with some locals who were burning car tyres in the street.

Each day more and more competitors are turning up, a number of which have made the cut in to the final stage of the PD Team selection process.  Rumour has it that Shannon might be leaving the team- there’s no way they’re going to want to keep him on with the geeky footwear he’s parading around the dropzone in.

The standard out here is pretty high so keep following this blog to see if some new records get posted.

20 countries/ 75 competitors at Worlds!

The preperations for the World Championships of Canopy Piloting is in full swing right now. Competitors are training and the DZ staff are making the last modifications so that everything is ready starting the 19th. A whopping 75 competitors from 20 different countries have registered for this event which makes it one of the largest competitions to date.

Today conditions were far better than the previous couple of days with sun and light down winds. Many of the competitors were practicing the power events, such as speed and distance, and with the slight downwind push many of these pilots were going huge. Marat from Brazil and JayMo from Canada put down some of the biggest runs today with massive 165+ meter (550+ ft) runs.

The rest of this week calls for the same type of weather so we should be seeing more and more spectacular runs from some of the worlds best canopy pilots. Check back tomorrow for more pictures and daily updates.             

Teams arriving in S. Africa!

Hey everyone...we've landed. There was about 10-12 of us on the same flight from the US to S. Africa and after a VERY long plane ride and a much needed shower we have arrived. Last night we did have our first couple near death experiences as Mr. Greg Windmiller had to be repeatedly reminded about staying on the LEFT side of the road. Now that we have recovered a little bit from that "experience" we're just sitting down to some breakfast then off to the dropzone to scout everything out. It's cloudy right now but we think it's going to be off and on throughout the day, so hopefully we'll be able to get some jumps in to start getting dialed on our setups and what not.

Keep checking back from time to time as i'll try and post some pictures

On our way...to world's

Well we're here at the Atlanta airport and we're about to take a very long flight to attend the World Championships of Canopy Piloting in South Africa. Members of the US, Canadian, and Brazilians, teams are heading to THE biggest Canopy Piloting event in the world. Held every two years, the top 8 competitors from each country are showing up to this prestige's event trying to become the next world champion.  More updates will be coming, but for now it's time to board this 18 hour flight...joy.

See some of you there and for those that won't be there, stay tuned.