last updated
june 14 , 2009
The
stormy year of CaTo !
June
The
first weekend in june was planned as a team-training weekend. With one
day extra of work, we should have enjoyed three days of jumping,
but.... the weather certainly did not know of our plans, and on Friday
it was just cloudy, Saturday was fine, and Sunday full of clouds and
rain. So the jumps we did were only on Saturday. The day started with a
malfunction: the hard-pulls I was experiencing in the last couple of
weeks now ended in a real container-lock: due to a pilot that was
stashed too much under the pin, with no slack, the pull-out cord was
impossible to pull further and to release the pin. So after a free fall
of some 20 seconds I decided to go for silver, and opened the brand new
PD Optima (143) Nice canopy, nice ride, nice landing. Tom followed the
free bag, and after one hour of Case work (thanks Karin!!!!) we were
ready to fly again. the other three jumps were fine but not great, it
became bumpy, and with a off-center camera (hey guy's, give us some
space while preparing for exit) the last jump of the day was done, and
we decided to call it a day. let's hope we find or rhythm again next
weekend.
13-14 june. The weekends starts with perfect weather: on Saturday we
have blue skies, some clouds, no wind (hmmm) and enough lift capacity
to make our jumps. The first two jumps went very god: stairstep
stairstep on the spot was so smooth that we will have a problem
convincing the jury that it where indeed two points, the next stairstep
transition to the opposite site was without error, and going down also
went quick and steady. In the third and fourth jumps we tried the same
jump in mirror... but we knew it already: both of us have or good and
bad sides, so these jumps went not OK. on the fifth we tried to make
the move from stack to stairstep, but this needs definitely some
practice :-)
and then it was time to play: Mr PD was there, and we both decided to
make some jumps with other canopies: the stiletto 120 and Katana 120
for Tom, and the sabre2 135 and stiletto 120 for Caren: the first
combination was dull, the second better :-) but landing stays a problem
with no wind and Caren as a pilot :-)
on Sunday, CF3 came also for a training day and that meant: ..... bad weather. So no jumps and an earlier home coming.
May
With
queens day on a Thursday, and also the Friday free from work, it
promised to be a long weekend on jumping :-) On Thursday we made our
first real team-jumps: Danny joined us, and had to show that he could
keep up with us with the lightning 143. Well... even a big guy like
Danny needs to add some instant-weight, so as for now: Danny is flying
with lead :-)
We focuses first on the difficult formations: stack-stair-step. Looking
at the Prussians last year, this could be a very fast move, but we
still need to figure out what and how they do it, and even the
camera-footage did not give us a clue what to try next. But with 6
jumps, the first day still was a success.
On Friday, Danny had to work, and we could jump just the two of us. 5
jumps at a row, and some improvements were felt. We proved this on
Saturday, when danny joined us again, and the stairstep-stairstep
(cross-top-bottom) was done in 4 seconds flat! hmmm, last year, with
the lightnings, this was our slowest movement, and was done in 8-10
seconds! so this looks good!
On Sunday, the weather finally gave in, and after two marginal
weather-jumps, we decided to stop, and enjoy the rest of the day at
home. With 50 jumps made already this year, our bank-saldo is getting
lower, but points are getting faster :-)
By the way, you can see us in (short...) action in the daily video of Teuge, see this link
The video also shows some footage of Tom in action as a rigger: how to
measure the distance between the line groups in order to make the
perfect spider? :-)
The second weekend of May.
No video this weekend, but that did not stop us from trying new moves
and new transitions. After looking carefully to the video of Russia-2
(world championships 2008) Tom had some ideas to speed-up our points,
and that proved to be successful: the stack-stairstep is now really
fast, and we now also know that trying to fly somebody out of the air
speeds up your point :-)
at Saturday 6 jumps could be made, on Sunday we were ready at 15:00
o'clock, with 5 jumps behind our names. Time to enjoy the weather, the
thoughts of good jumps, and prepare for next weekend: coaching at the
rubberduck. see ya.
rubberduck 2009
no CF CaTo jumps this weekend, but we worked as a CF coach at the
RubberDuck boogie, a boogie especially for beginning jumpers, in which
they can make the first contact with the different disciplines. This
year there were 6 'CF-heroes' and 6 coaches, so we could each have our
own stuent and jump. On saturday the weather was fine and we were able
to make 4 jumps each. Unfortunatly, Sunday was not good, and @ 13;00 we
decided to call it a day. See for a video
last two weekends of may were good and not good. although we could make
some training jumps, we did not complete as much as jumps as we would
have wanted and some of the movements where also not yet oke. But on
the other hand: we learned how to NOT do some moves, and we also jumped
with the new canopies, which turn out to be really great for CRW! far
much better than the 120. Only landings keep to be tricky, but practice
should do the job. Danny is now jumping with more weight (extra lead)
but still with the 143.
