World Team 2006

(Bumped into JC last night. He's on the camera team, and apeears to be in peak form. )

Five Hercules C-130 Transports - flying in formation at 24,000 feet.
441 skydivers
15 camera flyers
3 documentary team members
21 Support staff
71 Accompanying persons

World Team 2006 comprises 552 persons!

76 Females
9,310 years in the sport
20 years in the sport on average
2,222,850 skydives between us
4,800 jumps average
Oldest member 65
Youngest member 20
Least jumps 650 ("but they were all very good jumps"!)
Average age 42.8
31 nations represented

650 applications for the team. There's about 70 first timers here, so I'm not Robinson Crusoe.
A very, very good vibe too.

Got a sneak peek at some of the tech this morning - the radio helmets are here and ready to go. There's a couple of heads-up displays (Altimaster Titans are linked from skysurfer.com.au) kicking around too. More on those later.

Today, we move to Udon Thani. Four waves: Each three busloads to the airport, then 500k in the King's personal Airbus (long pants, no open toed shoes, don't event /think/ about the Mile High thing in the private suite). Then to the next hotel. I don't even want to contemplate the logistics of getting all these skydivers to one place at one time. Organising a starcrest is hard enough.

Slept well - Michael Vaughan has resisted the temptation to smother me in my sleep (so far). At 6:15AM the first wave departed: In the dark, with a police escort, and JC whooping it up in the third bus. Go World Team...

L.

Flights were all uneventful. Enjoyed Singapore Airline's in-flight on-demand movie system - watched excerpts of some of my favorite movies (nice to skip straight to the ending of "Something about Mary", catch some of "Willy Wonka", or just shake my head in disbelief at "Dukes of Hazzard" - which has no redeeming features whatsoever, not even Jessica Simpson's butt makes it palatable).

Collected my Helmet, Neptune and a bunch of T-Shirts. Good thing I packed with empty space.

More meetings tonight. Moving the entire operation to Udon Thani tomorrow.

Here's where we are...
102.7876434117588
17.39141921452863
There's a .kmz at skysurfer.com.au...

L.

Here's what we're planning.

Well, I've had my shots, packed my reserve, one day of work to go. This time tomorrow, I'll be in the sleaziest bar I can find in Singapore. Well, Changi Airport, anyway. Then on to Bangkok for World Team 2006.

http://www.theworldteam.com/


No guarantee I'll blog; but the longest journey starts with one step.

A quick word of thanks to NZ Aerosports, makers of Icarus Canopies (I own four of them, and recommend them :-)
Not being brave enough to want to pilot a Vx96 through this campaign, they've loaned me a Safire2 at a substantially lower wing loading. This should help with my personal goals for the event:
1) Survive
2) Don't !@#$ up
3) Be invited back :-)