posted Mar 3rd, 2009 - The NSL News can now follow up on the story of 23 February 2009, which covered once again the Valentine's Meet 2009. Perris Fury's meet videos were uploaded that day, and the NSL News closed the article after reviewing the videos with the question how Airspeed Odyssey was able to create an 18-point difference.

The NSL News was hoping to get the Airspeed videos and possibly an answer to this question. It took a little bit longer, however, with the kind and greatly appreciated help of Airspeed's video manager and Center Inside Andy Delk, the first videos have now been uploaded and can be viewed on NSL-TV.

The Airspeed treat begins with Rounds 1 and 2, the other meet videos will be added soon. The quality is much better, as Andy Delk uploaded huge video files to the server. It took quite a while to download and process the videos, which was still very much worth the effort.

Valentine'sMeet 2009	Rd1	Rd2	Rd3	Rd4	Rd5	Rd6	Rd7	Rd8	Rd9	Rd10
AirspeedOdyssey						-	-	-	-	-
PerrisFury						-

The videos of the first two rounds don't really seem to offer an answer to the same question. The 1-point difference in Round 1 is not even a part of this discussion, as both teams are so close to each other - in performance, pace and score. The different engineering did not seem to make a big difference.

However, the question already comes up in Round 2. It seems again as if both teams are on the same pace and performance level, and the engineering of the sequence is identical this time. The results are still very different. Airspeed Odyssey won this round by three points.

The NSL News used the opportunity of the video exchange between Arizona (Andy Delk) and Florida (NSL News) to ask Airspeed's Center Inside the same question. How did Airspeed Odyssey create the 18-point difference?

Andy Delk could not really explain it himself. He said that he did not see much of the Fury footage at the meet, and nothing really caught much of his attention: "I did not really watch much of Fury's jumps. We did see a few of them during the judging and playback. They looked clean and together, the best I could tell. As to how we beat them by 18, I have no idea."

He saw that Fury has set up a great foundation and expects the Perris team to clean up the few situations where they stumbled briefly. As all the top competitors, he was mostly focused on his own team's performance, which was inspired by exits from the Twinotter:

"Our own performance was decent for this early in the season. As always, it is not without mistakes. We had some busts and some rough areas that we would like to clean up. We are very excited to be jumping an Otter again. We have much more experience with the left door, and it shows in the confidence of the group. We are able to push it a bit harder earlier in the season as a result."

Both teams opened the 2009 season better than ever before, as the NSL News story on 18 February 2009 explained. Both teams will follow up with another outdoor competition, the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2009, which begins on March 20 in DeLand.

Then Airspeed Odyssey and Perris Fury will both travel to Europe and attend the World Challenge 2009 two weeks later. It is a copy of the start into the 2008 season for both teams, and the NSL News will follow them around, once again.

The Valentine's Meet 2009 with scores and videos can be commented and discussed in the poll below.

FSL Shamrock Showdown 2009
Who will win the Shamrock Showdown?	Airspeed Odyssey France Maubeuge Perris Fury
	Current Results