On its first official day of working towards the goal, the sun was shining and temperatures were in the mid 70s with light breezes; perfect March Arizona weather. The base 42-way made four very successful skydives and the three groups of 66 skydivers each made three jumps with two complete sectors on each jump docking on a mini base.

World Team is no ordinary team, with 1.1 million jumps between them

Great Start

Given the great weather, superb pilots that flew in formation for all the skydives and good skydiving on part of the participants, our World Team director, BJ Worth was pleased. The seasoned team is already functioning like a well-oiled machine. In the skydiving world, it usually takes three or four days for a team to gel like this. But World Team is no ordinary team; with 1.1 million jumps between them, it’s almost second nature.

Going Larger

The Captains have made the decision to go bigger tomorrow, the second day of the event. Instead of 42 and 66-ways, the group will be creating 90 and 132-ways, a day ahead of schedule. Most likely however, World Team will practice these two formations for two days and the World Record attempts with all 222 participants will still begin on March 31st.

Cameraflyers

The eight World Team aerial cinematographers reported no problems and were able to provide a great video focused on each individual sector. This is critical as the video is used in the debrief for each sector. From these visuals, important engineering changes and improvements are made.

Yesterday’s article, warm-up day: Fly It Forward begins

Tomorrow’s article: 222-way Sequential Day 2