posted May 10th, 2007 - The meet story of the season opener in Belgium wraps up the coverage of last weekend's events within the reach of the NSL network. Once again, Hayabusa Defence makes the NSL News due to the team's true commitment to 4-way competition. There are not too many teams that can keep up with the meet frequency of Belgium's world-class 4-way team.

It was the second 4-way competition for Hayabusa Defence this year. David Grauwels, Andy Grauwels, Roy Janssen and Luc Verstrepen had already made the April trip to Bedford and competed at the World Challenge 2007. Last weekend it was time for Hayabusa's team videographer Danny Jacobs to attend the first 2007 competition.

Seven teams from Belgium shared last weekend's leaderboard with six teams of the New England Skydiving League, while additional eight British teams had their own scoreboard. The competition in Belgium was held at the skydiving center in Temploux. Roy Janssen provided the meet report.

On Friday evening all teams gathered to receive the competition draw for the 10-round meet, six jumps on Saturday and four jumps on Sunday. There were one Rookie Class team, two A Class teams and four AAA Class teams on site. The jumps were done from a Pilatus Porter, the same plane that will be flying at next year's World Meet in France.

Hayabusa's Tail, Roy Janssen, evaluated the competition draw as an average one, not real fast not real slow. He said that the biggest challenge for his team was to launch good exits from the right-hand Pilatus Porter door. Hayabusa had not trained from this jump plane since the Belgian Nationals 2004, and the world-class team was hoping for the best.

Roy Janssen explained the difficulties for his team: "Even though we have a right-hand continuity plan, we are so used to shift 95% of our exits to a left-hand door plane, that it still wasn't that easy for us. We also realized again that the exit and the first sub-terminal page from the Pilatus Porter need extra attention and training compared to a Twinotter or Caravan exit."

Hayabusa went on the safe side last weekend and used a few "Fire and Forget" formations for the exits. The competition draw had seven out of ten exits starting with a block.

The first out-door competition for the new Hayabusa Defence line-up with Luc Verstrepen in the Center Inside position brought a 20.2 average, after the 24.7 average at the World Challenge 2007 in-door competition in Bedford. The team was satisfied with the results, as Roy Janssen confirmed:

"We were pretty happy with the outcome of a 20.2 average after ten rounds with our new line-up that started in February this year. We hope to pass the 21-average soon. The way things are going so far it seems to be a promising year. But, of course, it will take a lot of hard work and efforts, as usual."

Hayabusa Defence has more meets on the agenda. The next BST meet is scheduled for June, the Malevsky Cup 2007 follows in July, then the World Cup 2007 in Russia and the Belgian Nationals 2007 in August. The ESL Championship 2007 and the military world championship are on the Hayabusa agenda for September. It's another busy year for Hayabusa.