Team Events and Demonstrations by Ty Stephens, '11 [Fall 2009]

Below is Ty Stevens', Class 2011 [my 50 Year Class], Fall 2009 report to family and friends. He does this at least once a semester. This one deserves a place on the web site. The history talks about the past and the Club. Ty talks about the present and the Team. Included are links to You Tube videos to illustrate the explanations of the events that are performed and scored at the USPA National Collegiate Parachute Championship and other competitions. In addition to competition the Team performs demonstrations as explained near the end of the report.

NOTE: Some of the You Tube links may no longer be active. Sorry, that is just the way it works.

Blue Skies forever,

Gabe

Henmar R. Gabriel

LTC (Ret), Infantry

Founder, Cadet Sport Parachute Club

Member, Hall of Fame of Parachuting

All,

About halfway through the semester and doing pretty good. So, I usually talk a lot about academics and the military training up here. But for this one, I’ll talk about the jump team. What it is, what we do, and give you guys some cool videos to help explain it all. Especially if some of you plan on coming to nationals at Houston this year, you will actually be able to understand what is going on.

So what is it?

The jump team is composed of 36 cadets. It was formed in 1958 by LTC (R ) Gabe Gabriel ( my East Texas Liaison Officer to the admissions department, mentor, and family friend of mine) back when he was a cadet. It originally began as more of a military oriented free-fall program but has progressed (with the rest of the world) into a Competitive Sport skydiving team and demonstration team over the years. So what exactly does that mean? In competitions we compete in Relative Work, Vertical Relative Work, Classic Accuracy and Sport Accuracy. We are also trying to progress into crew. For Demonstrations we mostly jump in flags, the game ball, during the start of sporting events (mostly football games) and at the end of parades for the academy. It is mostly a Public Relations thing for the Army and West Point.

Relative Work (RW for short pronounced “R-dub”) also known as 4-way, or 2-way

4-way and 2-way are both types of relative work. With the 4 and 2 representing how many skydivers are involved in the event. The event is filmed by a videographer that flies above the formation and it is scored based on how many different formations (aka “points”) are built during a designated free-fall working time (usually 35 seconds). The different formations are drawn from a pool (called a dive-pool) of different types of formations. These points are known by all the competitors (I believe there is something like 28 different kinds)—however the jumpers will not know what order the points will be in until the day of or night before the competition. This gives them time to “dirt-dive” or “creep” the points on scooters (called creepers) on the ground—but not time to actually jump the sequence before their competition dive. This is just a way for them to visualize, rehearse, and memorize the dive before going up.

4-way—so here are a few videos of Airzona Airspeed (the current World Champs at the professional level) to give you an idea of how it works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KOIsJFizhA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbq4EIZpIi8

2-way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVtaET

Vertical Relative Work (VRW pronounced V-R-dub)

This is currently what I do for the jump team. It’s the same concept as RW except instead of flying with your belly facing the earth, you fly all your other surfaces—butt to ground (called “sit-flying”), head to ground (called “head-down”), on your back (called “back flying”). You get graded on how many points your turn during freefall—except because it uses more difficult flying techniques the score for formations are usually a lot lower—unless you’re really really good and have had a lot of experience. It takes years to build up the skills to compete in this, usually involving hundreds of hours of training in the “wind tunnel”, which at a few hundred dollars per hour is no small undertaking. On the collegiate level, this is a new form of competition for the West Point team. It is a little watered-down—we only compete 2-way VRW and primarily the points consist of sit-flying positions. The easier of the different techniques. It is new to the West Point Parachute Team—me and my partner are the second VRW team in the history of the team—behind the Class of 2010.

4-way head down VRW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiEMNp7VxDU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwlliH

Sit-flying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGYnK34I7d8

Yoga flying(joke… buy Don, Teri, and Dad will want to check this one out)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roDEyvjs-hg

Just a mix of everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8kRN5OeYUM

Sport Accuracy and Classic Accuracy

Sport accuracy is a type of accuracy competition. Accuracy competition involves trying to hit a target with your foot when you land under your parachute (canopy hereafter). The word sport refers to the type of canopy. Sport canopies are usually smaller, faster, and tend to want to plane out on landing instead of coming down on a point (Like a wing). Therefore they are a little less accurate and you have to fly them a little differently. (This is why we don’t use sport canopies for demonstrations into football games). Canopies speed and aggression is best defined by their “wing-loading” which is simply the size of the canopy in square feet divided by the weight of the jumper. The higher the wing-loading the more aggressive the canopy. Since must jumpers weigh about the same—you hear canopies spoken about in terms or square footage (“wow, he’s flying a 170”, or “he must have a death wish because he’s flying a 97… it’s a bedsheet!”) For, the record I fly a 215.

Classic Accuracy involves parachutes of a higher square footage, they move slower, come down at more of a 45 degree angle and can be very accurate. They are more susceptible to high winds and turbulence. On high wind days, sometime their ability to go forward (called penetration) is null and they have to fly their canopies backwards facing into the wind. This is the type on canopy we use in demonstrations because they are very conservative and very accurate. They can literally land on a target the size of dime. Classic Accuracy utilizes a giant inflatable pad (called a tuffet) . On the center of the pad is a smaller electronic scoring pad that scores where the jumpers foot strikes the ground in terms of centimeters away from the center, with 00 (aka goose-eggs) being a perfect score. Over a series of jumps, the scores are tallied up, and the person with lowest score wins.

