posted Aug 19th, 2005 - DeLand Fire recently competed at the German national championships. The NSL News reported scores and the meet story on August 14. Thomas Hughes, usually Fire's videographer and alternate, took the tail slot for Ian Bobo at the meet in Germany and kindly provided the NSL News with meet videos after returning to Florida.

The NSL News picked the three of the ten jumps with the highest scores (rounds 3, 4 and 8) and made the videos now available for the NSL audience. Thomas Hughes reported that DeLand Fire was able to make only approx. 40 training jumps during the summer trip in Europe, most of them in Texel, the island at the coast of the Netherlands. Texel is the place where Fire's center outside, Gary Smith, spends most of his summer time with coaching work.

The weather in the Netherlands obviously did not support a lot of training, however, it prepared DeLand Fire for the competition in Germany. Thomas Hughes and Germany's Deutsche Sky Liga manager, Dr. Rainer "Exi" Hoenle, both reported that the weather was miserable during the competition.

Dr. Hoenle mentioned that it was as cold as usually in October. However, the ten rounds of the meet were completed, and the meet management sometimes tricked the weather by sending the teams to a much higher altitude than the required 10,500 feet. The teams were then able to get clear 35 seconds of working time before the clouds would interfere with the video.

It was cold in the higher altitude, and there was a lot of additional freefall time for the teams, as one of the DeLand Fire video shows. The Fire members got bored at the end and entertained themselves with freeflying exercises.

The DeLand Fire videos offer additional extras. Tail Thomas Hughes gave the NSL Gloves free advertisement when he greeted Fire's videographer in Germany, Martin Van Der Brakel, while climbing out.

DeLand Fire also found a creative way how to advertise the team name. The team's video slate went up in flames two times during the meet. The first literal DeLand slate Fire announcing an earlier round might have come too early and not to the delight of the event management.

Next and last time the DeLand slate Fire burned again was before round ten. The video slate would not be needed any longer after the last round of the competition. However, the last DeLand slate Fire came along with the video of a very unfortunate parachute opening of Martin Van Der Brakel after round nine. The slate flames take over the screen before the results of the parachute opening can be seen. It surely looked as if the opening story would end up with a reserve ride.