The team captains are beasting the team into shape. After the first 132-way and 90-way attempts, one captain said, “Almost nothing went right.” But it’s like blacksmithing, you have to pound the metal and shape it, it takes a little while and a lot of pounding!”

It's like making horseshoes, you have to pound and shape it; it takes a little while and a lot of pounding!

Four Jump Day

On this second day at Skydive Arizona, each group made four jumps; the 90-way team, the 132-way team and the Alpha Team. Each team improved as the day progressed. The final photos show completions and near completions. The organizers showed the best videos of each team at a final briefing at the end of the day. The Alpha team’s last jump, a four point sequential dive that they held the final point for several seconds, was shown to remind everyone that highly-tuned professionals were ready to step in if performance was not up to scratch. It was a gentle but highly effective motivational display.

WT 222-way Day 2 – Alpha group – Jump 4 by Sergey Kuleshov

Father Jerry

Safety was also stressed at the beginning and the end of the day to reinforce and keep the teams from getting complacent. Jerry Bird, one of the founding fathers of skydive formations, spoke and eloquently reminded the group of the importance of being alert, focused and safe.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, World Team plans to continue one more day of preparatory dives at Skydive Arizona, utilizing the 90-way and 132-way format and adding a second sequence on each dive. This is to practise the sequential move in these groups, for the same move with all 222 skydivers on March 31st.

Daily Captain’s commentary: Rob Laidlaw, Base Captain

How was the Day 2 for the base?

“At some points it felt like a big-way camp day, just a normal working day… Setting large groups of people to work together and to minimise errors is always difficult. But for today I can only say that people worked really hard, awesome progress was made and we ended the day with an amazing jump.”