DSE

For the rig...no. For the container...it was the container's initial experience in the air. After jumping the hell out of it this week in Elsinore, I'm even more impressed w/it. Wow. Sweet. Openings were awesome, but the best part is simply how it fits, and how it changed my flight. Smooth and silky on my back, and it just felt....."solid," I suppose would be the right word. Like it is a part of me rather than a bag tightly strapped to my back. An extention of myself...is that too Zen for skydiving?

I can...but I won't. Wednesday, November 12, 2008 Like every story, event, or moment, this World Wingsuit Record has an end. Before we can reach the end, the beginning probably needs to be told as best as I can recount. More than a year ago, Jeff Nebelkopf, Justin Shorb, Scotty Burns, and a few others were drinking around a campfire, table, or attractive girl when the idea came up to do this event. Through a series of twists and turns, the concept began to take form and develop into a real idea. Skydive Elsinore had spoken with Jeff about doing a wingsuit event at the dropzone, and the pieces began to fall into place. The event was announced, along with a series of skills camps and qualifying weekend camps where flockers from around the world proved their mettle in order to be a part of this heretofore never attempted formation. Regardless of geographic location, skyflyers from around the world were invited to participate, to ‘audition,’ and to secure their slot in this magnificent wedge (that was not yet determined as a wedge or other formation). I attended several of these qualifying events. At the first event, I was unequivocally informed that I didn’t have the skills to fly in this sort of a flock. Expectedly so, as I only had around 25 wingsuit jumps at the time. But... I don’t like to be told “no.” Jeff Nebelkopf was leading this event, but I didn’t know him at all, outside of various web fora. I did get the opportunity to hang with guys like Sean Horton and Scott Callantine, who took me “under their wings” so to speak, and helped me figure out what I wasn’t doing right. I should mention that Scott and Sean had previously spent some time with me in Eloy over the holiday boogie. My fourth wingsuit jump was a 20-way jump organized by Scott Campos. (It’s also the weekend I met Brian Drake, who figures into this story later) These two individuals, coupled with some help from Jeff, turned a really disappointing weekend into a very positive learning experience for me. They invited me to other camps and events that I attended. Soon after, I was introduced to Justin Shorb and Scotty Burns at another one of the camps. These two both spent a lot of time teaching me to fly better. Not as coaches, but as friends interested in seeing me improve, and knowing my goal was to be a part of this record event. Scotty invited me to be a part of the now-famous jump with the Space Shuttle Discovery and I got to know Harry Parker and Mike Mascheff. They too, helped me grow and improve. I brought a wingsuit event to Utah, where Scotty, Justin, Scotty Callantine, Sean McLaughlin, Jason Carter, John Bast, and other friends came to jump the mountains of Utah with me. This three-day event changed my wingsuiting direction entirely. Soon, I was flying with many large flocks, and decided to go to Pepperell, MA for my birthday in August. Justin and Jeff organized a 52 way jump that was a highlight of my flocking experience. So…enough of my story. Lemme tell you about another guy in the flock. This guy had wanted to wingsuit for quite a while. He met Sean Horton/Monkeyboy at Skydive Utah and did his first real wingsuit jump with Sean. He was hooked. Soon after, I was able to fly with him a bit in a TonySuit Raptor he’d borrowed from Justin. It didn’t take long until he’d ordered a Raptor for himself. He did really well at the Wingsuits over Utah event in July, and was invited to try out for the wingsuit world record. He ended up as an alternate on the record, and spent the first two days of the record event flying as a proxy flocker until the more experienced jumper showed up. It didn’t take Plane Captain Mark Harris very long to realize that he very much wanted this proxy to be a dedicated member of his team, but there was no room. As the axe began to fall in the first weekend, my friend was chosen as a replacement flyer in the “foreigners” flock. Jason Carter is a Cinderella story. He joined the flock with only 40 wingsuit jumps under his belt. The guy is a natural with wings. He has a tremendous attitude, never once was late to his slot, never late to a brief, debrief, dirt dive, or team meeting, and his enthusiasm was infectious. I stand in awe of his dedication and desire to be part of this record. Next on my list of heroes is Brian Drake. Brian broke his leg in a BASE accident a couple of months back. Brian was someone I’d flown with in Eloy over the holiday boogie, and we kept in touch as he’d traveled to Israel and met some mutual friends there. We emailed a fair amount, and ran into each other at Lake Elsinore’s qualifier camp earlier in the year. I really admire Brian. Well…broken leg and all, Brian jumped. Over and over again, up to seven jumps in a day. He’d slide every landing in, and wait until someone could bring his peg-leg to him, and then would figure out a way to get into the bed of the retrieval trucks that drove out to pick us up from the very far-out landing area designated for our team. He never once complained. On Tuesday, he cut his finger quite badly on a shaving razor (he later found a huge chunk of skin in his shaving kit bag). He needed to go to