posted Feb 24th, 2009 - For the past two years the Carolina Skydiving League has held its annual meeting in at the Paraclete-XP wind tunnel in Raeford NC. The highlight of the Carolina Skydiving League annual meeting is the tunnel meet. This year the league decided to team up with Paraclete-XP to raise money for Jump for the Cause. Jump for the Cause is a 501c3 corporation and the skydiving industry's premier fundraising Organization. JFTC is dedicated to raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Money raised by Jump for the Cause goes for Breast cancer research and the City of Hope hospital. With the help of Jump for the Cause participants Karen Wood and Maxine Tate this year’s meet was a tremendous success. With the contributions by Carolina Skydiving League, Paraclete-XP and all of the jumpers and visitors, the Jump for the Cause raised $3445. Tate said "this is absolutely fantastic; we sold an awful lot of raffle tickets in addition to the money from the Carolina Skydiving League". During the meet Jump for the Cause sold T-shirts, hats, and raffle tickets for tunnel time with coaching.

In the past, the tunnel meet was just a 4-way RW competition. This year the league added 2-way VRW to the competition. Twenty eight teams competed in the tunnel meet. There were twenty-two teams in the 4-way RW competition in three classes, Rookie, Intermediate, and Open. There were six teams competing in the 2-way VRW in two classes Novice and Open.

Tunnel Camp

"Competition in the tunnel is a little bit different from competition in the sky", says Carolina Skydiving League director Dan Winkelstein. For this reason, the tunnel meets always start out with a tunnel camp. This camp is designed for skydivers with less than an hour of 4-way relative work experience in the tunnel. The two things we wanted competitors to get out of the camp are

1. How to safely fly competitive 4-way in the tunnel and avoid tunnel funnels

2. Review of basic RW skills

"Tunnel funnels can be awfully dangerous" said Winkelstein. The coaches for the tunnel camp included Brian Krauss of the Golden Knights, Bruce Travis from Skydive Carolina, Joey Freeman formerly of Carolina ICE, and Chris Halsan and Todd Porter of Team Apocalypse. Each coach would work with 2-3 competitors. The camp started with an hour of classroom work. The classroom work included basic entry and exit procedures in the tunnel; basic RW skills, grip discipline, cross referencing, light grips, presentation of grips, levels, and staying in the center of the tunnel. The coaches then worked on a set of random dirt dives with each group. Tunnel camp competitors would each spend 7-10 minutes, in the tunnel with their group, flying the random points practiced during the dirt dive.

2-way VRW

The 2-way VRW event was new to the Carolina Skydiving League venue of events. Fortunately, Skyventures Colorado had a previously run a Summit Challenge, so the League used Skyventure Colorado Summit Challenge format. The first two rounds for both Novice and Open class 2-way VRW consisted of combinations of Back flying and Flat flying formations. Judging was done from the tunnel mounted overhead camera, this provided a top view of the action. Competitors had 90 second tunnel time rotations for each round. Competitors would start with a 2-way star formation (either both flat, both back, or combination back and flat). As soon as grips on the 2-way star were broken, time would begin. Time ended 35-seconds later or when the strobe indicated it was time to exit the tunnel for the next group. Novice 2-way VRW had 4 or 5 points per round and open class had 5 or 6 points per round. Each round consisted of a combination of back/belly randoms or blocks. The rules stated that if the first point was a 2-way star, competitors still had to show complete grip separation before building the first point.

Rounds 3 through 6 inclusive, for the Novice class, consisted of a 4 or 5 points dive of head-up sit-fly formations of randoms and blocks. Rounds 3 through 6 for the Open class consisted of 5 or 6 points of head-up/head-down, head-down/head-down, or sit-fly formations of randoms and blocks. For rounds 3 through 6, both Novice and Open would enter the tunnel and make a 2-way sit-fly consisting of a single hand-to-hand grip. As soon as this grip was broken, the 35-seconds clock would start. Judging for rounds 3 through 6 was done from the booth mounted camera. This provided a side view of the competitors. Because there were only six teams competing in the 2-way VRW, the competition consisted of all six teams in the tunnel for a full hour. "If we had gotten just a few more teams, we could have broken it up, so teams would do only three rounds per session and then have a break. As it was, the teams had to dirt dive all six rounds prior to entering the tunnel" said Winkelstein. Judging for the 2-way VRW was Chris Talbert and Selwyn Facey. 2-way VRW was new to both the judges and the competitors, so it took a little longer to finish the judging then normal and some of the teams had a lot of busts.

