Paradoxically: smaller is better if you want to get better at bigger

In 2012, at 120 jumps or thereabouts I asked myself … “what’s next?”

I’d done the occasional “2 Kates 4 Way Weekend”[1] at Picton and thought 4 Way was all about not funneling on exit. Free Fly looked to be a bridge too far, and wingsuiting was still embryonic at that stage. I’d recently acquired my starcrest but they tended to be a jump done at the end of the day, when the instructors wanted a fun jump, or one of the more experienced fun jumpers decided to organize one. I knew faces around the DZ but wasn’t confident enough to suggest I be included in their jumps. Where was I heading in this sport?

There was much talk around the DZ of the legendary 2010 Aussie Bigway record: stories of 100 way formations, multiple plane exit; foreign phrases like “left rear trail plane”, “superfloaters”, “taking out a chunk”, “zippers, stingers and whackers“ punctuated conversations; I wondered at this new lexicon, and tried to imagine a sky filled with skydivers given my largest was a starcrest of 8. Jump planes called “twin engine Otters” and “Skyvans” conjured images of new lands, new experiences, new DZs. I wanted to be part of that!

With talk of a bigway record in somewhere called “Perris” and with the encouragement of others at the DZ, I joined the group, paid my ticket, booked in at the iHop[2], and headed over to Southern California in May 2012. I knew no-one well, and did not know what to expect, but fortune favours the brave, and at worst I’d be jumping at a new DZ from larger planes than previously.

The events of the 2012 camp, is a story for another day, and a tale in itself, but I left that camp not only with a record[3], new friends, and a $900 t-shirt, but with some very sound advice from the likes of Dan BC, Tony Dimenico and Mark Brown about how to confidently perform in bigways … “get into 4 way”.

Counter-intuitively, I thought my path in skydiving was in larger formations but found myself moving back to smaller formations so that I might perform better in larger formations. The paradox of “smaller is better if you want to get better at bigger”[4] pushed me to 4way FS.

What thereafter transpired between 2012 and 2015, when the next Aussie Bigways Record was convened in Perris, was 3 years of 4way FS. And whilst I was fortunate to have the tutelage of the likes of Chris Farina[5], Christy Fricken[6] and Simone Bambach[7], 4way FS gave me something more than something to do; it offered more than teaching me to competently exit a plane in a linked formation; more than finally understanding what my AFF instructors kept going on about when they spoke about the “relative wind”; it taught me more than matching fall rates and flying in close proximity with others … it gave me that sense of camaraderie a team event offers; that shared experience of the physical exhaustion of training, the focus of achieving precision as a shared goal, sharing lodgings at competition, laughing at your team mate’s personal habits, poking fun at one another, getting to know others and their stories, the stress of competition, the anxiety of watching the points board, the collective good will of all teams in that category, and at times the adulation of success.

By 2015 I was certainly no less a skydiver than I was by mid 2012, and I’d hoped I was better. It was time to put to test whether “smaller is better if you want to get better at bigger”.

The 2015 Aussie Bigway record camp occurred. It has passed into Aussie Skydive legend. But what of all that 4 way experience? Was it just a way of occupying the years between the bigway records? Was it just an excuse to meet and jump with others? Did it just give me an excuse to travel to other DZ and jump in foreign landscapes?

Well it was all of that and more. When you exit that twin engine Otter, as part of an 8 pane formation load, with 125 other skydivers, you want to exit presented to the relative wind … 4way teaches you that; when you exit that Skyvan as part of the chunk in the base, you want to know how to take out that linked chunk relative to the wind … 4way teaches you that; when you’re a front front float outside an Otter with 4 others expecting you to take the wind and move forward of the door … 4way teaches you that; when you’re rear rear float outside the Otter, and sharing the camera step with the cameraman[8] … 4way teaches you that; when you’re a front row diver in the door of an Otter, and there’s 5 outside the plane floating and 15 or so behind you counting on you exiting stable, and identifying and moving to the base … 4way teaches you that; when you’re a stinger between two zippers, off the base, and your sector has 40r other skydivers behind you all counting on you being there, remember back to you time at tail in a H, it’s exactly the same … 4way teaches you that; when you’re an outside whacker, with 125 other skydivers in front of you, and you cannot take up the grip until all in front of you have taken up their grips, and you just have to fly your slot and look through the formation … you can do it … why? Because … 4way teaches you that.

So when that load organiser at your DZ suggests, would you like to do a 4 way jump … just one … not asking you to commit to a team … just so 3 others have a 4^th to make up that 4 way … and you start thinking “it’ll funnel” or “I’d rather do a starcrest” or heaven forbid “I wouldn’t mind doing some head down”[9] … stop … pause … and recalibrate to think: “actually, I don’t know these 3 … this could be fun … I’ll ask someone to show us how to exit properly”. You never know … you might just decide to go to Black Death at Elderslie, to attend one of the 4way 4 Everyone camps, and you may just take that 4 Way to State Champs at Moruya. If you do, you’re on your way to the 2019 Aussie Bigway Record Camp.

4Way FS may not reward you with podium finishes; it may not even guarantee you a spot on the record … but it will upskill you faster, and I guarantee you’ll quadruple your circle of skydiving buddies.

[1] Kate Vaughan (nee Langley) and Kate Nobel (nee Rogers)

[2] a house at the DZ in which jumpers live communally; a bit like being back at boarding school without a member of the clergy checking that your hands were outside the sheets

[3] POPS 42 Way Aussie Record

[4] should be a motto somewhere in Aussie Bigways

[5] Arizona Airspeed

[6] Perris Fury

[7] needs no introduction

[8] except George (the Scot), he’ll just kick you off

[9] If this occurs you may need professional advice

 

 

Mark “Higgo” Higgins – NSW Mentor for Adrenalin Skydive, Goulburn