USPA Nationals are in full swing again at Skydive Chicago, IL. This past weekend saw the 4-way formation skydiving teams battle it out, with Arizona Airspeed taking 1st place as so many times before, but not without stiff competition from younger teams such as Perris Fury and the new generation of Golden Knights.
It is now on to more formation skydiving (8-way, 10-way, 16-way), followed by  vertical formation skydiving, freeflying, freestyle and canopy relative work (CReW).   Nationals then wrap up with the classic events of style and accuracy.

Right before Nationals there was a wee bit of drama concerning a certain someone slapping up a 3rd party website intended to host news and information from Nationals.  That page was taken offline per USPA’s request, as it had no affiliation with the real deal.  There were some hurt feelings, but seeing that Skydive Chicago is doing a pretty good job of posting scores as they become official, most people were able to dry the tears and move right along.  You can read more about USPA’s stance here –  and really it’s pretty easy to identify with their point of view.

James LaBarrie from Skydive Carolina has been on site and on behalf of Blue Skies Magazine put up a shitload ton of news and photos on our Facebook page.  If you are on Facebook and hungry for Nationals news, check it out – he’s been doing an excellent job!

Competition started today at Skydive Spaceland with some rain, rain and more rain.  Around noon the skies cleared up enough so that meet organizers were able to get a handful of loads off the ground, enough to at least complete round 1 of intermediate 4-way.
At the close off registration yesterday 57 4-way teams had signed up to compete, with the majority of those being US teams with a handful of international guest teams competing as well.

Tomorrow looks like another wet day, but it is too early to tell if or how much the rain will hamper the meet.  The big teams are already pondering what effects (if any) this might have on team selection for the World Meet in Russia next year and some interesting thoughts on what might happen in case the weather doesn’t allow for a full meet are posted on the NSL website.  Kurt has been a busy guy, updating both his own website that caters more to hard core 4-way geeks, but also guest blogging on the CYPRES blog, where he writes posts geared more towards people with casual interest in 4-way.
Check both out for pictures and videos from Spaceland.

I’ll leave you with a gorgeous photo of a lonely Spaceland Otter, waiting for the rain to let up.

Photo by Nik Daniel