the hospital, but refused, knowing he’d be letting his teammates down by not being in his assigned slot. He did two jumps with a finger dripping so much blood that it was coming through his leather gloves and bandages. Brian asked if I’d stitch his finger. The riggers loft was closed, and the DZ didn’t have a suture kit. Using a sailmaker’s needle and E thread, I stitched Brian’s finger closed. He was obviously in a great deal of pain, but he said not a word, didn’t utter a sound, didn’t flinch a muscle. I know it hurt like hell, because I shoved the needle through his finger. The bleeding slowed, but later picked up again, most likely due to the non-elevated finger and the crutches he was using to get around. Inspirational, impressive, amazing are all adjectives that I’d use to describe this young man. Brian, I was honored to fly next to you all week long. Scott Gray….nailed in the arm so hard on the first jump of the first day that his arm was the color of a finely crafted bit of ceramic pottery covered in purples, blues, green,and yellow hues. Swollen to the point of looking like he had a billiard ball stuck in his arm, he only sat out for a couple of jumps until he could get back from a doctor’s exam. He flew like a madman throughout the rest of the days. Another impressive story. There are other stories as well, but I’ll leave those to be told by those others. Everyone involved sacrificed a lot to be part of this great event. Money, time, loved ones, jobs, special personal events all took a backseat to this opportunity. You could see the pain in everyone’s eyes after the first or second jumps this morning; we still hadn’t achieved the record, still hadn’t built the correct-slot formation. We only had three more jumps to go and the sense of disappointment was pervasive and endemic. We’d been up since 5 a.m., and boarded the first plane prior to 7 a.m. We were tired, feeling defeated, and knew this was it. The last day, the last chance. “Make it count,” some said. “More cowbell” said others. “We’ll never get there…” from yet others. During the third debrief, Taya Weiss gave us a pep talk. She made it a point to say that we’d already built the coolest, biggest, safest formation ever seen in wingsuiting, but now it was time to step it up and make it be the accurate formation we all so badly wanted to achieve. Somewhere, somehow….everyone dug deep down into their souls and found energy, strength, and motivation. Was it Taya? We’ll never know. We’ll only know that we each were galvanized to greatness, to be where we needed to be with a sense of strength that only the most despaired seem to be able to find. Although we loaded the planes with what appeared to be heavy hearts, something happened up there that can’t quite be explained. Everyone was in their slot, everyone hit their mark. Justin Shorb led our group to the formation, and we sat slightly back waiting for a person in the second plane to plug into his place. It seemed like an eternity waiting for him to fill his space so that we could completely move in and lock up the formation. You could almost hear the sigh of relief as he slid into his slot and Justin moved forward. Even though the formation had been heavily “breathing” with a lot of side to side and back to forward movement, there was the most brief of moments, almost like a flash of light that passed, where everything was still, seemingly in slow motion. We achieved what we had come for. We had built the formation we came to build. We created something never before imagined nor achieved. And we knew it. It felt obvious by the time we hit the ground. The energy, spirit, and joy was almost palpable through the entire landing and drive back to the packing area. No one really spoke, no one really dared ask the question “did we do it?” Just before the last jump of the day, manifest announced that all wingsuiters needed to gather up for a 15 minute call, but we needed to be at manifest first. With a heavy face, Taya took the microphone. I was sure she was going to tell us that we simply could not possibly achieve this task. After watching wingsuit pilots much more experienced than I being cut from the team, I was expecting to hear that we simply couldn’t do this. At 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday, November 12, 2008, Taya simply said “We did it.” No one said anything. She said “Guys, we did it. We built the formation. We achieved what we came here for.” The cheers were loud, exuberant, and prolonged. Five days we’d been working to build this monster. Five days of 6:00 a.m. calls, dozens of dirt dives lying in the cold, wet grass in and out of our wingsuits. Five days of watching guys like Scott Callantine and Monkeyboy wearing Walmart bags on their feet in the early morning so they could keep their shoes dry. Five days of eating dust and dirt, long walks back to the packing area. Five nights of going to bed early so we weren’t too tired early in the morning. Was it worth it? You bet your ass. Special thanks from me personally to: Justin Shorb, Scotty Burns, Jeff Nebelkopf, Taya Weiss, Scott Callantine, Jason Carter, Rick Hough, Jack Guthrie, Debbie Zimmerman, Scott Campos, Phil Peggs, Sean Horton, Rick, Reed, Lurch….and all the others that helped me learn to fly better. I’m a part of this record because of you and your guidance. They're more names, my mind is a little blank. A lot of great inspirations, instructors, flockers, and friends out there... I'm tired. I'd like to say more...but it's late and I have an early flight to Eloy. Watch the Skydivernetwork.com blog...more pix will be there in the next few days.

