OmniSkore! coverage of the 2007 US Nationals.
Omnibits by Jan Meyer

Sept 14, 2007 at 9 am
Accuracy has about 3/4 of round 10 to finish. Some jumps got off, but Accuracy is now on a wind hold.
10-way is now jumping after waiting for a low cloud cover to clear.
CF is about to get a call. They are starting with rotation.

9:20 am
Airspeed opened the door for everyone else to beat them. They got a 40 on round 1 because the camera view did not clearly show when they exited. The Knights, Perris and SDC can lock out Airspeed in 10-way. Think about all the 'There I was....' stories that will generate. A few years from now people will say, 'Yes, Sonny, my team was good enough to beat Airspeed at US Nationals.'

11:20 am
Airspeed has protested round 1 in 10-way. The jury is meeting soon.

High Noon
The Golden Knights have a 10 sec lead over Perris 10. Airspeed has moved into 3rd place.
The protest meeting is in progress now.
Fayard 4 posted a zero in round 2. I have to run down Chris Gay to find the skinny on that. 2 Stupid is in 2nd, only one point back. Frayed Knot is 2 more points behind them in 3rd place.
In Accuracy, the team standings are Skydive Rick's in first place, Golden Knights in second place and Pacemakers in third place. Great job.
The video zoom for Fayard 4 got knocked all the way to zoom in. That is one way to score a zero in CF. Those throw-away rounds come in handy at times like these.

1 pm
The judges busted SDC 10 for the same thing they busted Airspeed for. This time I was in the room and could see the video. It looked good to me.
The jury did not find in favor of Airspeed in their protest.

1:15 pm
Another protest in from Fayard 4 about the zoomed video.

1:45 pm
Accuracy is going to change their hold to 2 pm call to standby to standby until 4 pm. Jeff Steinkamp says the aviation forcast predicts the winds to drop before sunset. There are only 5 people that have to still jump.

Update on the Airspeed protest.
The rule in question is SCM 5-1.6B.
The jury put out a letter about this. In part it says:
"After full delibration, the jury agreed that there was no misinterpretation of the rule by the judges. The jury found that the judges do not necessarily require filming of the entire line but, rather require a sufficient amount of the line and jumpers in the image at the time of exit so the judges could accurately begin timing of the jump. In the opinion of the majority of the judge's panel, not enough of the jumpers and line were in view to give the judges sufficient information to accurately start the clock, which gave the team a maximum score for the round."

2:15 pm
Now the Knights have been busted to 40. The reason was because they did not show a 2-way base pin.
Only two teams do not have a 40. That is the leader Perris 10 and the 4th place team Otter Chaos.

3 pm
I heard from someone on Perris 10 that they took a bit long to build the star in round 6 because someone went low and then came up.

3:20 pm
Tim was just called away for the 3rd protest of the day. Something about one team protesting the score that another team got.
The top 3 10-way teams, judging is on hold until the jury decides on this lastest protest.
Ok - Here's the scoop on the protest. Otter Chaos is protesting against Perris 10 because Perris 10 built a round formation after the Wright Flyer in round 1. The round (formation) is the formation for round 6. (Hope that made sense.)




4 pm
Wow - Arizona Airspeed came back all the way to first place. Perris 10 takes second place and the Golden Knights take third.
The result of the protest was that Perris 10 was not practicing 10-way because they did not exit the plane and then build the star.
Guess all those 'There I was...we beat Airspeed' stories have evaporated.
Ten-way still has a Judges Choice Award and the Godfrog Award.

5 pm
CF Rotation should be completed today by late tonight.
AE briefing tonight.
The last 5 jumps of accuracy should be up soon, but maybe not. It was still pretty windy when I just stepped outside. These jumps are rejumps because the winds picked up too much when they did their 10th round jump. Then there may be a tie or two. At 6pm they will be released until 6:30 am tommorrow - well unless the winds come down.
Tommorrow CF 4-way will go before 2-way.
AE will run Freefly and Freestyle tommorrow. They may or may not wait until Sunday to start Skysurf. Apparently there is one skysurf team that cannot get here until Sunday. The other skysurf teams will vote on whether or not to start the event a day late.

6:30 pm
CF Rotations has just wrapped up ( o;) ). Fayard 4 came in first, 2 Stupid came in second and Frayed Knot came in third. Awards will be awarded later this week because there needs to be the 2 hour protest time. (And we all know how important that is....)

later that night
Judges that will appear for a 7 am takeoff for the last 5 jumpers for accuracy


The predicted, unseasonably low of 32 degrees, lead to the hangering of the aircraft


Some frogs that were hanging around the airport today:


Judges' Choice Award went to the Golden Knights.
GodFrog Award went to Arizona Airspeed.



Rook said he'd speed up the AE jumps by reducing the calls between jumps to about 20 minutes. That should speed up the jumps, but I suspect that the scoring won't be able to keep up.

Brrr. It is unseasonably cold tonight, but the forecast is 80 sometime next week. The good news is that I've missed the hotest days in SoCal this summer.