By Alastair Macartney, one of our heroes from Jump4Heros.

Otters and Porters and flying next the 1,300′ skyscrapers that adorn the beach and border the dropzone in Dubai. Today has been the official arrival day and the DZ was rocking with lots of competitors trying to get some final training in. The PD Factory Team are now here along with other top names like Wuzi Wagner, Red Robbie, Curt Batholomew, Nick Batsch, Marat Leiras, Martin ‘Danger Pants’ Reynolds and Erwin the Tank. The French are flying fast, some of the locals are looking pretty good and, of course, the Brits are enjoying the sunshine and scoring the gates.

The views remain awesome. This morning I flew over a super yacht with a helicopter on board as I was flying my base leg. The sun is shining but unfortunately we’re now on a weather hold due to the wind.

We spoke too soon yesterday. There’s been a broken leg after sliding out a decent run – very unlucky. There’s a few competitors nursing bumps and bruises as well. A big shout out to the DZ staff who retrieved my canopy and freebag from the sea super fast and the rigger for fixing my broken line over night.

Time for the beach…

Thanks Alastair for sharing your Dubai experiences with us – we hope you got yourself a tasty beverage to shake the nerves after that cutaway
And sorry for the sideways accuracy guy… I can’t seem to figure out how to get him to come straight down, and our webmaster is on vacation for a few more days!

50 of the nations best canopy pilots (or so we hope) are currently hanging out by the pond at Skydive Spaceland in Rosharon, TX – 33 competing in Open class and 17 in Advanced.
Both classes will compete in 3 events (Speed, Zone Accuracy and Distance) with 3 rounds of each. Medals are given 3 deep for each event and for overall as well.
Meet director Albert Berchtold reports that they have already wrapped up the Speed event and were able to complete one round of Zone Accuracy before going on hold due to winds.

According to unofficial scores posted on the PD Blog, Nick Batch (Alter Ego) took gold in Speed, Ryan Brownlow silver and Jonathan Tagle (PD Factory Team) bronze.

The results from this meet will determine the US team of Canopy Piloting, so competition is fierce. After 4 rounds, Curt Bartholomew (Alter Ego) is in 1st place, Jonathan Tagle (PD Factory Team) in second and Ian Bobo (PD Factory Team) in third. Many more jumps to be made, so we will likely see a good bit of shuffling of the top 10 places before the event is over.

Unofficial scores through round 4 are available here:

• Open Class
• Advanced Class

Best of luck to all the competitors – go big, make the gates and don’t hit the ground too hard!

Getting into competitive canopy piloting is no easy feat, as many bruised bums and battered skydivers can attest to. The siren song of whistling 300 HMA lines is irresistible to many and just about every day a guardian angel gets a workout as the next Nick Batch/Greg Windmiller/Jay Moledzki (pick your favorite) stabs out of the corner for the first time.

In order to provide an environment where canopy pilots can train safely and receive proper coaching and feedback, John Nolan has established Canopy Piloting Training Series (CPTS). The CPTS will serve FLCPA pilots and provide quality training events for the pilots participating in the FLCPA league meets.

Their first event is coming up next weekend and will be hosted at the Raeford Parachute Center September 2nd-4th. Wold class canopy pilot (and Golden Knight) Greg Windmiller will be the event coach. Participants will train on 5′ inflatable course markers on the Raeford pond in Speed, Distance and Zone Accuracy. This event will serve as a great training event for the upcoming USPA Canopy Piloting Nationals (Skydive Spaceland, TX, September 14th-17th) but non-competitive pilots will also given opportunity to be coached in high performance landings.

Watch this space for future announcements and updates from their camps, and check out the CPTS Facebook page for more information and camp dates.  We wholeheartedly support this kind of initiative and applaud John for taking this project on.

Cost for coaching is $100 per day, or $200 for all three days. Interested participants can contact John Nolan by e-mail or communicate through their Facebook page. The fee covers coaching and video debrief of every jump, refreshments, an event DVD (containing photos and edited videos to take home to learn from), catered meal (Saturday) and indoor air-conditioned packing.

The CPTS would like to acknowledge and thank Sun Path Products, SkySystems USA, Performance Designs, Alti-2 and Vigil for supporting this event.

John Nolan performs the weedwhacker flawlessly.

Lara is on site with the Big Kids at the PD Big Boy Pants at Mile Hi in Colorado, living it up and loving the lack of humidity. Even if today is only the first day of competition, we are already seeing records fall and some amazing moves on the pond.  Keep in mind that this is an invitational event so attending are some of the best canopy pilots in the solar system.

Below are a few facts and photos that Lara has shared through our Twitter account today – hit us up as @blueskiesmag on there to get her insights and fun facts for the rest of the event.
Organizer Albert Berchtold of the FLCPA is also broadcasting live via USTREAM (FLCPA Channel) – awesome opportunity to watch the pond and hear some of the commentary going on.