4-way Open Class

At 3:00 in the afternoon the draw for all the competition was handed out. The draw for the 4-way portion of the tunnel meet consisted of the National Skydiving League draw for the weekend of 2/21. At 6:00 the 4-way open class competition started. There were only two teams in the open class, so teams did 3 rounds, took a break for 20 minutes and did the last three rounds. The competition for the open class was exciting. It was standing room only around the tunnel watching the open competition. Team Sean Sweeney Fan Club averaged 23.0 points over the six rounds for a total score of 138 just ahead of the home team, Paraclete-XP which averaged 22 ½ points over six rounds for a score of 135.

The rules for tunnel 4-way competition call for a 90 second rotation. Teams enter the tunnel make a star (M). Once the star is broken, the clock starts. 35 seconds later, time is over. Just like in 2-way RW if the first point was an M, then teams had to show full separation before regripping. The tunnel mounted overhead camera captured all of the video for all of the 4-way competition (Open, Intermediate and Rookie). As soon as a tunnel session ended, the video was stored to a harddrive. Judges Chris Talbert and Brian Krauss timed and scored competition with only a 20 minute time between completing the rounds and completing the scoring.

Carolina Skydiving League Annual Meeting

The Carolina Skydiving League annual meeting was wedged quickly between a chicken dinner, provided by the league, and the 4-way Intermediate and Rookie Class 4-way RW competition. The annual meeting started with the awards for the 2-way VRW competition. Taking first place in the open division was team “AA” with an impressive 6-round total of 105 points. Taking first place in the novice division was team Perfect 11 with a score of 90 points in 6 rounds.

During the annual meeting, Winkelstein announced the finances from the 2008 Skydiving season. The Carolina Skydiving League held 5 meets during the 2008 season and raised $900 for charity. $600 was donated in 2008 to the Wounded Warrior Foundation in the name of the Army Golden Knights who have helped the league by coaching teams and judging the meets. $300 was donated in 2008 to Jump for the Cause.

4-way Intermediate and Rookie Class

The Rookie and Intermediate class competition started promptly at 8:00. Each tunnel session was 20 minutes and consisted of four teams each doing 3 rounds in rotation. The rookie class is designed to be an introduction to completive skydiving for low time jumpers. A rookie team consists of three jumpers with less than 500 jumps and an expert with unlimited jumps. The rookie draw consists of six rounds of three points each and only randoms points are part of the draw. The idea, says Winkelstein, is to "introduce novice jumpers to competitive 4-way in an environment where they can learn the basics, develop good 4-way skills and have a high degree of confidence that the dives they plan and engineer can be completed in the sky". The concept for the Rookie Class came from the league's affiliation with the NSL.

This year the intermediate division used the NSL A Class draw which includes some but not all of the blocks. A large percentage of the intermediate teams do not feel comfortable doing vertical block transitions in the tunnel. "Next year if the tunnel meet gets as high a turnout in the intermediate division, as we did this year, we will have 4 classes instead of three and introduce the USPA Intermediate draw as an event", said Winkelstein.

There were some interesting teams in the Rookie and Intermediate class. Team "Classically Trained' came in second in the Rookie division. This team came all the way from Pigeon Forge Tennessee and consisted of four members of the staff at the Flyaway wind tunnel. One of the members has not even completed student status and the group has never competed in 4-way competition until this event. During the awards ceremony, Winkelstein told the team "As soon as all members of this team get off student status, you will need to move up to intermediate division".

While team "Which end up" came in last place in the intermediate division, team members Chris and Mary Wagner flew all the points of all of the formations upside down. After the first round in the tunnel the crowd watching gave the team a standing ovation. Mary Wagner said "some of the points that we did not expect to be difficult such as the Murphy Flake (C) were pretty challenging".

Coming in first in the Rookie division was team Space Dockers with a 6-round total score of 98. Coming in first in the Intermediate division with a 6-round total score of 100 was The Terror Within.

After the last round of competition, the judges completed the scoring in about 30 minutes. Once scores were posted, the Carolina Skydiving league presented metals to the winners. Maxine Tate from Jump for the Cause also presented some gifts to the winners from the PIA convention.

Following the awards, the Carolina Skydiving League presented a check for $1460 to Maxine Tate and Karen Wood of Jump for the Cause. It was about 11:30pm by the time the meet was over. 28 teams had competed in 6 rounds of competition each, and $3445 had been donated to a worthy cause. Next year the league hopes to have an even bigger event.

Dan Winkelstein, D-11467, author of this article, made his first jump in October of 1981. He has more than 4200 jumps. He is the director of the Carolina Skydiving League, as well as a Tandem and AFF instructor. His home dropzone is Raeford Parachute Center in NC.