United Parachute Club, PA July 19th

by Eduardo Guillen

In spite of hurricane Bertha we meet at United Parachute Club for another United Diamonds camp, although it was delayed one whole week. Sadly this delay made it impossible for some of the more experienced regulars be present and so we were only nine including two newbies to CReW: Greg and Cory. Actually they are novices to skydiving as well: they had less than 150 jumps... between them.

Greg (forty some jumps) did a great job flying as row 2 wing and even taking grips on a row 3 wing in every jump once he got over the awe of already holding the 4-way lockup's canopy in his other hand, which "was good enough" he said.

Cory got his 100th jump, and his CCS in quick succession during the weekend. While packing his canopy after successfully completing his second 9-way diamond on Sunday afternoon he was heard saying "Poor relative workers! They don't know what they are missing!" (Please note he still hasn't been in any kind of wrap).

On Saturday morning we completed two loads and then the wind picked up and a wind hold was called for more than 5 hours despite some of the attendees making every imaginable effort for change this situation. These included tying down the wind sock and even a prominent member of Diamond Quest was seeing climbing up the tower where the anemometer is and holding it while others into manifest told the pilot the winds has come down. The pilot remained unconvinced and we stayed grounded and could do nothing but playing one bounce, taking a pleasant nap like I did, or for the paranoid, repacking their reserves.

Later in the afternoon we did two more loads, although I'm not sure if that was because the wind has came down or everyone got tired of hanging around. By then we had some base-pin problems fixed and we built a 5 and 6-way boxes on the dives.

As we were making more jumps and some slots were changed, we found ourselves building bigger formations. On Sunday we started with two dives building to 6 and 7-ways respectively and by the afternoon we had completed two 9-way diamonds with everyone in.

Although we didn't have enough CReW dogs for bigger dives we had a good time and we all gained valuable experience in flying the echelon, taking grips and docking as a wing or lockup. A definite progress could be seen in everybody's flying skills by the end of the camp.

See y'all at next camp in August!