Tidbits (Timbits + Tedbits)

Wednesday, October 20 -

Going to be a long slow day. It is official arrival day and practice for all the delegations, and in the meantime we will be trying to get our grubby mitts on a video mixer or two and finish setting up all this hardware.

So check in every now and then, I may have some pictures up here later, but there won't be any real action until tomorrow.

The Mexican delegation regrets that they won't make this meet! Maybe next time amigos!

To the person who suggested a clock of sorts on the front page, I would like to put a Java applet there where people can see what the local time is, so if someone wants to do me a favor and send me the applet while I go scrounge up all the team info I would sure appreciate it. Or at least send me a URL to go take a look. I'm at webmaestro@omniskore.com thanks.

Lots of competitors have been asking "Where is the live air-to-ground video?" What a great many competitors and spectators don't understand about doing live air-to-ground is what a tremendous drain of resources it is on a host. In addition to an array of additional equipment to set up, it requires at least two more full time bodies to run it properly, and then there is the gargantuan task of coordinating pilots, manifest and two teams of judges with a live video signal. It is neither cheap nor easy, and it requires the luck of good weather to boot. So if you spend all the money to get live air-to-ground, you are banking on good weather as well. 

This is a photo collage taken from the DZ entrance. Not much to see from this angle; our DZ-TV and judges' setup is in the building to the far left, manifest is straight ahead, and the main tents are off to the right. Lots and lots of tents and RVs thrown in everywhere.

Word has it that our video mixers are on the way...and hey, we got a real coffee pot in here now! Life is looking up indeed!

1315
Well, for the lack of skydiving competition we're having some measure of fun watching the Mets toy with the Braves in the NLCS on the Internet...kind of strange watching a Tuesday night game live on Wednesday afternoon...

The weather has been clear, breezy and very cool the last couple of days. It is spring time down under, they say it's going to get quite warm in the summer, and if we don't like the flies now just wait a few months! No thanks, I'm looking forward to the Arizona desert again, home sweet home.

My ride back to the B&B tonight. Unleaded only, please!

1600
Praise the skygods, they just delivered a Panasonic WJ-AVE55 video mixer to the DZ-TV room. Crunch time is approaching, it's time to track down all the team info from registration and have a long session at the keyboard...

...meanwhile, France and USA tied the official  4-way practice jump at 26 points each; the jump was spinner, sidebody donut > sideflake donut, sidebody, phalanx.. Methinks a terrific battle is coming up betwixt those two teams!

HOT LINK DEPARTMENT - Have you seen the new link on the HOME page of this coverage? You can go to http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/, type in a URL, and have the web page translated to French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. I'm dying to know how accurate it is, so someone check it out and drop me a line! Thanks JG for the hot tip!

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