Why couldn't we make more jumps: well,,, having two planes on the DZ is
not by default good; if there are just not enough people to fill both
planes continuously, you get into the situation that one plane is left
on the ground, and guess what: the crw people are the ones that also
stay on the ground... All other (FS-) teams are re-planned, but for
some reason we are forgotten. Well, let's see if we can do something
about that in the next day's.
and it can be soooooo simple:
1. we jump from 9000 ft, a regular altitude at the dz and are always with at least 2 persons, so also according rules
2. our decent-speed is so high (1500 ft/minute) that the plane can go further up to 12000 and drop the remaining skydivers
3. we need some 30 minutes to pack and get ready for the next jump
let's see what's happening next weekend :-)
April
After
waiting for 5 months, the winter is finally over, and spring has begun!
We, CaTo (CAren and TOm, video man=Danny) , are a two-way canopy
formation team, living in Holland and jumping at our home-dropzone Teuge. Last year we
participated at the world
championships (11th place, 22 competitors) (see our blog) and this year, we
want to improve ourselves! Although there will be no WC this year, we
have set the goal to get the national record for ourselves (today we
share it with the other team (CF3) in Holland = 12 points) and also
become the dutch champions. We changed our canopies from Lightning 143
into Storms 120, and even smaller later this season. But, changing from
lightnings into Storms also means changing the technique of flying
together: with the lighting, it was real flying on-your-own, from point
to point. But the Storm is not only faster (higher wingload and better
canopy) but we also are changing techniques and looked at the world
champions: Russia: the fly together, and scoring each point by making
it a joined effort of both flyers. This is fun! (but also difficult...)
In this web-log, I will try to keep you informed of our progress and
jumps!
Let's start with the first weekend: now that the rebel-sailors are
on-tour, we needed to find ourselves a new place to stay, and we found
a camping-site and new
caravan with a perfect bed and kitchen (THE most important things after
a good canopy :-). So, after we drove our caravan to it's new parking
space, we went to the DZ to make the first jump of the year. But.....
caren did talked to much about her 'first-jump-of-the-year' experiences
in the last years (loosing a camera, flying through the canopy of Eric,
having a streamer with a lightning, etc etc). The result: 5 minutes
before the boarding call she tripped over a roll-of-carpet in the
hangar and twisted her ankle badly... But.... that first jump needed to
be made. So after two hours of ice, and a perfect ankle tape set by
Marjolein we wnet into the plane and jumped. A little rusty, but the
good feeling was quickly there, and the landing.... well.... let's say
that she landed and broke nothing :-)
One weekend later: eastern, so three day's of fun ahead of us. Although
it was quite busy at the dropzone, the manifest was a great help, and
we managed to make our 5 jumps per day. And the rust began to fade
away: it quite different from flying a Lightning, more attention and
less rest because we both have to fly in every formation, but bit by
bit we see already improvement. The canopies perform as expected:
although the 120 still does not feel like a real CRW canopy (the
openings are messy, and end-cells collapse too often) we can manage and
get the feel of it.
and weekend number 3 in April with again sunny and dry weather, now
with two planes, so lots of possibilities to jump. The ankle of caren
is still not completely healed, but it also gives her a nice excuse to
make not-that-graceful landings. Let's see of the ankle heels before
the end of the season :-)
What we notice is that making intensive jumps is not as easy, and when
a jump really is successful: it hurts after 4000 feet, and we wish we
had not gone up to 9000 :-) but then again, when a jump is less
successful, we have more time to practice and to call each other names
:-). So again 2x5 jumps, bringing our total already at 26 jumps in
2009! By the way, we started a formation-logbook, logging the
information of each of the formations and transitions, so not to
forget. Last year, we made some 30 jumps with the sorm, and had already
figured out some of the moves we had to make. But how soon can you
forget, or how old are we today: the information is gone, and we have
to find out all over again. But now we are able to make notes and
remember the info :-)
The last weekend of April:
The weather forecast was not really good, but we decided to go for it
and wait and see if we could make a couple of jumps during the
Saturday, and perhaps even Sunday (although it seemed not to become
blue-sky, but rainy with clouds... they said) But surprise
surprise: not only was the weather great on both saturday as well as
Sunday (we could even walk in t-shirt and fly with just one sweater :-)
but everybody else was apparently also afraid for bad weather, and
stayed home, so no queues, pre-manifesting and with 11 jumps over 2
days, it couldn't be better.... Well.... as a matter of fact, it could
have been better if our moves also where OK... but especially
transitions on-top need some extra work, and most of all: VIDEO-proof.
So next weekend (queens day) Danny will join us again at will try to
put us on tape so we can debrief without the 'you-did-I-did-not
arguments :-)
stay tuned for more updates