Rick, you were sorely missed. Your name was brought up in the plane several times, more than one jump was prefaced with "This is for Rick." Stoney made a beautiful gesture in your honor as well. That's a story for someone else to tell. For those looking for pix and more information, please give me a bit of time (by tonight's end) to post them with some stories of the day. Wow...emotions overflowing for more reasons than I can recount here. Everyone worked so damned hard to make this happen.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008 “Skypirates.” That’s the word that came to mind as we lined up in the frosty Elsinore air this morning. Shivering, shaking, cold wracked bones in a wet field watching mists rise off of Lake Elsinore appeared like a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster. With names like “Ripcord, Lurch, Peggs, Peg-leg, Gimpy, Creepy, Spot, Monkey, Grey Mike, Purple Mike, Pink Mike, Dopey, Brokeback Zach, Harry Potter, Handsome Harry, we’re clearly a ragtag bunch of misfits, not even accepted by the USPA or FAI, the governing bodies of our sport. We have no flag to fly other than that of our individual countries, yet in the air, geographic boundaries are meaningless. We’re different because we fly forward and are somewhat anti-social because we can’t quite share the air with our non-winged friends that also wear parachutes on their backs. We fly formations that ‘normal’ skydivers can’t fly; we can fly directly above or below each other, and travel ridiculous distances that no skydiver could ever hope to achieve. True, we can’t exactly fly backwards, and it’s very hard to fly on our butts, and we can’t fly downward as fast as most head-down skydivers, but we’re moving forward at speeds where we regularly pass small aircraft on their downwind, base, or final legs. We’re weird. And we’re pumpkin-proud of ourselves. And we should be. This morning we put together more forward-moving people than ever attempted in history. And it was fun. And challenging. And exciting. We lost a fair number of people in the formations this morning, and another fair number were moved around. Regardless of fame, big name, history, number of jumps, who you know….if you weren’t performing or if you violated a safety rule, SNAK! Went the axe. You’re cut. Two painful words no athlete wants to hear. The morning began with a cutaway from a nasty spinner, but fortunately the trash was recovered fairly fast. My first jump ended up in a nasty spinner as well. Hands on the cutaway pillow, I realized that there was a canopy below me, and another heading straight my way. I knew I had some time, although I was below my deck of 2k. I quickly unzipped both arms and legs and began the process of trying to get my slider down by untwisting lines. Sabre2’s are very forgiving wingsuit canopies as they’ll fly fairly well even with half a dozen line twists. Later, the jumper flying towards me told me that he had pretty good video of me fighting my canopy, and wondered why I hadn’t chopped. He wasn’t aware of the canopy straight below. Jump five of the day, we thought we had achieved the record. Spirits were high, everyone excited. Luigi Cani had donned smoke along with another jumper and flew in as part of the fourth aircraft team (my team). We also had some new blood on the team and it seemed to be helpful. See my photos for images of the jump. Unfortunately, while the formation was beautiful and symmetrical, it also didn’t fit the measurement standard exactly as Jeff Nebelkopf prescribed. So, it was back to the aircraft for a few more jumps. Either way, tomorrow is our last day. Luigi is jumping an experimental 70 something Xbraced canopy that requires he carry a coat hangar with him. The canopy is so flattened that once deployed, the speed and flatness of the canopy causes the slider to creep back up. The slider is too high for Luigi to reach, even with short risers, so he has to deploy, use the hangar to pull the slider down over his toggles, and then stow the slider. Somewhat comical to watch. Speaking of comical…I’ve long had a few silly opinions based on minor experiences with various wingsuits over the past year. Most of my opinions have been fairly well substantiated. This flock, contrary to the statements and opinions of some, is *extremely* varied in wingsuit type, body type, wingsuit brand, and talent. It’s probably most heavy on Birdman suits, with Tony Suits and Phoenix-fly making up the balance of the suits with a few SFly suits tossed into the mix. Some wingsuits simply aren’t made for flocking, and that’s all there is to it. Maybe if the flock had a greater forward speed or downward fall rate (we’re aiming for 66mph) it would be a different story. But… it’s obvious that some suits are better made for flocking than others. Bear in mind that this event is made up of some of the greatest wingsuit flyers in the world, with representatives from virtually every corner of the globe. Another interesting point is that some countries have teams from their area that are physically struggling with the various flocking techniques and speeds that seem to be common to the USA. And then there are those that make you sit back, scratch your head and think….’how do they do that?” It’s been a tremendous pleasure to fly with a few of the TopGun guys like Costyn. It’s been even more fun to jump with my friend Juan Mayer from Argentina. I flew with him when I first began this wingsuit journey at the urging of Scott Campos. Juan is part of my team, and follows me in the formation, flying off my right foot. Damn….it’s fun flying with some of these guys. Dinner was a blast; Hawaiian food courtesy of Ill Vision. We had another briefing, watched jumps of the day as filmed by Craig O’Brian and Scotty Burns, plus some ground footage I’d shot along with others. The rest of the group adjourned to a local bar while I went back to the hotel to finish the daily diary and upload video. Tomorrow marks the end. Win or lose, this has been a monumental undertaking, and Jeff, Taya, Justin, Phil, Ed, and Mark all deserve a huge vote of appreciation, confidence, and gratitude for having put together an event that is not only exceptionally challenging, historic, and ground-breaking, but monumentally difficult to keep safety at the fore. They have. I’ve watched big-name people be removed from the formation without any show of mercy as the result of a safety violation. I’ve watched one friend give another friend a Yellow Card (reprimand) for a minor safety violation. The organizers have made hard, fast rules and stuck to them without favoritism. I myself have had my ass ripped up for working on video between loads, prepping the video for briefings. Collecting video from seven different sources per jump isn’t fast. And it’s necessary. But it still made me late for a briefing and dirt dive, and got me into hot water with the very people I’m serving. In other words….no mercy. You know where you need to be; be there. To quote Ed Pawlowski…”Don’t be the last guy here.” Well…another long and rewarding day. Bonding and friendship abound, and no matter how it all falls out tomorrow, a lot of great strides in wingsuiting, skydiving, and friendships have been accomplished. We’ll see if we can pull it off tomorrow….6:00 a.m. still comes too early…. Even for skypirates with strange nicknames and rebellious streaks such as ours. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccpJassp5wg YouTube vid from the day.

