Colorado CPC # 3

[swoopster33 0]

Colorado CPC # 3 was held at Mile Hi Skydiving Saturday. Turnout was light as several competitors were out of town. We still had a good event, and the weather held off long enough to get the meet in. The results are as follows:

Dave Billings 1st
Steve Armstrong 2nd
Jason Tolliver 3rd
Jason Russell 4th
Eric Johnson 5th
Aubrey Cundall 6th
Keith Hansen 7th

Next meet is July 16, and our pond should be complete by then. Next time, we get wet!

Thanks to all of the CPC competitors for another great meet. A big thanks to Lyle, Sarah, Jackie and Aaron for judging. We could not do it with out you guys!

[Brains 2]

Nice job by steve especially. Way to get your confidence back.

Never look down on someone, unless they are going down on you.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Spizzarko (Grant Adams PM'ed me about adding a little recap ... what he normally does ... about our comp this weekend). I'm going from memory here, so hopefully I'll be somewhat accurate.

The day was nice. Reasonably sunny (considering the rain and clouds the day before the comp as well as the day after) and the tempuratures were just right. Not too cold, not too hot. But we were dealing with moderately strong 5-10 kt quartering head winds as well as direct head winds all day long.

In round one (zone accuracy) only one competitor, Jason Russell was able to land in a positive scoring zone. Most competitors either misjudged the lack of penetration we would get into the wind and landed short of the positive scoring zones, and at least one competitor verted the entry gates.

In round two (zone accuracy), Jason Tolliver and Dave both managed to rip nice runs landing in positive scoring zones but Jason Russell went long on the course, Steve and Aubrey both touched down in positive zones, but like past competitions we both slide off the side of the course. Plus Eric and Keith verted the entry gates.

In round three (distance) Jason Tolliver appeared to score a respectable distance run (in the moderately strong head wind), but it was later ruled after a video replay than his feet touched down before the entry gates and the video appeared to show his feet dragging through the gates. Dave, Aubrey, Jason Russell and Eric all scored respectable distances while Steve and Keith verted their attempts.

In round four (distance) by now the moderately strong quartering head wind coming out of the Northeast was now coming directly down the course from the east. So we knew we weren't going to be scoring big distances. But Steve (longest of the day at 250 feet), Dave and Jason Tolliver did manage to score respectable distance runs while Aubrey, Jason Russell, Eric and Keith all verted.

Before round five started (speed) not only did the moderately strong winds shift now coming out of the Southeast (our first speed carving course runs from the west to the south) but two competitors (Keith and Aubrey) pulled themselves out of the competition due to personal reasons. So that left Jason Tolliver to make the entry gates but he hit a noodle (taking a 5 second penalty) while Dave and Jason Russell verted the entry gates. Eric made the gates, but didn't have enough momentum to get himself to the exit gates and his canopy touched down. Steve was the only competitor to run this speed round clean at 3.5 seconds (even though I had to kite my canopy through the course for the last foot or two thanks to the winds).

In the final round, round six (speed) we finally had that nasty moderately strong head wind out of our faces and now we were going to swoop from the south towards the west with the wind at our backs. But most of us don't practice this entry gate orientation very much so some people had more problems verting the gates. Anyway both Jason Tolliver and Jason Russell verted their attempts while Dave scored a 2.66 second run through the carving speed course and both Steve and Eric scored 2.60 second attempts through the 185 foot course. Also if you can believe it, I put a sweater down on the ground to aid as a ground reference to know when to start my turn on this rarely used approach orientation. But some fun jumper at the boogie decided to pick up my sweater off of the ground. So not only did I lose my visual reference, I also seem to have appeared to lose my sweater as it was never returned to the lost and found at the DZ and an announcement over the PA also failed to turn it up. So I'm not to sure what to think about this.

Anyway ...

Dave Billings was the overall winner (taking 2nd in zone accuracy, 1st in distance and 3rd in speed). Steve Armstrong took second overall (tied last for zone accuracy, but 2nd in distance and 1st in speed) while Jason Tolliver rounded out the top three (1st in accuracy, 4th in distance and 4th in speed).

I would like to thank Jason Tolliver for organizing the event as well as thank management at Mile-Hi for accommodating us and a special thanks must go out to the judges who volunteered their time. Plus since this was a boogie weekend for the DZ, at night Lyle Presse gave a little seminar to 1/2 of the competitors as well as a few other by-standards concerning competition swooping tactics. Lyle was so kind to share with us some trade secrets concerning the running the zone accuracy, speed and distance events. Of course this info could have been more useful before the comp, nevertheless it was good stuff to hear. Most of the stuff he told us, we already knew, but he did have a few nuggets for us (swooping trade secrets) so our time was definitely well spent with Lyle.

I'm looking forward to the next competition which should be over the new pond and we hope that Grant Adams and Ryan Townsend return from their vacations and we also hope that Chris Pope can sort out his health issues and can get back into the air with us. The top two people (Grant and Dave) have dominated the local CPC circuit so far, but Jason Tolliver, Jason Russell, Aubrey Cundall and Steve Armstrong all find themselves in a tough battle to take the remain three top five slots with one of us bound to go home empty handed. I'm currently on the outside of these guys looking in, meaning I still have a lot of hard work ahead of me to qualify for the CPC Championships in September. But I did manage to close the gap a little between myself and the three people ahead of me. It's been a fun summer so far of swooping on the CPC and I can only hope that we continue to have some great swoop comps and that we continue to fly safe. Safety-wise this was our best comp to date with nobody being dangerously low, digging themselves out of the corner and the health of the judges was never in question this day.

Steve ...

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[Spizzzarko 0]

Dude,

Thanks for the inside scoop. I'm glad everyone had a good time, and I'm sorry I had to miss the event.

Grant

[dsbbreck 0]

Grant,

I look forward to competing against you at the next comp. It was kind of a Shallow Victory considering you (my nemisis) were not there, and I wasn't swooping my best. I verted a gate for the 1st time in the competitions which really bothers me.

I would also like to thank everyone, especially Lyle who granted me a re-jump do to me having to abort my 2nd accuracy round do to traffic. I believe I would not have taken 1st if I were forced to take a zero on that round.

I'm looking forward to tearing it up on the pond next time.

David

"Socrates wasn't killed because he had the answer.......he was killed because he asked the question."

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Quote

I would also like to thank everyone, especially Lyle who granted me a re-jump do to me having to abort my 2nd accuracy round do to traffic. I believe I would not have taken 1st if I were forced to take a zero on that round.

You're lucky you did score on that re-jump because I would have taken 1st had you not scored points. And how would that have looked considering I was tied for last place 1/2 through the competition.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[dsbbreck 0]

I think you were definately performing better than everyone else. You just got unlucky in a couple of rounds.

David

"Socrates wasn't killed because he had the answer.......he was killed because he asked the question."

[freakydiver 0]

"So I'm not to sure what to think about this."

Classic!! Nice goin on the placement steve man.

-- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." --