Saturday, November 4

1000
Official practice this morning is being delayed by clouds, but a load is going up now to test the altitude. The weather is supposed to be improving, and I'll post another update around noon.

1140
There are still overcast skies, but the teams are doing practice jumps with a reduced working time of 20 seconds. I got the webcam working too, but be warned, it's very slow -- I'm working with rusty old POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines here.

The plan is to judge all of the Formation Skydiving teams live using the air-to-ground microwave transmission system. When you check out the webcam, what you see is as live as can be, short of being here. Pretty cool and exciting to watch! Wow - speaking of exciting, the Russian 8-way just did a 19 on their practice round (50 seconds working time too). It looks like Airspeed 8 is going to have their hands full again! Make that a 19 busted to a 17. I like their new colors; much easier to watch on video. In Corowa last year they were in white, the jumpsuits are dark now. Check them out when we get the team photos posted later tomorrow.

Wishing the clouds away...

1345
Official practice is done, opening ceremonies will be at 1545. I should have the draw posted tonight.

Opening Ceremonies
The ceremonies began with an assortment of old canopies flown by an assortment of old skydivers. That's 74-year old Bob Sinclair flying the top center, a flat round with a double-L mod.
Kermit, George, Al and Bob.
Dan Poynter narrates the festivities.		George Zawisza stands up his PC landing.
The Russian delegation.
The current 8- and 4-way world champions, Arizona Airspeed 8 and Perris France Maubeuge.
Airspeed wowed the crowd with a nice team landing, even after Alan Metni fell off the DC-3 trying to rear float! But give him credit, he got into the canopy formation for the landing.
The Beech 18, DC-3, and Stearman perform a fly by to end the opening ceremonies.

1730
Never stick your head into the DZTV room and say “Your not going to write about that, are you?” ;-) sorry, Alan...the competition draw is going on in the hanger so that will be up soon...okay, the draw is done! 4-way starts at 0800 tomorrow, five rounds they say, so see you in the morning!