Record Turnout Nationals – Part I

A record 76 teams arrived for the first weekend of the National Championships in 4-way and VFS. Not daunted and with a good forecast, the Skydive Hibaldstow fleet of 3 Dornier G92’s quickly jumped all the competitors over 2 days. It was great to see see a wide diversity of trained and scratch teams who all came to have some fun at the dropzone.

Two juding panels were needed and with chief judge, Kate Charters at the helm they kept up with the big influx of videos to judge. This year, there has been a UK-wide shortage of 4-way cameramen, so many had to film 2 or even 3 teams at Nationals.

So onto the results: In the Rookie Class new team Equal Pay For Women with only 6 months together won with a fantastic average of 14 over their 8 rounds. Silver and Bronze went to a jump off between Langar Squared and Well Wild. In the end, Langar Squared won by a single point. The Well Wild girls though, came to Hibaldstow the following weekend for the 8-way and took the Intermediate Silver!

The A class was also very interesting with a jump-off for the Bronze between RAFSPA Venom and Mental Blox. In the jump-off Mental Blox who had done very well in the Hibaldstow Cup took the Bronze with a blinding final jump and a 3 point advantage. The Silver went to Fiasco, but no one could touch well known team 4Mula who were 13 points in the lead.

Equally, the AA class was close between Hyrokkin who took Gold and Raykipo who took Silver. Between rounds 1 and 6, they were neck and neck, but eventually Hyrokkin who have split training between Hibaldstow and Langar won out by 3 points. Interestingly, Raykipo decided not to scoreboard, whilst Hyrokkin did. High Latitude Heroes took the bronze with a solid 11 point average.

In the AAA class, there were a record 21 teams, of which 4 of them were Open. There were teams with members who were Swedish, Italian, Danish and South African. This has to be a great warm up event for the World Mondial in Dubai in November. As was predicted, Skydive Hibaldstow sponsored team Satori won with a 20 point average. This is their 4th win in a row. South African team Voodoo came 2nd, but being open, the Silver medal went to Kaizen (or Kizen!) who did their best ever average with a 17.4. Vision would have come 3rd, but again they had Pete Allum who represents the Italians. Therefore the Bronze went to scratch team the Pink Panthers who are made up of BritChicks and ex-SonicNutz team members.

Lastly, the VFS had a record turnout of 4 teams which is saying something considering it is a new discipline and a very hard one at that. A combination team between Volare Freefly and the Bad Lieutenants formed which took the Gold with a commanding 10 point average, nearly double that of QFX. Special mention must go to them as they are the new kids on the block and are also going to Dubai. Bronze went to the Goat Throwers who won by a single point in round 7 over AFM. It’s nice to see one of their team is none other than Weed Stoodley who is also a BPA judge in Artisitics.

Many thanks to Charlie Pearce, Olly Burgin, Christian Hincliffe, Kris Cavill and Dave Head for the photos.