Tuesday 1st December 2015 - Day 1 of the WAG - Practice day for Parachuting

It's all happening at the Desert Campus DZ where all the teams (not CP) are there to practice before their start day Sunday 6th December.  There is a great atmosphere at the Desert DZ with its extensive and improved facilities - including this small oasis with a water feature where you can sit and take coffee and watch the parachutes landing.

16.30 hrs

The first of the Competitors briefings - Canopy Piloting will be the first of the Parachuting disciplines to being their World Air Games event.  Helmut Schlecht, the Parachuting Event Direcotor opened the meeting, welcoming all the competitors and explaining the differences this year of the previous DIPC's and the Mondial, and introduced his team who were working to make this all a success.  He then introduced Dr. 'Exi' Hoenle   the overall Chief Judge who spoke briefly and handed over to Bjiorn  Korth, Event Judge for CP.  Bjorn  introduced his judging team before covered the rule changes that would be implemented at this competition (as already distributed on the Web Site to all competitiors).

He confirmed that the course was a LH carved course, so no rule change there.  The Distance event was a Drag Distance event with a Gate 5 (as in the previous rules) and Accuracy had the only real change so there would only be posative landing zones (the negative zones have gone), and no Gate 5.  The 1st Zone was now 1 point not -20; zone 8 +25 and 9 + 5 and the first point of touch down will be considered in the lowest scoring zone.  The marker strike penalty is re-introduced so that should a competitor strike a marker so that it is damaged or disfunctional in any way a default score will apply.

His explanation was susinct and as there were no questions obviously accepted by all competiors.  Helmut then spoke about the competition programme and the various Drop Zones and aircraft that would be used for all events.  To start the competition in the morning 1 Twin Otter would be used with a lift capacity of 20 competitors - for the 6th and 7th December it was planned to use the helicopters for CP with a lift capacity of 10.    Because of the tight time schedule for each event, CP in the morning from 7.30 - 10.00 and then 14.00 - 15.00, Helmut appealed to all to ensure they were on time for all calls.  He also covered various safety rules applying to the aircraft.

There were a couple of questions from the competitios concerning where they could store their equipment and also about a shaded packing area as there were no delegation tents on the Palm DZ this year.  Parachute storage was organised in Tent 5 which was pointed out on the DZ plan - one of the support staff from Skydive Dubai said he would ask it it would be possible to utilise their indoor packing facilities.  Exi then moved to the issue of helmet numbers and confirmation of jump order.

All is set for an early start in the monring.  Helmut ended by wishing all competitors a good and safe competition.

10.00 am

Meanwhile Registration is continuing at the Palm DZ and tonight will be the Competitors Briefing for Canopy Piloting before their early start at the Palm DZ tomorrow morning.

There should be more colour in the sky and activity at the Palm then: