posted Aug 25th, 2006 - Last weekend's 4-way events also included the last competition of the regular Vertical Relative Work season in 2006. The test event at the USPA Nationals 2006 will conclude this year's step of the new discipline onto the stage of the competition community.

The NSL News introduced 4-way Vertical Relative Work with the story on April 23, and the NSL website made room for a new league within the league. 4-way competition is the heart and soul of the National Skydiving League, the new category is based on the current competition format, and is has the potential to become a popular event.

Eric Deren, founder and manager of the currently small event series, provided an update after last weekend's competition at Skydive Chicago. He also visited at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving and Artistic Events in Germany where he planned to introduce 4-way VRW to the IPC officials.

The scores of last weekend's 4-way VRW competition can be found at the separate VRW pages They are also a part of last weekend's complete leaderboard. However, the competition draw is not the same as for 4-way Formation Skydiving. VRW has its own dive pool, last weekend's draw can be found by clicking here

Skydive Chicago hosts second annual VRW 4-Way Money Meet Ottawa, IL, USA - August 19th, 2006

Three teams showed up in Ottawa, Illinois, to battle over US$4,750 in the new discipline of 4-way Vertical Relative Work. VRW 4-way is judged under basically the same rules as 4-way Formation Skydiving, with a dive pool made of vertically oriented formations.

Three teams competed, including Team Mandrin, Sebastian 5 and a local pick up team dubbed the Alcaponies. Mandrin took an early lead and never looked back, ending with an 8-point average over six rounds, once again setting a new record meet average for VRW.

"This was fun, but we don't want to start patting each other's backs just yet; I want to see how well we can do at Nationals," says Mandrin member Jon Pinyon. Pinyon speaks of the VRW 4-way demonstration event which will be held at the USPA Nationals in Eloy, Arizona, in late October.

Not even two years old, VRW 4-way offers a new and additional direction for competitive skydiving, especially for current freeflyers. VRW takes everything that has worked for 30 years in Formation Skydiving competition, and adds freefly maneuvers, which are not a part of the traditional dive pool.

The current custodian of VRW 4-way, Eric Deren, has this to say about the differences between FS and VRW: "VRW is RW, plain and simple. We're using the same rules, the same working time, the same definitions. Our only differences are exit altitude and the way the individual formations are defined.

In traditional Formation Skydiving, a grip is a grip and a slot is a slot and that makes the formation. All we've added now is the specification of 'orientation', which is defined as either 'upright' or 'head down'. Each slot in a formation has defined grips and a defined orientation. It is up to a Formation Skydiving judge to determine whether each formation occurred within the working time."

When asked how he feels about the current artistic freefly event, Eric Deren doesn't hold back:

"From my conversations with many of the freefly competitors over the years, I have determined that there are a surprising number who are only doing the artistic event because, right now, it is THE ONLY WAY to rank and file one's vertical flying skills against the skills of other fliers in the world. A good portion of them could care less about the 'artistic expression' and are really more concerned with getting a good score, whatever it takes.

For me, personally, creativity involves being presented with different challenges and having to overcome them 'on the fly' with minimal planning, as in VRW. I personally do not feel that there is an extensive amount of creativity involved in doing one new skydive every year and practicing it 300+ times. I want to do a new skydive every time I get out of the plane, and my experience is that there are a lot of people who feel the same way. There will always be artistic events and there will always be people who want to do them. I'm developing VRW to be the discipline for the rest of us."