I use a Databank from Meritline. It takes every kind of card I can imagine, and I purchased a 300 GB SATA drive that goes in it. It holds a charge for a few days if I'm not regularly using it. Uses USB for the interface.

Absolutely 100% impossible that the movie is public domain. It stars Demi Moore. Nothing containing Ms. Moore will be in PD for another 40 years at the earliest, depending on her role. More likely not for another 100 years, depending on her death.

Me too, Matt. I think this event will be forever ingrained as one of the cornerstones of wingsuit skydiving and it's continual evolution.

Monday, November 10, 2008 Frosty breath and a late sunrise marked the start of this day. Today would be the first opportunity to put all four aircraft into the air loaded with would-be world record holders. Ed Pawlowski walked around the field, bullhorn in hand not unlike a major issuing general’s orders. The first jump went very, very well. But not good enough. Not many people fit perfectly into their slot as assigned by the grid system, although the formation was indeed, a beautiful sight. The formation really breathes a lot. By the time it’s 250 feet across, the wedge has taken on a life of its own. Flying a large wingsuit formation from this one is significantly different than other forms of relative work; there are no grips, forward and downward speed have to be perfectly timed, and there is the additional component of bumpy air that most skydivers only experience when under canopy. Today…the air was very bumpy. And we got bumped. Hard. A lot. We also reset the deployment altitudes this morning with the leading edge wings deploying at 2500’, the second row deploying at 3000’, and the third row deploying at 3500’. This added quite a bit of depth to the already fairly spread group of wingsuit pilots. Jumps two and three of the day were also very good, but not quite up to the bar as set by our fearless leaderJeff Nebelkopf). Think of the old MacDonalds commercial, it’ll make more sense. It was absolutely hilarious hearing 70 skydivers sing out “Jeff Nebelkopf when a couple skydivers were playing around with the old MacDonald’s commercial “Ba dabuh-Ba -buh….” By the third skydive, it was nearly noon, and the group was visibly tired from the early start and short calls, so the organizers gave us a long lunch break. Spirits were high, even if the physical body wasn’t quite up to the same level of enthusiasm. Jump four of the day wasn’t quite so good. Between winds, communications between aircraft, relative levels of aircraft, and a few other hiccups, the formation built, but it was a bit more challenged than the other jumps had been. Discouragement would normally be found at this point, but Jeff, Mark, Justin, Taya, Phil Peggs, and a few other leaders really worked hard with the jumpers to keep the enthusiasm high. We laid down in the field again to measure out our slots. The axeman did arrive as promised in yesterday’s post; a few people were replaced with alternates, and tomorrow, some changes in the strengths of the formation are expected, moving the stronger flyers to where they’re needed. Jump five was filled with enthusiasm. We knew we were going to build it, and build it we did. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t a perfect formation; we had a few stragglers towards the back of the formation that didn’t quite get to their slots. Team captains met late into the evening to formulate a plan to help bring the formation to a successful completion. The left side of the wing has some challenges that need to be addressed; it’s nearly three-quarters of a mile that has to be covered in the first 15 seconds of the skydive in order to plug in the sectional to the entire formation. Covering that kind of sky with a safe approach is much harder than one might think. Then again, if it were easy…this skydive would have been accomplished a long time ago. The emails received from several wingsuit skydivers around the planet all seem to be of the same theme; “This just can’t be that hard.” Well…it is. Very hard. Looking forward in the formation and seeing 20 bodies directly in line in either direction ahead of you is a disconcerting, and it seems like the formation is really moving around. We’re displacing a lot of air up there, Special kudos need to be made for Veggie, Chris, John, Bob, and a few others that either didn’t make it to the alternates team, are grounded due to previous injury, or simply there for moral support. They’ve made sure we are fed, watered, and Veggie makes sure we have gum before getting on the loads. The landing areas are spread over approximately three-quarters of a mile in length and approximately 500 yards in width to assure that the groups will each land in safe areas. Skydive Elsinore has been great about sending trucks out to pick up the landed skydivers. Personally, I landed on the motorcycle racetrack on the fifth jump, and was tickled to see a truck racing towards my approximate landing area. The evening closed off with dinner provided by Avery and Team Ill Vision, along with videos from Matt Hoover and myself. We met for a pep talk following the evening' meal provided by Avery and Team Ill Vision. Tomorrow comes very early and lest I be snicker-snak to the vorpal sword…time to sign off for the night. One parting comment...while I feel we're doing very well, I also know what it is that Jeff is trying to accomplish. Nothing like this has been ever attempted before, and reaching *his* particular goal is still a long way off. See the SkydiverNetwork.org blog for more pix and a short video of two jumps (yes, it's copyrighted music, and yes, I have provisional permission from the publisher)

