posted Sep 6th, 2005 - The NSL News fell a little bit behind at the second half of yesterday's event coverage in Perris. The reason for the interruption was a conflict with USPA that was unforseen. The NSL News had prepared the coverage of the USPA Nationals as properly as possible and asked for permission to do the normal NSL News business in Perris.

The conflict came to the surface when meet director Scott Smith and USPA's Director of Competition, Larry Bagley, asked the NSL News to stop uploading video files of the meet for NSL-TV. The NSL News was surprised by this order since NSL-TV is a part of the usual special event coverage by the NSL News, and the access to DZ-TV for this purpose was dicussed beforehand.

The conflict could not be resolved until now, and the NSL News regrets to be unable to offer any new video files to the audience, probably from here on until the end of the competition. Meet director Scott Smith promised to get clarification from the USPA headquarters, and the NSL News is on a hold as of NSL-TV coverage in the meantime.

However, life and competition have gone on, with or without NSL-TV, and Omniskore's Tim Wagner has kept the audience up-to-date with scores, pictures and Tidbits. He is doing an amazing job handling several different chores at the same time.

The last two rounds on Monday changed the picture on the top of the 4-way AAA Class leaderboard. The Golden Knights delivered a breathtaking performance in round five and simply left the rest of the field in the dust, which included the former leader, DeLand Fire.

DeLand Fire happened to show the team's first weakness in Perris after four solid rounds, which gave Fire a 2-point lead before round five. The combination of the Golden Knights' performance from a different planet in round five and DeLand Fire's weakest round made for a 4-point difference, and the 2-point lead switched from Fire to the Army team.

The teams did not know until Tuesday morning how the actual standings would turn out after six rounds. As in the previous years at the USPA Nationals, the jump plane operation was once again very fast and efficient and beat the three judging panels on a regular basis.

Technical problems added to the delay in posting missing scores, and result was the fact that several teams had to take off for round six without knowing their scores and the scores of other teams for round four. For quite a while, there were also scores posted for rounds five and even six while round four was still missing.

Most of the teams did not worry too much since the focus is mostly directed on the internal factors of the performance. However, some teams and competitors felt uneasy not knowing the latest standings and possibly making ajdustments of the tactics for the upcoming jumps.

The NSL News has refocused on the event coverage and was fortunate enough to find Golden Knights team captain John Hoover in the creeping area this morning. He was ready for a short interview and review of the current situation during a break after the team's morning routine and preparations for round seven. Click here to watch the interview on NSL-TV. Round seven is now in progress, stay tuned.