posted Nov 26th, 2007 - The NSL News story on November 12 had provided insights of Perris Fury member Christy Frikken after her return from a tunnel camp at Bodyflight Bedford. Her team had just completed the visit at the NSL Championship 2007 before traveling to Great Britain.

The tunnel camp included coaching by and tunnel training for Perris Fury. It also continued with the cooperation of the Perris team with Bodyflight Storm, the new British national 4-way champion and national team in the Open Class. Christy Frikken commented the November training with Bodyflight Storm from her perspective.

The NSL News was interested in feedback from the British team, as well. Team member Claire "Sparky" Scott followed up and provided the NSL News with a summary of her team's experience at the same training camp. The NSL News will also try to follow up on the Perris Fury - Bodyflight Storm training project with videos of the tunnel training camp.

Perris Fury - Bodyflight Storm tunnel camp

By Claire "Sparky" Scott

We completed a very successful 3-day 2-on-2 tunnel camp with Perris Fury at the Bodyflight wind tunnel in Bedford. The aim of the camp was to take the team to the next level in terms of increased speed and anticipation. We have been lucky to be able to take advantage of Perris Fury's expertise in the past - one of the advantages of training along side them in Perris.

They have helped by inputting technically to each slot, which has complemented the coaching we have received from Dan BC during the past year. We had already benefitted from a couple of days of 2-on-2 coaching with Fury earlier in the year in Perris, and so it made sense to take advantage of Fury's trip to Bedford.

The camp was structured so that two Storm members would fly with two Fury members, therefore allowing for some very valuable in-air coaching. Generally the outside centre and tail from one team would fly with the point and inside centre of the other team. Afterwards we had the opportunity to put into practice what we had learned by flying as a complete team. The results were very pleasing.

We began the camp with a number of random dives where we would start with stop drills on stage one. A few pages were like dirtdiving the jump in the air by working on the communication and emphasising complete stops before taking any grips. Then we would start the jump again flying at our usual pace, stage two, before letting the pace naturally increase to a level that was just about sustainable, which was stage three. After a few pages we would stop and begin the jump again, this time starting at stage three, seeing how long we could keep going at the new pace.

We also worked on all of the blocks, first on the blocks only and also as part of a 3-random 1-block sequence. Here we started the block at our usual pace so that we could concentrate on putting into practice some of the new technical information given to us by Fury.

Once we started to accomplish the correct pictures and feeling, we would then take the block to the next level in terms of power input. This made for some interesting flying as we tried to get to grips with seeing the pictures much faster.

We were really pleased with the way the camp progressed, especially as we were also flying in our new mirrored quadrants for the first time. This was a decision recently made to adapt to right-hand door exits from the Pilatus Porter.

We now have a few more hours in the tunnel together to consolidate the information we received from the Fury tunnel sessions before leaving for our next training camp in Perris in December. This will be the first time we will get to jump the Porter - a new challenge that the team is looking forward to.

We have a few busy months of training ahead and have tried to incorporate as many meets of the California Skydiving League into the schedule as possible. Our first competition in 2008 will be the Bodyflight World Challenge which will be the first tunnel competition for all team members and something that we are very much looking forward to.