Accuracy jumps are usually done at a lower altitude, since there is no “freefall” dynamic. Usually anywhere between 3000 and 5000 feet. Basically, the jumper picks where he wants the plane to let him out at (called a “spot”) and jumps. The spot is important because based on wind-direction and speed it will determine his accuracy. Generally you want to be up-wind of the target—the faster the winds, the farther upwind you need to be.

Also, there is “team accuracy” which just scores the results of a group of jumpers (usually 4) over a series of jumps instead of just the individual.

Sport Accuracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WraFHP6VsWU

Classic Accuracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZapaQiE2hjM

Also, there really small canopies, can be planed out at high velocities—causing the canopy to swoop in for a landing (hence the name “swooping”) allowing the jumper to almost skate across the ground before coming to a halt. The jumpers usually throw the canopy into a sharp dive low to the ground to build up speed for a more aggressive swoop. They have competitions to see who can swoop farther—dragging the toe across the ground or sometimes a pond (called a swoop-pond). This is highly dangerous and is the leading cause of skydiving fatalities. Likewise, we don’t really compete in this at the collegiate level. But it is a lot of fun, and you see a lot of guys doing it.

Swooping and Swooping bloopers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ukkh7lkSGA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyLifuEC4KE

and why it’s dangerous…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBCAf_7VYE

CRW Canopy Relative Word or “Crew”

Crew involves flying canopies in close proximity. Inducing malfunctions like down planes and basically putting on a show. It’s requires a lot of training and can be dangerous because of the risk of entanglement and collapsing your parachute so close to the ground. Our new coach from the Golden Knights did crew for them. So we are starting to see it on the team—but probably will not be a reality until the Class of 2012 or 2013 are seniors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WArhTblR5Sk

Crew gone bad…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ydJW1N7w2c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rNmG52dmS4

Demonstrations

The non-competition side of the jump team. This is what everyone sees. We do demonstrations for parades, football games, boy scouts, you name it—we’ll jump into it. The demo guys always use the Classic canopies. Basically—it’s what West Point pays us for. To jump into Michie Stadium you need a minimum of 250 jumps and a pro-rating. You get a pro-rating by landing 10 consecutive jumps, standing up, in a 10 foot diameter circle. (a bit of a challenge). To jump into any other venue you need 500 jumps and a pro-rating. This is why most of the demos are done by Firsties (seniors ) on the West Point team. They are usually the only ones that have the numbers.

West Point 2009 Demo season

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBRYKIh8tZE

ESPN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vHGPao5myU

For Kicks-- Malfunctions

Everyone on the team has had a few malfunctions… from line twist, horshoes, toggle fires, step throughs, line-overs, snapped lines… you name it. We’ve experience it. I’ve personally had somewhere around 8 malfunctions—but only one was serious enough to warrant a cutaway. Cutaway is a term used when you deem your main canopy unfit for landing and go to your reserve. You pull handles—located on your stomach—the right handle releases your main canopy from your harness and the left activates the reserve. All parachutes are fitted with automatic deployment device—called a Cyprus (Cyprus is actually the brand-name). This is a little computer that measure airspeed, altitude etc. And if the right conditions are met, like still falling at 120 mph beneath 1500 feet—it will automatically deploy your reserve.

So what’s it like being in a cutaway—here’s a good video—minus the cool music it’s spot on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7w7JLWRd4A

This is what it really sounds like… line twist, probably the most common malfunction—and you just kick out of them… like this guy does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2d8TCjtMRA

Military Application: HALO/HAHO

HALO stands for High Altitude Low Opening and HAHO stands for High Altitude High Openings. These skills are taught at MFF or Military Freefall school for mostly Special Forces, SFOD-D, AF Para-rescue, and USN SEALs. Both NCOs on our team got their background as rigors and instructors at MFF school. Special Ops use these techniques to jump behind enemy lines, or to insert into areas covertly. (Parachutes don’t make a lot of noise coming down—helicopters do).

They also can drop into an area and fly their canopies across borders without actually violating another countries airspace. They usually jump from much higher altitudes (up to 30,000 feet) and require Oxygen and cold weather equipment. Because they jump combat gear—it requires different techniques in order to stay balanced. They also often do it at night, in low-visibility, and with Night Vision Goggles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FvP1O6nd6M

We’re trying to woo some SF professors of ours to hook us up with a summer training trip to HALO school… we’ll see how that goes.

Misc. BASE jumping, wing suiting etc.

BASE

There are a few guys that from 09 that have done the BASE jumping. BASE stands for Building, Antenna, Span, or Earth—basically it’s jumping off something that is stationary—a tall building, a telephone antenna, a bridge, or a huge cliff. It involves low altitudes, special equipment. (BASE parachutes aren’t equipped with reserves because—frankly you don’t have time to use it).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PMYSOUWe8

Wingsuits

Wingsuiting—is basically a suit that allows you to fly… kind of like a flying squirrel. It planes out your rate of descent so you can fall for a lot longer and fly a lot further before reaching your pull altitutde.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFzGlEY7pvk

My favorite video—this what happens when you combine the two…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvOvd5wWMHY

West Point Jump Team vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9-WPsP4ME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBRYKIh8tZE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LX7Du7aQzw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vHGPao5myU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdGuPi2Vfbk

Our rival Air Force Academy vids:

Why we hate Air Force—setting the collegiate big way record…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxmE6WtJNfc