• In the competition are 16 Velocities/Comp Velocities, 3 JVX, 1 Petra JVX, 1 Scirroco and 1 unknown entity being flown by Jay Moledzki.
• Current World Record in Speed stands at 2.093 seconds and was set on December 5th, 2009 by Golden Knight Greg Windmiller (USA). Both Jonathan Tagle and Nick Batch both came oh-so-close to the current record with runs of 2.096 seconds and 2.095 seconds respectively.
•  A couple of new National records:
  - New German speed record – 2.421 seconds by Morris Friess
  - New Brazilian speed record – 2.412 seconds by Edson Pacheco
• A couple of averages from the speed round:
  - Canopy size: 84 square feet
  - Exit Weight: 225 lbs
  - Wingloading: 2.69 lbs/square ft
  Remember that all of the above falls strictly into the “do not try this at home, kids” category.
• PD Factory Team member Jonathan Tagle had a small run-in with the planet, causing judges to close the course for a short period.  JT shook it off like a champ, got up, brushed off his big boy pants and is doing fine. Judges and spectators may have needed a fresh round of Huggies.

This wraps up the Speed portion for the day  - the crew is busy setting up the distance course and anticipates that the first Distance round will take off at 2:00 PM Mile-Hi time.

I am posting live, minute-by-minute results and news from the Big Boy Pants swoop comp over at twitter.com/blueskiesmag. Even if you don’t have a twitter account, you can follow along to get scores, photos and maybe a little tomfoolery.

Swooper psyched for the Big Boy Pants Swoop Record-palooza at Mile-Hi Skydiving next weekend – I’m going to soak up the dry air, visit some old haunts and of course have a blast watching the big boys and girls go for new big records. That link has the full list of big boys who have been invited and will be there, along with profiles for most of them, so be sure to clicky click it.

But now for the important stuff (vote in the distance poll over there to the right, too >>>>):
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Well, that is if everything goes according to plan. Several shit-hot swoopers have gathered at Skydive the Farm for the weekend for the 5th and final meet of the FLCPA 2011 season.
4 rounds have already been completed and as long as the weather breaks long enough for them to get the final 2 rounds in, we should see a brand new champion for the Florida league tonight.

You might find it interesting that the Florida league champion will be crowned at a dropzone in Georgia, but if you look up the word “Florida” in the Swoopers Dictionary, you will see that in swoop language, Florida includes every dropzone with a pond from Key West to North Carolina, so pretty much up and down the east coast. That’s just how they roll, those swoopers.

League director Albert Bercthold gave us a call well before crack of dawn this morning, to give us a status update – you can listen to his message by clicking on the link below:

Good Morning Skydive the Farm!

We hope to bring you an update tomorrow with the standings and the new champion.
You can also follow the league on Facebook for quick updates – such as when they might be off a weather hold. Best of luck kids – looks like the battle for the championship will be between Colorado swooper Nick Batch and Golden Knight Greg Windmiller – but then again you never know!

This past weekend the Florida Canopy Piloting Association put on its 4th meet of the season, on the the beautiful pond at the Raeford Parachute Center in Raeford, NC.
This league has proven to one of the best venues for young canopy pilots to get their start in competitive swooping and many of current top pilots in the US (and even some from abroad) have done their first chows under the protective arm of the league. All kidding aside, the FLCPA offers a professional and friendly environment, and almost every meet offers coaching from a top competitor at no extra cost to all competitors.

We especially like to see that more and more chicks are venturing onto the pond, and throwing down stuff on par with the boys. Jeannie Anderson, Sales Manager for Mirage Systems and member of Team Alter Ego was one of the chicks swooping it up in Raeford, and she nailed the furthest distance run of all the 18 amateurs in the comp – 91.93 meters.
Way to go swoop-chick, keep up the good work. We especially appreciate the thoughtfulness of photographer Curt Bartholmew and how he included that awesome looking blue windblade in the picture of Jeannie going the distance.

Add this guy to the list. “Read More” to watch the video.

photo by zachklein

Swoooop!

This weekend was no exception as 25 competitors registered to compete. It was a good mix of pro pilots and amateurs and in this traditionally dominated male event, three swoopettes showed up to compete. Greg Windmiller slipped on his speedy pants went on to set a new Florida distance state record by going 147.3 meters (or 483 ft). Nicely done.

Pablo Hernandez of PD Factory Team took 1st place, Brian McNenny of Slipstream Airsports 2nd and Greg Windmiller of the Army Golden Knights in 3rd – a truly star studded podium (please feel free to take the stud part however you’d like). Pablo pretty much owned this meet with 6 scoring rounds, leaving Brian and Greg to battle it out for 2nd place.

Check out this nifty 4 minute 16 second “teaser” video shot at the comp – thanks to meet director Albert Berchtold for sharing.

For you Excel spreadsheet types, you can find all the scores and points right here.