posted Oct 4th, 2008 - Belgium's national 4-way team Hayabusa Defence, bronze medalist at this year's World Meet in France, completed the 2008 season with a 30.5 average at an 8-round CISM competition in Switzerland. The event took place in Locarno (29th of September to 2nd of October), at a scenic skydiving center next to the Swiss Alpes.

It was an invitational international CISM event organized by the Swiss Army. Participating countries were Sweden (with male and female lineups), Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Belgium and Switzerland with two male lineups.

The NSL News had already reported of the 4th CISM Military World Games in India last year where Hayabusa Defence and the Golden Knights gave each other an extremely exciting race over eight rounds. Hayabusa won by one single point with a 31.5 average.

The competition in Switzerland was held over eight rounds, as well. The jump plane was a Pilatus Porter.

The rules for the CISM Formation Skydiving competitions are different compared to the FAI/IPC rules. The exit is always a Star, and the teams have five seconds in the Star to start the clock with the first break. Two other random formations follow, and one of eight blocks in the CISM dive pool (4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 19, 21, 22) complete each sequence at the end.

Hayabusa Defence competed for the first time with the new lineup and also in different slots. Weadong So, the new member, is now in the Point slot, Andy Grauwels has moved to the Center Outside position. Former Center Outside, David Grauwels, has moved to Luc Verstrepen's Center Inside slot, Roy Janssen is the only member in the same position and flies the Tail. Danny Jacobs is still filming the team.

Weadong So has already been Hayabusa's alternate for almost two years. He got his chance when Hayabusa replaced Luc Verstrepen after the World Meet in Maubeuge. Team speaker Roy Janssen provided more details of what happened with his team after returning from France:

"We decided to switch slots for practical reasons. We had our first training camp with the new lineup in September and did 70 jumps in preparation for the CISM.

Mainly we tried to get used to the new slots and piece partners, and with that we also aimed for getting cleaner performances out of our skydives.

The first impressions of the team performance are positive, however there is still a lot of work ahead. We have one last training camp planned this year in Spain and will probably do around 80 jumps. From here on, we will focus back on the FAI/IPC dive pool for next year's competitions.

The meet in Locarno was well organized, and the atmosphere was very good between all the teams. The plan was to do two days, each with four rounds, and of course a celebration party afterwards! In general, we had five good rounds out of eight where we were pleased with our performance at the moment. Three other rounds had little problems but no disasters. We will fix them in the upcoming training camps.

We could run away from the other teams from the first round on and had a 54-point lead (244) over the silver medalist at the end.

Luc Verstrepen was a player coach for the Swiss team Rotondo that finished in second place (190). The third place went to the Spanish team (178).

Soon we will enjoy our winter break in November and December. We will only do some tunnel training in this time period. The plans for 2009 are complete but not 100% confirmed yet.

We plan to compete at the Aerokart Indoor Challenge, the World Challenge 2009 at Bodyflight Bedford, the World Air Games, the World Games, the Belgian Nationals, the Military World Championship and the FAI World Cup. We will mainly train in Empuriabrava, Spain."