posted Mar 30th, 2012 - The NSL News makes another excursion to the bigway world. The story on 28 March 2012 reported the German 231way recently built in Eloy, Arizona, and the current project in DeLand to build a 222way Florida State Record.

Organizer BJ Worth invited official judges to make sure that a successful 222way will go into the records. USPA Judge Marylou Laughlin and Jerry Bird are in charge of counting the number of connected bigway fans, but there is much more behind the job. They also have to make sure that the participants are registered properly before they are boarding the nine jump planes.

The bigway fans in DeLand are mostly World Team members and are visiting from many different nations. USPA requires 51% of the participants to have up-to-date USPA licences to sanction the attempts for a state record. They don't have to be US citizens, as long as they are USPA members. The other 49% of the record participants may have licences from other countries. Florida State Record means more or less that the event was hosted on Florida soil.

Many of the participants were warming up during the week with larger formations up to 88ways. Thursday was planned to be the first day for all 222 bigway experts to get in the air at the same time. They had to wait for a while when clouds were in the way. However, the Florida skies opened up at the end of the day, and the first practice jump for the complete group took place before sunset.

Clear skies on Friday morning allowed the organizers to give the green light for the first real attempt to connect the 222way after the successful warmup jump on Thursday.

The NSL Reality TV camera was running when organizers and judges were viewing the videos of the first attempt. Jerry Bird had another good story to tell while he waited for the footage to be ready for reviews. This story went back to the USPA Nationals 1999 in Sebastian...