Sunday, November 09, 2008 The Axe-man Cometh! This early morning stuff is for the birds. Early morning breath leaves small puffies in the air for a moment, as hands desperately wrap around steaming hot Styrofoam cups of coffee. Cold muffins went down a little less easily today than yesterday, but they *are* good muffins, regardless of the cold. It was obvious from the moment of sunrise that the winds and weather would not be terribly cooperative today, and as advertised, they became challenging. We got the first loads in the air by 7:40 and kept pushing at the schedule to get each group up to practice their formation. Team D kicked ass this morning with perfection at the first jump. Not so perfect was the breakoff, where Scott Gray had an unfortunate collision with a UFO. With Scott now out of the air, however temporarily, we set up for the next load, dirt-dived again and again, even lying down in the wet grass while wearing our wingsuits. Second load went very well, and was uneventful. Until landing. The wind had kicked up so badly that virtually no one made it back to the landing area, most landed well to the east, north, or both. More than one person was dragged backwards, and one non-wingsuiter suffered minor injuries while being dragged by their canopy. Thankfully some packers were able to run over and catch the wayward canopy before it became a full-on incident. Myself…I ended landing in a pile of construction debris. Landing backwards is never a fun prospect. With that…the day was closed. Norman Kent, Craig O’brian, Scotty Burns, and myself sat around the video room for a couple of hours telling photo stories and playing with the computers before adjourning for the day. 6:00 p.m brought about the dinner, safety briefing, and social time for the group. A great dinner of barbequed pork, chicken, and spiced sausage with beans and rolls was a comfort food this ole’ boy needed. After dinner, we received yet another safety briefing and watched a six minute video featuring footage shot by Norman Kent, Scotty Burns, Craig O’Brian, Douglas Spotted Eagle, and Tero Paukku. The vid showed all the various segments of the formation as they’ll fit together as one large, 250’ wide super-sized wedge. The captains have built a grid that will fit over a photo of the formation. Anyone not in their slot runs a very high risk of being cut. The Alternates Team is salivating, hoping to move up into the slots of axeman’s victims. Ed Pawlowski was presented to the group as the guy that will be chopping folks from slots, and if you know Ed…mercy nor quarter shall be given. This formation will build, maybe as soon as tomorrow afternoon. 6:00 a.m. is looking even more ugly tomorrow. No tardiness, lest one desire a yellow card. (there are 25 new photos on the Skydivernetwork.org page, if you wanna see more. Just look for my personal page there, read the blog or look at the photos). A short video of cuts has been added.

