"You are looking at the future!..." Olav said after he noticed he was being scrutinised by the RW skydiver. The latter stopped the train of his thoughts and nodded with a half smile. He must have thought that after all this Zipser was maybe right. And he was right, for three years later, in the middle of November 1997, 150 free flyers met for this great dance of multidimensionnal flight. A plane ticket for the Arizona desert in their pocket, they couldnÕt wait for this journey to the future.
On Saturday and Sunday, November 8th and 9th, free flyers began arriving in Eloy. Charles was impatient to see how many would come. They were coming from all over the world. Lots of them were Americans of course, Europe was represented mostly by Germans, French and Italians. Like in 96, Charles Bryan had put together a group consisting of 8 or 10 of the top free flyers. One could see the Fly Boyz, John Alaska, Adrian Nicholas, Knut Krecker, Claude Tzifkansky, Mike Vail and of course Olav Zipser, now nicknamed "the father of the free fly" by everyone. They made around 50 jumps together aiming at bringing new ideas to the discipline just like they had during the Free Fly Festival 96 which had produced the magical jumps of the "Chronicle II" video. For the Festival 97, Charles BryanÕs method remained the same as the previous year: he paid the jumps for the members of this top group and kept their footage to make "Chronicle III".
On Monday, November 10th, first day of the Festival, the party began. About a hundred skydivers were already here, another fifty arrived during the week. Watching the free flyers' ample suits in the big packing hangar in Eloy, it looked more like the end of the seventies. However, there was no need for sharp eyes to realise we were closer to year 2000: many personalities expressed themselves through piercings in the navel, ear lobe, scalp or eyebrow. Others exhibited magnificent tattoos and long hair followed. Techno music gave the beat during packing and freshly filmed free fly videos were shown non-stop thanks to an editing console with several TV sets. The daytime atmosphere felt like a rave party with energetic drinks changed into free fly rush.
Charles Bryan's 10-way seemed less enthusiastic than the year before. Among the few remarkable jumps though, there was the "tracking dive" orchestrated by Olav Zipser: after a linked exit rapidly put vertical, everybody let go and faced Olav. He began a headdown tracking with a more and more pronounced back incidence. The group followed him with a forward incidence. With the great vertical speed, incidence led without delay to an oblique trajectory drawing large spirals in the sky according to the pleasure of Olav Zipser, guide of the "trackers" on this occasion. The group also designed some nice jumps, more static but including two-story formations. "Trajectory jumps" were also made, following the 8-shaped path marked out by Bill Beaver, the only belly flyer following free flyers, and Eli Thompson (FlyBoyz) spinning vertically so fast it provoked a stroboscopic effect on the images taken with his digital camera.
At the same time, Omar Alhegelan chose to be load organiser for the duration of the Festival. He split his time between several groups, gathering people from different backgrounds and citizenship, mixing them, keeping in mind their different technical levels. He also organised some jumps with a Skyball and was available to be an examiner in the "Skyball test" (see below).
The week passed by at this almost nonchalant pace with three, a bit cold, grey sky days, though one could go on jumping, it did not match the Arizona myth of the warming sun reddening behind the horizon. The day before the end of the boogie, Olav organised a successful 23-way that went on perfect. The base in the centre, mostly members of the top group, was joined by experienced freeflyers on the outside. The latter expected more of this kind of jumps during the Festival. It was their only regret of the meet.
The freeflyers could jump together, learn to know each other, mix, be happy or disappointed according to the quality of the jumps, quit a group to join another...but there was no effort to gather people of the same level around a leader in order to make great jumps, even for 3 or 4 days only. We are at the dawn of free fly boogies which will demand solid organisation and technical staff, as it is the case for RW. Charles Bryan noted it and he knows that this aspect will have to privileged to ensure success and a warm atmosphere for the Free Fly Festival 98.
At the end of the Free Fly Festival, Charles Bryan et Mike Vail allowed themselves the indulgence of throwing a jeep from the Skydive Arizona Skyvan in order to shoot some pictures and film for Red Bull, their sponsor. First, the mechanical parts (engine, gearbox...) the wheel and the windshield were removed from the car. It was then put aboard the Skyvan and securely tied to the floor. The handbrake was on for the climb. At 4000 m, the jeep was dropped over a desert area a few kilometres away from Eloy. Charles and Mike took place on the driver and passenger seats and Wendy Smith was on the solid metallic bumper of the jeep. At the green light, the handbrake was released and 3 other people pushed vigorously the car out of the plane. Wendy let go when the car was outside and shot pictures in bursts. The car went into a dive and slowly began a series of loops. Charles and Mike stayed for ten seconds in the car before it started to spin more violently. Mike left first, Charles let himself be ejected a few seconds later. The fall rate of the car speeded up and, still spinning, the car began to move horizontally, changing directions without a warning. Everybody opened their chutes. The car had no parachute and crashed without a bounce in big cloud of dust. The shock compressed it, tearing numerous metallic parts apart. It was then towed and sent to the scrapyard.
A track for swoop lovers marked by wind blades was set away from the landing zone in Eloy, in order not to interfere with those who wanted to land as usual. It was a hundred metres long, eight metres wide and formed a curved corridor. The goal was to enter the corridor through the first gate delimited by two blades in order to exit as far as possible. The curvature of the corridor forced the pilots to do curved swoops and to stay close to the inside blades in order to shorten the distance and thus increase their chances to go all the way. The wind blade poles are made of very flexible fishing rods. They looked like they could be safely touched with one's lines. Well, this was not true: during a curve very close to the inside, Adrian Nicholas caught one of the wind blades with his lines, his canopy collapsed on its side, Adrian had a bad landing and dislocated his elbow, fortunately he was not seriously injured.
The Skyball is a like a big badminton shuttlecock with a fast fallrate well adapted for freeflyers. The white ball is filled with about 700 g of lead and its weight can be changed in order to slow it down or speed it. It certainly is the best of the freeflyersÕ game. Its fallrate is always the same, it can be sent from one person to another and it stays on a trajectory horizontal or oblique depending on the strength and direction of the throw. There is only one necessity: it has to be caught before the end of the jump. One can imagine the damage it could cause if left on its own. The Skyball has a vertical speed of more than 200 kph... Skyball jumps are possible under precise rules in the Arizona desert without a big chance of hurting someone. One has to pass a rather strict test to have the right to jump with a Skyball in Eloy (and in Eloy only). Within his freefly school in Skydive Arizona, Omar Alhegelan offers a training course for those wanting to take the test. A Skyball jump with an instructor costs about 50 US$ (including the cost of the jump for the two). The instructor catches the Skyball if the student didnÕt and debriefs the jump. A test jump only costs 40 US$ (including the cost of the jump for student and instructor). However, there is a 50 US$ deposit which is not refunded if the instructor has to catch the Skyball during this jump. Here are the requirements for the test: the student gets ready for a floating exit and jumps when the instructor throws the Skyball. The student has to move in its direction, take it in one hand and pass it to the other hand. He then has to let go of it and perform a 360 turn on axis facing the Skyball. After that, he must take it again in one hand, change hands, let go of it and do a backward or forward loop. He has to catch the Skyball once again with one hand, put it in the other one, leave it in the air and do a lateral loop. Finally, the student has to catch it at a minimum altitude of 1500 m before it turns into a projectile... Pictures of Sébastien Merian taking the Skyball test with Omar Alhegelan facing him. Peter Unruh, the designer of the Skyball, is currently working on a AAD system to open a parachute is the freeflyer fails to catch it...
