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Pilot150

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Hey Wendy...you've been around skydiving long enough to know this question...was there EVER a speed-star event or was that just made up?




There sure was...I remember goin' to Elsinore and playing Combat RW... with guys crawling all over each other 'on the hill' to 'get in or go in' ;)B|










~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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Speed star was always 10-way, not 8-way. Using a no-lift dive to get there was more common in the days of small-door DC3s, where the distance from the base could be considerable.

And 10-way still exists. There are several formations built (including the round star), but the idea is still to get the formation built as quickly as possible. A certain amount of rock-and-roll can ensue, but like rocking the boat, too rough a star won't hold together.

Basically, skydivers got a whole lot better at RW, so building a whole lot of formations (sequential) became a better use of multiple seconds of freefall time. Used to be there were 4-way speed stars, too.

The first competition I ever saw was a 4-way competition out of a Cessna (i.e. 30 seconds). The team that won built a 4-way every time. And the losing team was not newbies.

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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So how big was the base for a 10 way speed star? 4 in a base and everyone else had to 'no lift' to catch up with the base? If someone was to do 'no lift' how could they see where the base was in order to dock with the base? Or would they count in their heads until an approximate time and they come out of the no lift to dock? Just curious...I just like it that in cutaway at least that all this wasnt made up BS. Thanks for opening up my mind and informing me about the history of jumping!

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Cutaway had a lot of BS in it. Bunches and bunches of it. Not to mention a dumb plot and the acting wasn't very good.

I didn't do competitive 10-way back in the days of DC3's and small-door Beeches (for one thing, I jumped at an Otter dropzone already). But the rules had a no-contact exit. The base and pin were generally somewhere around #3-4 or so. The first few would get to track back up to the base/pin, and the rest would dive down.

Note that a no-lift dive is generally a blind move, and not recommended; in the "bad old days" it was most common for someone going late on something like a 20-way, and not for a 10-way.

Wendy W.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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Yeah I should have clarified that at least some of the movie wasnt total BS. In my personal opinion if someone from hollywood made a movie totally about skydiving and made it completely accurate it wouldnt be watched as much as one that was made from the hollywood factories. Of course if it had Collin Farrell and Jennifer Garner in it and she was topless at least for a second or two. I buy that movie and never let anyone borrow it.

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no love for Terminal Velocity? dumb plot but more or less believeable skydiving sequences, some funny bits too.

at least i thought so, ymmv.



The guy who runs the gear store at my home DZ was running that movie on the screen he had in the store to create a sort of skydiving background noise.
He was pretty happy when somebody asked to borrow the movie and it did not come back.

I thought it had some funny bits. I forget what the plot was about, maybe because I didn't care.
I was always thinking thing like, "it kind of looks like they frosted the mirrors on that skyvan." And, "I'm pretty sure I've never jumped out of that skyvan"

Apparently it's rated a 5.2/10 on imdb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111400/
I'd say that is a fair score.

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So how big was the base for a 10 way speed star? 4 in a base and everyone else had to 'no lift' to catch up with the base? If someone was to do 'no lift' how could they see where the base was in order to dock with the base? Or would they count in their heads until an approximate time and they come out of the no lift to dock? Just curious...I just like it that in cutaway at least that all this wasnt made up BS. Thanks for opening up my mind and informing me about the history of jumping!



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

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And a real kicker regarding "Cutaway" and how full of shit it is, is the fact that one of its writers and its director was Guy Manos, who either should have known better or was trying something that made knowing better a moot point.
Personally I loved the part where Berenger practices tracking, while standing, in front of a mirror, complete with a grunt from so much energy required, I suppose. My friend and I watched that part about five times just to be sure we saw what we thought we saw.

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Guy Manos, who either should have known better or was trying something that made knowing better a moot point.


~~~It's Hollywood entertainment not a documentary. :D

Try showing 2 hours of team training videos to a room full of wuffo's...ya could GIVE the popcorn away and they wouldn't stick around! ;)











~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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~~~It's Hollywood entertainment not a documentary. :D

Try showing 2 hours of team training videos to a room full of wuffo's...ya could GIVE the popcorn away and they wouldn't stick around! ;)



Not much of an excuse when for the most part Guy could have been dead on accurate and still be entertaining and the whuffos would be none the wiser. They wouldn't know either way and to have been more accurate would not have affected their interest in the movie. For example, no whuffo would have known that the Knights compete in 8 way, not 10 way. Sure, I suppose speed star comp. is a tad more exciting than turning points, but not necessarily and in this film it hardly made a difference. So why tell lies when it doesn't really move the plot forward any better than telling the truth? One doesn't simply play with fact solely because no one would know. What it does in effect is make the skydivers moan and laugh and ridicule and the whuffos start perpetuating more untruths and maybe even get into skydiving based on untruths. How many people got into skydiving because of "Point Break" only to find they actually had to have instruction, couldn't talk in freefall or did not in fact have a two minute delay from 4 grand?

In "Point Break" all the skydivers in the audience laughed at all the inaccuracies because we knew what was wrong with the skydiving. But unless any of them were also surfers, we had no clue what was accurate or exaggeration, with that part, but because we saw the liberties taken with what we did know, we could suspect the same with the surfing. From my perspective it cheapened the illusion and I was no longer able to suspend disbelief. Granted, that's the insider's dilemma.

But I did appreciate the in joke of having Bill Booth grab a Javelin. Only a skydiver would catch that and in a sense, it was a nod to us, a gift, maybe even an apology for all the other nonsense.

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Not much of an excuse when for the most part Guy could have been dead on accurate and still be entertaining and the whuffos would be none the wiser...





Again, it's Hollywood.

Guy may have had a better concept of what he wanted to show, but the producer has the final word.

In movie making there is a generally accepted formula for a successful film, very few have the balls or the financing to stray very far from that formula.

The actual 'powers that be' must have felt maintaining the plot point of the story had little to do with the accurate portrayal of the skydiving.

I found it rather interesting to see how that movie about the Russian sniper finally came about.

Ed Harris bought the rights 10-15 years before it was actually made, the story he wanted to tell was very much different from the one that would have been told had he just wanted to act in the movie.
Harris pretty much had to wait until he was in a position to not only act in, but produce and direct the film to make it as factually accurate as it was.

There is another very interesting story out there regarding the plight of the 'Night Witches'...an extremely heroic group of Russian women fighter and bomber pilots that flew night missions into Germany during WWll.

That 'movie' has been in the making for going on 20 years now, but because 'Hollywood' and the film formula would certainly take liberties with facts pertaining to the characters and the missions the owners of the 'story' are reluctant to green light the treatment from their end....who knows if it will ever be made.










~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

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Look HERE

YEAH BABY!! NOW THAT! is a speed star. I've been trying to get 9 other like mInded and fall rated mofo's together for another one of those for years. can't get people to agree to not have floaters. It aint a speed star w/o the no show exit IMHO
i have on occasion been accused of pulling low . My response. Naw I wasn't low I'm just such a big guy I look closer than I really am .


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