I went from a Sabre2 150 to a Storm....Actually still jumping the Sabre 2 150 in one rig. LouDiamond/Scott is spot-on, IMO. If you feel you can't get good swoops, solid landings, sweet openings, whatever out of your Sabre2...you haven't gotten everything out of it that you should be able to. Also...wingsuiting and smaller canopies don't always go well together. As your wingloading rises, so can the likelihood of a spinner in the event of linetwists. Are you prepared for that?

We have a 97 year old woman named Beulah, who did her first tandem with her daughter, granddaughter, and great granddaughter all on the same load. Her great-great granddaughter was on the ground as a 7 year old.... four generations on the same load. Wonder if that's happened before?

here it is in action. Really, really thrilled with it. I can sit and backfly in it much better than my old rigs, too. Fits so nicely...barely notice it's on. Barely feel the container opening. Not a single line twist, no deployment issues of any kind, which is a huge improvement over my old Talon FS.

Saturday, November 08, 2008 There is only one 6:00 in my day, and “a.m.” isn’t part of it. Until this morning. The organizers had the groups arrive at 6:00 a.m. (coffee and really good muffins provided) to get started with safety briefings from Hammo and Co (Skydive Elsinore staff). PD Team member Jonathan Tagle had some words of wisdom about landings, given the fickle winds of Elsinore’s landing areas. Lying down in the dewy grass during sunrise of the landing area at Elsinore sounds very romantic in the written form. Physically, it was wet and cold. But it allowed us to see the perfect formation spacing as we laid down and across the 71 Flock University logos painted on the grass of the landing area (remember those, from Day One of the blog?) Each component of the formation launched today in separate aircraft loads, and it didn’t take much to get each piece working very well on its own. On Monday, the pieces will be put together like puzzle sections in order to form a perfect formation of 71 flyers. Winds were definitely fickle, blowing from all directions of the compass at times. There were a couple of unfortunate landings, one of which involved a ground-based canopy collision with one jumper being seriously injured and the other merely receiving a very dirty and dusty landing. The wingsuit groups are briefed prior to each jump, and landing direction determined prior to boarding the aircraft. In the event of a changing wind, the team captain or first person down sets the landing direction. Thus far, all wingsuit group landings have been uneventful and safe, save it be for one hotdog that swooped another wingsuiter, caught his foot in an already-down canopy, pulling the landed wingsuiter onto his back. Oops…bad juju. That won’t happen again. The final load of the day was reserved for wingsuit team “D”, which is the last aircraft group in the formation. We’ll have the furthest to fly, but tonight, we were treated to a gorgeous Elsinore sunset, gold and deep red. No matter how ugly one might be…an Elsinore sunset brings out the beauty. For me, the highlight of the day is watching Brian Drake. He’s a hero in this event. Brian broke his leg in a BASE jump a couple months ago, and still sports a cast. He has a unique pegleg that lets him stay fairly mobile, but it has to come off during the jump. Brian gets to the plane by grabbing my rig and doing the hopalong thing. But the real fun comes when in the formation, I get to look across towards Brian. He lets me know we’re in sync in the slot by sticking his tongue out at me. It’s a sight to see him slide in his landings with his cast on. Talk about dedication to the sport and to the event. Brian, you’re my hero of the day. Justin brought us home every jump, perfectly over the landing area. No one landed out, no one landed in dangerous traffic, and everyone had a smile on their face when they walked up to the packing area. Speaking of packers…Alex trekked all the way out to Elsinore from Massachusetts to jump and pack. He is another hero of the event, making sure that multiple people made 30 minute turnarounds on the wingsuit loads. Awesome job, Alex. Tony Uragallo has been taking out the Alternates group, and the team will likely need a few of these alternates to make the formation fill out as it becomes more apparent where some wingsuit pilots might not be quite cut out for flocking. While there are some incredible wingsuit flyers here, known as the best in their regions or countries, not all are experienced in large-formation flocking, and find themselves slow, low, floaty, tumbling, or unable to hold position. It happens. Large-formation/bigway flocking isn’t anywhere near as easy as it looks, and maintaining the distances that must be maintained isn’t simple. It’s much harder flying 8 feet away from someone and staying locked in than it is to fly head to foot. Try it some time. It’s not a cakewalk at all. Tony held court at the end of the day; while Tonysuits don’t represent a huge portion of the wingsuits seen in the formation, he’s obviously an icon and legend in the wingsuit and skydiving world. It’s terrific to see him here, leading flocks. Well…Avery Badenhop wants everyone to join him at KokoRo’s for sushi tonight, so it’s time to move on. Tomorrow is another day, and after spending the day capturing, debriefing, archiving video from Craig O’brien, Tero, Scotty Burns, Mark Harris, Jeff Donahue, and other videographers involved in the event…I’m bushed. Food sounds good right now. even sushi See you tomorrow. Photos are on the Skydivernetwork.org page, see my blog there.

