Wednesday, 10 September

0735

Looks nice out there today! Trying to find out what the day's schedule is ...

Sifting through the mailbox:

• Q: What are the dirty details behind how the U.S. got the Fun Flag back?
  A1: I have no idea, other than Neal was rather aggressive in his tactic. His commander is still working on the award nomination.
  A2: What difference does it make?!

• Q: In the Freefly results, why is the name(s) "Devore, Nelson"? (Ed: Rook Nelson is teamed with Mike Swanson, with video by Jon Devore.)
  A: A bit of an operator error by the Artistic events chief judge when he typed the names in. We'll get that fixed!

• Q: What is the whole story behind the Fun Flag?
  A: Well, I don't know if it's the whole story, but you can get the gist of it here.

• T2 will be out of touch for a few days ... his young son Ryan (aka R3) is sick and went in the hospital with pneumonia, where T2 is staying while he gets better. So, warm healing thoughts for R3!!

0845

CF 4-Way Sequential round 3 is in progress. And Freestyle ...

0945

While assisting the Artistic judges with a small problem, the FS judges snuck in behind me and completed round 4 of 8-Way, with the USA taking a 1-point lead over the Russians and France dropping a few points. Details to follow, leaderboard updated!

Looking at the detailed score sheets, once again the pace of the top three 8-way teams was very closely matched. Russia was the fastest to point 1 (Double Satellite) by a hair, and all three teams were practically in a dead heat through point 11, with France perhaps one second behind. From there, the USA had the faster pace over Russia, and just got the 17th point (a Wagga, built from Opposed Stairsteps) in on the freeze-frame, something Russia was not able to do, making 16 by a second. France busted formation 15 (Accordion), however, and looking at the scoresheet, they didn't recover in time to build anything else, finishing with a 13.

I'm working on getting another monitor, so we don't miss any more of these skydives!!

1030

Still working on securing a video monitor so we're not just mushrooms in here. We've called in the heavy artillery, and if that doesn't work, we'll try Aussie air support.

Did you know: "Accordian" is misspelled in the dive pool??? And how many years have we been oopsing that one??

Somebody complained about turbulence and CF Sequential is now on hold.

1120

FS 8-Way round 5 is being judged now and hooray, the Meet Director himself has brought us a monitor!!! Thank you, Patrice!

And just like that, France 8-Way is up with round 5 ... a very nice 25!! Hope Diamond, OldBone/Compressed Stairstep Diamonds, Snowflake/Inout ... looks like a really fun round.

And here's the USA ... a little slow out of the starting gate, and they finish with a 23. Just Russia to go and Round 5 will be done. They just landed ...

Waiting for the Russians' dub & judgment, I'm looking at the detailed scoresheets for USA and France, as I am wont to do ... wow, again, their pace is nearly identical. They both went from points 1 to 17 in exactly the same time, with France making it to 23 about a half second quicker. The difference, of course, was the exit; France started a full 4 seconds ahead of the USA.

And here's Russia ... a 26, and they take the lead by two. They were quick out the door (not quite as fast as France) but their random work was superb.

The three top teams have each lead at some point of this contest!

1300

8-Way round 6 is half done ... waiting for the last (uh, first?) three teams, now who could they be? ...

Freestyle Female round 5 just completed and France vaulted ahead of Italy for the lead.

Here's France 8-Way FS ... they get 20 right on the freeze-frame, a nice jump ... and USA *just* misses a 21; the slow completion of their Taj-Mahal out the door out the door cost them that point. Russia now ... and they pick up another point with a 21, at least on the first judging view. Yup, the 21 sticks, however I think the judges were very generous with some of those separations.

We had a second correct answer on the CF riddle yesterday from Jeff Atherton. Unfortunately the legalize attached to his e-mail under his signature convinced my e-mail filter that it was spam, so I didn't see it until I cleaned out the spam account a few minutes ago. I've added some subject tags to the e-mail links to prevent that from happening again. Thanks Jeff!

1430

USA FS Ladies just did a 14 in round 4 ...

Someone got a haircut since the Anton Malevsky meet!!!

4-Way Open round 5 is beginning to begin ...

Another T1 programming help request, for any of you Borland Delphi hackers out there who are also C++ programmers: I'm looking for the Delphi equivalent of C++'s Standard Template Library (STL). I know that Delphi doesn't have generic templates, but what I'd like to do is simple collection classes, like C++'s map<std::string, std::string>. Specifically, I want to associate pairs of strings, like this: MyMap["foo"] := 'Bar'; Any suggestions would be most appreciated!

... and just like that, Andy Pook from the UK 8-Way team "VNE" looks me up and gives me the answer I was looking for. Thanks, Andy!! You = 'da Man';

FS 4-Way has finished round 5. The Norway ladies continue to lead FS 4-Way Female, while France opened up a 5-point lead in the Open category over the USA.

1730

Let's hear it for the weather!

And from the What's This department ...

It's nice weather out there but no judging going on. I have no idea what's up but I will endeavor to find out ...

1800

Judging round 6 of 4-Way now -- which is a SMOKER. The fastest block in the pool (Cat + Accordion -> Cat + Accordion) followed by three randoms -- Murphy Flake, Phalanx and Crank. Australia, whose previous high round was 14, just did a 23. This one is gonna pad the averages!!!

Peaking a sneak at the Freefly scores, team USA scorched the competition with a 9.0 in round 3, but still trails the leader by 0.9 points. They were not happy about their scores in the compulsory round (2), and I don't blame them. But -- that's what official practice rounds are for, to find out where you stand with those unknowns.

UK scores a 34 in round 6!!!

... and the Norgies pull a 36!

USA 4-Way does a 35... Italy a 32 ... France a 36 on the first view ... and a 37 for the books. France takes a commanding 7-point lead into round 8!

Fetch the corkscrew!!!

1900

The ladies begin round 6... and when it's done ... wow, UK has vaulted ahead of Norway with a 28-point round!

2045

Only thing going on, officially, is Freefly Round 5 judging. That's the sorta-new "speed" round, and methinks it's going to cause some grumbling ... last year the scores in this round were prorated in a scale of 0 to 10, where the highest scoring team in the round (number of points) gets a 10. This year, they (the Artistic Events subcommittee) changed the rule to just divide by 10. The result is, a good team getting a good score of 18 or 20 points (which is really good) only ends up with 1.8 or so points for the round, which (among other things) can really screw up their averages.

Well, they're judging said "speed round", and not doing it very fast, so I'll have to wait until the morning to post those results. Ciao!

2106

Doh! Check that ... I was checking out with the AE judges and they said "Ten minutes. Twenty max." So ... I'll wait, and get the completed speed round posted.

2115

With three teams left to judge in Round 5, the highest score is a 1.1 ... oh my! The current leaders only got 0.1 in this round! Final Round 5 scores very shortly ...

2136

A half hour later, still two to go, the AE judges inform me they've judged everything they have dubs for, so the last two will wait until the morning.

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Ted Wagner, Chief Engineer | Tim Wagner, Webmaster