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VRW Dive Pool Expansion - a call to arms
written by Eric Deren of Team Mandrin
December 28, 2005
The deadline for submission is February 1, 2006.
One of the most immediate problems facing VRW 4-Way right now is a lack of formations
in the current dive pool. Most skydivers don't know this, but during a formation
skydiving (FS/RW) competition meet, no formations are repeated. There are 22 blocks and
16 randoms in the 4-Way FS dive pool, which are enough formations to do an entire 10
round meet, and a tie breaker, without using the same formation twice.
Currently, with only 6 blocks and 8 randoms, the VFS/VRW Advanced class dive pool can barely
support five rounds without repetition. Only half of those formations are classified as Intermediate
formations, making the Intermediate pool only able to support about three rounds
without repetition.
Necessary Additions for Competition
All of this needs to change. Before the February USPA
(United States Parachute Association) Board of Directors meeting,
we need to add 10 formations to the dive pool. The breakdown is as follows:
- Five (5) intermediate blocks
- One (1) advanced block
- Three (3) intermediate randoms
- One (1) advanced random
This will bring our Advanced total up to 24 formations and 36 points,
and our Intermediate total up to 16 formations and 24 points, allowing both Advanced
and Intermediate VRW competitions to do 6 rounds without repetition.
What We've Got So Far
During the
first VRW competition
at Skydive Chicago in August 2005, members of
The Lodi 5 and Team Mandrin had a VRW formation "brainstorming session" with
Richard Schachner (USPA southeastern regional director and USPA Formation Skydiving judge) as
a moderator. The below-pictured white board shows the results of that session:
Also, Chris Salcone of the artistic freefly team Guano has forwarded his
suggestions for additions to the dive
pool, as pictured below. A good portion of these will have to be re-designed to fit within
the Dive Pool Submission Guidelines, but they represent a
tremendous amount of creativity and what the future of this discipline holds:
How You Can Help
Yes! We want YOUR ideas. This is your opportunity to become a part of
skydiving history! Just follow the following guidelines and send us your ideas.
We will give credit to you or your team for coming up with a formation that gets
used in the dive pool! We are going to have 10 new formations by February...
at least one of them should be yours!
Dive Pool Submission Guidelines:
- Become familiar with the
dive pool as it stands now. See what makes up an
Intermediate formation and what makes an Advanced formation. The idea is not to make
these formations hard... they just need to look cool and be fun to fly. The hard
part comes when you try to do 14 of them in 35 seconds.
- Take a glance at the (gasp)
classic FS dive pool if you are unfamiliar with what blocks
and randoms actually are.
- Be aware that no point in the dive pool can look like any other point in the
dive pool, just like classic Formation Skydiving. This means, since we've got a
"Head Down Star" random,
you can't make a block that begins or ends on a
"Head Down Star".
By the same token,
we won't be able to use a random that is a part of an existing block, or a block that
contains a point that is a part of an existing block. This shouldn't be that big of a
problem... Bellyfliers only have two dimensions, one body position, and four grip points to
work with, and they've got 38 formations in their dive pool. We've got
three dimensions, sitfly and head down body positions, the four FS grip points, plus foot grips!
(see next guideline)
- All grips should be able to be described as leg, arm or foot. The foot
specification has been added to VRW so people can't cheat the grips of
multi-level formations like the
"Gulley"
down to the thigh. For safety and
judging purposes, no grips are allowed on the rig. For the 2006
training and competition season, we would rather not deal with the judging implications of head docks,
either, although we will accept submissions that involve these kinds of grips for
future dive pool enhancements.
- More consideration will be given to formations that consolidate all of the grips
into two or three areas. This makes them easier to judge. For a good example,
refer to Random C, the
"Shoe Shine".
- Also note that the
"Shoe Shine"
is the only Intermediate formation that includes an upright, sitfly body position. We need
more of those. I would suggest, however, that for Intermediate formations there be a maximum
of one (1) flyer in an upright, sitfly body position. And, following the
"Shoe Shine"
lead, minimize or remove the need for the sitflyer to take hand grips.
- Use plenty of notes to describe your formation(s). As you can see from the
pictures above (especially from the Chicago session), it is very easy to draw something
that nobody else can understand. Hell, I was THERE, and six months later
now I have no idea what some of these Chicago drawings meant.
- Project Horizon standardized the use of triangles for upright fliers and circles
with noses for head down. However, some multi-level formations (like the
"Gulley") cannot
easily be described this way, so feel free to use side-view drawings.
...and that's it! The more creative, the better! We want submissions that are fun to
fly, look good on camera, and are easy to judge...
Please send your submissions to eric@atlantafreeflight.com, or post them to the
DZ.com thread about this topic!
The deadline for submission is February 1, 2006.
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