The parts are being assembled as separate groups on Fri, Sat, Sunday. All four groups will begin jumping together as one unit (four aircraft) on Monday afternoon. if you're implying that there are unsafe wingsuit pilots on this attempt; A-you're showing ignorance... B-Safety is the UTMOST concern, and anyone displaying unsafe activity is yellow-carded. Two yellow cards equal instant ejection from the team. If it's really unsafe (such as two canopies deploying too closely together), then it's an instant red card/ejection from the team. You suggest these guys are unsafe in their deployments?

Ramsey, Nicole Kent, taken by Norman.

Put this post into Wordle... See what you get. www.wordle.net

*typically* the waiver would only apply between tandem or AFF students, as they are the only ones actually hiring a videographer through the DZ. It would be a RARE case that for example...I could come to your DZ and shoot a piece, and Wink (or anyone else) have any sort of claim over my work. Great example...Norman Kent's new Scrabble project. He shot it, but didn't need clearances from anyone but his wife and son. And he owns the content 100% free and clear.

Yeyo, it's at *least* 10% less fun without you here. See you soon, my friend. Glad some folks appreciate the reports. They're being fed to the news media as newsfeeds, slightly more colorful, but I know skydivers like to dig at the colorful stuff so it's slightly edited for you. More pix coming up. K', Andreea, just because you are a super girl, I've posted a bunch more pix. http://www.skydivernetwork.org/profiles/blogs/world-record-attempt-day-two

For those interested, my blog on skydivernetwork.org has a bunch of photos, etc. There is a nice blog feature there. Friday, November 07, 2008 What a day! Not a lot of jumps, but lots of logistics to deal with. Magnet board laid in, video room set up complete with interview confessional, and for me personally, I got my initial experience with a new container. WOW, it felt great to jump it. Thanks again to Rigging Innovations. The team captains started to work even harder than before, at times looking like a basketball team huddled up sharing the top-secret, insider information that assuredly will allow this event to successfully build. We’ve already started learning more about our slots, which are much more distant than we’ve practiced all summer. Makes for a much prettier sight picture, but no where near as easy to fly. Seriously. Flying in slot farther from someone is significantly harder than flying in slot very close to someone. Tighter is easier, in my opinion. But it also leaves more room for error when you’re tight, and the more distant slot is much prettier in photos, and covers more airspace. I think it’s more safe, too. A few video interviews were done, but the big event will attract ESPN, EXPN, and Comcast Sports Network (CSN). Jeff and Scotty both sport new haircuts, so they’re all prepped up for their on-camera appearances. We dirt-dived hard. Both in suits and out, and there were a few moments of confusion in this first day of group landings. A pattern was established to separate the wingsuit landing direction from any others that might be landing. The red/yellow card warning system has been established and kicks into full effect tomorrow morning at 6.00 a.m. Tonight is our last free night as normal humans. Tomorrow, we become robots, slaves to the clock and cube. 3 meters square, no more, no less for our slotted positions. Three square meters is a larger area than one might expect. Birdman, Phoenix-Fly, S-Fly, and TonySuits are all represented here; suits of every hue and shade in the rainbow are seen milling about. If you asked me, some of the color combinations should be considered illegal distractions in the air. Are some skydivers colorblind? The team briefings are fun as well. Cramming 30 people into a 10 x 12 room isn’t. Watching the jumps on a 15” computer screen isn’t. Thank heaven that Hammo helped us set up a monitor system that allowed us to control briefings from the media computer systems while keeping all the wingsuiters out of the video rooms. Jim, our pilot is a dream come true. He turned on the green light on the second jump of the day, and then realized we were out just a bit too far. So…everyone climbed back in. Except for Scotty Burns. Scotty hung on the side of the plane for dear life (in the camera slot, wearing a wingsuit) while Jim banked the plane around for a 180, putting us more on track for our 2.5 mile flight. Scotty looked like he was having the time of his life. Jim didn’t know he was out there. Oh what fun we have as skydivers!

If Wink has a WFH in his agreement with you, the videographer...then yes...he could sue you for infringement. Imagine you having vid of an incident and posting it. The potential harm to him is immeasurable, irrecoverable. Hence the value in protecting yourself. ie; read the other thread where a videographer shot a fatality behind another tandem student, and foolishly left the footage in the DVD turned into the student. That easily can (and likely will) find it's way online at some point. How can Orange recover from that footage being out there? They cannot. IMO, a DZ that doesn't have this waiver with both students and videographers is just asking for trouble.

which indicates that Wink is a smart guy.... Or has been around the block a few times... Or both

Learn to deal with it. Tandems might need catchers, and it might be that no one is in the landing area... Might be that someone needs to take/retrieve a radio or rig, maybe something got left in the landing area by a student and we don't want non-skydivers in the landing area... People running in and towards the landing area are a fact of skydiving life, IMO.

