posted Dec 18th, 2007 - The NSL News updates that covered the Belgian national 4-way team, Hayabusa Defence, were on a peak this year when the team won the FAI World Cup 2007 in August, and then again during the CISM Military World Games in October. Team speaker Roy Janssen wrapped up the story of another success with his feedback for the NSL News on 24 October 2007. Then it became quiet around Hayabusa Defence, as the team's 2007 season was over.

Roy Janssen mentioned that three team members had to complete their boot camp for the Belgian Army at the end of the year and that training would resume in January. He could not provide details of the Hayabusa plans for 2008 by then.

The NSL News now received an update from Belgium, which includes interesting information from the World Cup 2007 champions' headquarters. Roy Janssen once again answered some NSL News questions and added information of the team's current situation.

The Belgian team does not really have a significant headstart as of training experiences with the right-hand door of the Pilatus Porter. However, the team members feel probably more comfortable with the challenge of the new exit than many other teams.

Hayabusa will work together with Airspeed Odyssey's 4-way and 8-way veteran Craig Girard who agreed to provide his experiences for the Belgian team's training plans. Girard's own team from Arizona will have to compete against Hayabusa Defence for the gold medals at next year's World Championship of Formation Skydiving in France. Roy Janssen explained why both parties feel comfortable with this cooperation. Here is his latest contribution for the NSL News.

Hayabusa Defence 2008

By Roy Janssen

After coming back from the Military World Games on the 23 of October Andy, David and myself had a few days rest before finishing our boot camp that we started in January 2007. Because of our status as top athletes in the Belgian Army, we were allowed to split it up into several periods.

We learned mainly the basics skills that each soldier must know for combat during the last five weeks. The training ended on November 30th.

For the month of December we were and are on holiday, but we are still busy with catching up with personal stuff that had to wait during our skydiving activities this year.

We have scheduled only three days of windtunnel training in Roosendaal, Holland. And with temperatures below freezing, as it is here in Belgium, it is the warmest place for us to train at.

Our training will resume on January 3 next year. We will be heading towards Empuriabrava in Spain. This is the place where we will be doing most of our training until the World Meet, and we will jump from the Pliatus Porter.

So far, our plan is to make approx. 600 jumps before Maubeuge and complete 10 to 15 hours of windtunnel time.

We have also planned one training camp in Eloy and another one in Switzerland where we will be training side by side with the Swiss military national team Rotondo.

One of the challenges for us in 2008 will be the exits from the Pilatus Porter. Even though we have a right-hand continuity plan, we have not trained from of a jump plane with a right-hand door since 2004. The latest experiences for us were one BST meet (Belgium Skydiving League) in 2006 and another BST meet in 2007.

So, I guess that does not make us very current with these exits... However, it will still be easier for us compared to other teams that have left-hand continuity plans. Depending on what they will do - sliding the exits and keep their own continuity plan or starting with mirror-imaging everything - there is always a good and a bad side of it.

It is up to each team to choose a plan that it feels most comfortable with or that fits best to the strategic plan. If it was up to us, we would like to do any big meet from planes with a left-hand door. Over the years, we have become so familiar with sliding our exits that it is now just normal, and everybody feels comfortable with it.

We recently decided to ask Craig Girard for some coaching in 2008. After a little conversation, we both felt good with the idea to work together. It might seem strange for some people that we ask somebody like him considering where we are at this moment. However, I guess that it will work well for both of us.

Of course, it all starts with trust in this case. We believe at this moment that he can teach us many valuable things that are not exactly technical things, like blocks and exits. He has also all kind of other knowledge that makes a world-class team. He has been there for ages, while we are just new on this level. The more information we can get - the better we will become.

For sure, we are the students, and we will try to beat the master! But more than ever before we look forward to the next season. We still feel that we have much more to give. We will just be holding on and go as fast as we can!

The competitions we planned for 2008 are the Bedford The World Challenge 2008 at Bodyflight Bedford, the Belgian Nationals 2008, the World Meet 2008 in France and the Military CISM event in Switzerland in October is on the team agenda next year. We may attend other meets in between these events if it fits into our training program.