OmniSkore! coverage of the 2007 US Nationals.
Omnibits by Tim Wagner

0700
It's a bright, crisp morning at Skydive Chicago and 8-way is loading up.

Yesterday's winds brought me a gift in the form of a bad allergy attack last night. I took some Benadryl after dinner and I was lights out. Phone rang at 0600 and a voice said "Bus is leaving!." I told them to go ahead, I'd catch a ride. Ten minutes later I caught a ride with Rabbit, the Caravan pilot from Spaceland. Thanks Rabbit!

I walked over to the S&A area for some photo opps, they have the tuffet set up between the main hangar and the RV park, and the host is running FS on the south side and S&A on the north side of the DZ.

Cool story time. On Monday, long time friend and Deguello captain Jack Berke brought me a book, an obscure hardback by the name of Decision Over Schweinfurt. He told me he bought it in a used book store in Ontario, California, in 2003. Turns out I know one of the books previous owners. Check out the inside of the front cover here.

0900
I'm judging again, updates forthcoming...

...it is such a treat watching Airspeed do 8-way (not to mention 4-way), they posted a 20 on round 6...the races aren't close in Open, but from top to bottom, all those teams are doing some really nice skydiving...in Intermediate, CBI has turned up the heat on SPX with a score of 9 on round 7...Perris Activ8 has a three point edge over Cross Keys TFR for third place...

...here is my perennial note to team videographers: It is of no benefit to your team to leave the airplane before your team does. It makes it very difficult for judges to get an accurate start time and they wind up cuing the DVD over and over again. Drives them crazy...

1030
Round 9 is in the air, round 7 is in the can and CBI added a point to their lead over SPX in Intermediate...despite their score of 4 on round 1, Lock It Up still has a scoring average of 11, that's pretty darn good 8-way for what I assume is a weekend team...

1230
CBI had a bad jump on round nine eight,  4 points busted down to 2, and the Intermediate lead has changed again, with SPX back in front by two after nine.

I'd love to be blogging more 8-way, but I've been spending most of my time judging, which has been fun. We had a discussion about a team that built a crank where one of the cat grips wasn't on a leg, it was on the arm of the sidebody guy in front of him. The rules require that sidebody grips be on an arm and a leg, but there is no rule that prohibits the cat guy from taking the arm. No penalty.

Several emails wondering why so many Intermediate teams had a hard time with round 8. It was a difficult skydive: Rubick > Swiss Bear/Swiss Bear > Hope Diamond. Only SPX 8 seems to have handled it okay; CBI just plain made a soup sandwich out of the Swiss Bears and never recovered. But they're not out of it yet, it's a two point game with one jump left.

Knight Trax just won a small victory: They beat Airspeed on round 9. They scored  a 15 on a blue collar jump that Airspeed did a 14 on.

For you Style & Accuracy folks, Jan has finished the competitor photos over on the classics page.

1400
What a finish in 8-way Intermediate. CBI put up a valiant effort on round 10 but came up a point short as SPX put up a clean round. There is a tie for 3rd place, we're checking the rule book on the tie-breaker...there will be a jump-off.

1500
Okay, 8-way is done except for the 3rd place jump-off in Intermediate. Airspeed finished off their dominating performance with a stellar 17 on their last jump while Knight Trax wins the silver and Ace 8 the bronze.

The 8-way awards and 16-way briefing are tonight and we'll have more Style & Accuracy posted later.

1545
Here's the jump-off: Cross Keys TFR gets a five...and Perris Activ8 wins it with a 7.

I will have some streaming 8-way video posted later tonight, but it might be tomorrow, I loaned the tape to the host so they could use the footage for tonight's awards.

1700
Four more streaming videos have been posted on the main page. I tried to get more of the Intermediate teams but sitting on a judging panel kept me away from my 'pooter. Thanks to Jan for getting what we did.

16-way briefing is at 1830. There will be teams Deguello, Knights, and Airspeed for sure, so 16-way will be a blast to watch.

A peek in the mailbox, and I can't help posting this:

Really glad to see you're keeping a hand in the works, Tim! The website looks great, works great, and we always enjoy your writing! Since I took this year off from competing, following along on Omniskore is the next best thing to being there. Keep up the great work!!

Thank you very much, but any praise for the web site should now be directed to Jan. She has kept my basic look intact but she completely overhauled the back end while automating the team pages, and for that she deserves all the virtual (and actual) beer you can send her way.

2000
The 8-way awards and 16-way briefing have concluded and what a great awards ceremony it was. I think Arizona Airspeed has to be one of the classiest acts ever to grace the FS stage. Craig Girard recognized the French 8-way team and then proceeded to outline the new Team USA in the form of Airspeed and Knights Fastrax. I had the honor of hanging medals on the silver medalists along with Elisabet Pettersson. The day is done, 16-way on call at 0700 tomorrow, see you here!

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