Thursday, November 06, 2008 Frost marked the morning as I loaded the truck to begin my journey to the airport. Sitting here in the terminal, I had to laugh as I watched three air-warriors with rigs on their backs. You can always tell a skydiver, either by the Tshirt, closing pin jewelry, or the obvious; a rig. And dayum! Some of those rigs are UGLY. We cloistered in the corner of the terminal like a secret society, chuckling at the surreptitious glances tossed our way. It’s always fun to make up storylines to go with the conversations being observed; “What are those long-haired guys wearing on their backs? Are they gonna hi-jack the plane? Are they mountain climbers? Cool looking backpacks, where do I get one? What is that handle for?” Yup…it’s always a good time to put words in the mouths of others. C’mon….you know you enjoy it! The others went their way, on a different airline to the same place. Alex (Packing guru from Pepperell, MA) found his way to the same flight I was on. We boarded the flight from SLC to Ontario, excited at the prospect of getting to Elsinore in time for at least a couple jumps today. Wouldn’t you know…everytime you’re in a hurry, no one else seems to be. The flight was delayed by nearly 30 mins, but we did get airborne. We joked on the ride to altitude that it felt weird to be landing with the plane for a change, and maybe we should ask the pilot to allow us an early spot. No one around us seemed terribly amused at our stories of engine failures, stuck flaps, or pilot errors. Maybe understanding the exaggerated excitement of these events is limited to skydivers. So, we’ve arrived at Ontario, Jason Carter was there with the micro-compact car. I can only guess what the “economy car” might have looked like. Cramped with three of us, rigs, my camera box, one large suitcase, and two monster kit bags, we’re driving south to Elsinore. The back end of the car is ass-heavy, so we sway across three lanes of the freeway at least twice on our drive south. We’re among the first to arrive, which is good, because one of us have rigs that have never before been jumped (I won’t say whose, as we’re already spending enough on the weekend without having to buy beer again). Jokes of Purple Mike abound, and the anticipation of sweet winds, warm air, and soft landings dance through our heads like the proverbial sugar plums (what the hell is a sugar plum, anyway?). I think we’re all a little buzzed; Jeff Nebelkopf and Justin Shorb insisted on painting Flock University logos throughout the landing area, to standardized the dirtdiving locations. After 30 cans of red and white spray paint, shoes, pants, and fingers sport what looks like the remnants of a bad Halloween costume. But the field looks terrific! Les (Aerodyne) and I make a mad dash to Temecula to get out a FedEx and miss the sunset load. WE’RE HERE! But my cameras haven’t arrived. Now I’m bummed. Well…a coupla fun jumps down, it’s time to go to dinner. Don Juan’s, here we come! Gotta laugh at the wingsuit magnets on the side of Scotty Burn’s rental car. Tomorrow, at least one of those magnets will be Sharpied to match my wingsuit. Catch up with you tomorrow.

Mike-"You know I drink a lot of Red Bull too?" Her-"Dude, I read BULL all over the second I saw you." Mike-"Have we met before?" Her-"Yes, I'm an assistant at the STD clinic." Mike-I think you're the best looking girl here. Her-Well, I better go find the best looking guy then, hadn't I?

There are several answers, but most of em' boil down to one of two. A-Your DZ has a written, specified work-for-hire agreement for tandem and AFF videos. In this case, the video copyrights belong exclusively to the DZ. However, the DZ may either in total or in part, transfer the rights to the student. Again, this can be in writing, and should be, IMO. B-Your DZ has no written agreement and as an independent contractor (how most DZ's work), you as the videographer, own the total rights to the video. This can get very sketchy...Say you shoot a video of a student, and give the student a copy of the DVD. Do you then have the right to distribute their jump video on a demo reel, on the internet, or to a television show? If there is no written agreement, this is a very challenging situation. They may not want their face plastered on America's Funniest Home Videos....or maybe they don't want to be the next Scott Lutz. And they can sue you. It's debateable that you are a contractor in the STUDENT'S employ, shooting their work for hire. Legally, paperwork should show you as a WFH. Or show you as NOT being a WFH. This way...everyone knows what's up. Now....let's say you complicate the video further...you have a WFH with the DZ. You shoot the student, you edit their vid, and you use copyrighted music. The student puts it on YouTube. Copyright holder gets pissed. Who is sued, you or the DZ? Correct answer is both, but you are most at risk, because you are a 1099 contractor with a WFH agreement with the DZ. This is the tip of an iceberg in terms of the depth of the question...hope this helps?