The Baltic Wingsuit Meet was organized two years in a row. The event is based on the drive to do AWF – Airplane Wingsuit Formations.
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
For me it all started from watching on YouTube Daniel Ossio’s AWF record from 2019.
Inspired by Daniel, who is an expert at AWF, together with our DZ Turbo Finist pilot Bartłomiej Ledwon, we tried to figure out how to repeatedly skydive together making it possible with a similar plane to Pilatus Porter. Similar but more difficult to fly by due to its speed.
After a few dozen jumps, we could fly together in formation without any problems, and then I said “Why not create an AWF Polish Record?”. That is in a few words how the event came alive.
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
The 1st Baltic Wingsuit Meet
Last year 8 top Polish wingsuiters met together and did for the first time a Polish Record – AWF8. Everyone was super excited about the event so I said “why not again?”… So I started planning how to bring even more wingsuiters into the project and teach them how to fly safely with the plane. My plan was to try to break Daniel’s AWF World Record.
By the way, necessity is the mother of invention and I believe I am the only wingsuiter in the world who developed most of wingsuit skills flying formations together with a plane and not with other wingsuiters. 🤣
I started the Baltic Wingsuit Meet because I had a dream to do something interesting in Poland and change a bit of direction of interest for the wingsuiting community. I wanted to prove that we can do exactly the same stuff we were watching in other countries.
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
The right event format for 2021
I am long enough in the sport to remember how simple organizing boogies looked like and what you really need in order to keep the participants happy. Maybe it sounds strange but money always was the last item from the importance point of view in my recollections.
The atmosphere is the most important, no tandems and quality jumps which usually you can’t get on your local drop zone.
I put both those things together and I added a skills camp. I mixed all these elements and I finally came with the Wingsuit skills boot camp boogie “product”. 🙂
Then I asked Freefly Rob Heron from Canada and Daniel Culbertson from Norway to help me make this event more interesting for participants.
When I was taking a group for AWF they took part of tight fast formations and general wingsuit skills development. This combo made everybody happy and gave the participants the drive to change or improve something.
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
Success
We had 25 participants mostly from Poland but I put a lot of effort to make this event international and bring as much as possible attention from foreigners. In the end we had guys from Poland, Switzerland, Finland, Canada, Germany, and Norway.
To make the event more international than only having guests from abroad we decided from the beginning that all communication regarding the event planning up to regular chatting on the DZ will be in English so everybody was naturally forced to speak it. After the event, I heard some feedback from guys that they were very positively surprised that not even once did they feel the language barrier. I think this was the most important point for the success of the international boogie located on the “east block” DZ. 🙂
August in Poland is supposed to be nice but we had to face all week clouds which were putting us frequently on a weather hold. But even faced with these difficulties we managed to jump every day and achieve our goal. We broke the AWF world record! 😎💪
The setup of the event was that after the final selection to get the team warmed up by increasing the difficulty of the jumps. On the second day in the late afternoon we had already jumped from two planes. On the next day, one day ahead of the original plan, we broke the record by building the biggest wingsuit formation with the plane with 18 wingsuiters (4 more than the previous record)!
New AWF World Record video
I have to mention that one of the participants was Daniel Ossio, the person who organized the previous record. We combined our experiences together to obtain the goal we were all dreaming of!
A big achievement in my opinion was that the event went without a single cutaway. And we are talking about a wingsuit event… I believe due to good planning, briefings , and straightforward commands we kept the team safety orientated.
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
The TEAM
World Record Largest AWF Airplane Wingsuit Formation participants:
- Walasek Piotr LO 1 (Poland)
- Ossio Daniel LO 2 (Switzeland)
- Paliszek Janusz (Poland)
- Poradowski Michał (Poland)
- Mijakowski Jakub (Poland)
- Konopka Sebastian (Poland)
- Kobyłecki Dariusz (Poland)
- Kankowska Dorota (Poland)
- Winczewski Dawid (Poland)
- Busch Christian (Germany)
- Schmidt Gerald (Germany)
- Hutchinson Charlie (UK)
- Kowal Paweł (Poland)
- Grajner Dominik (Poland)
- Brosig Michał (Poland)
- Skowron Marek (Finnland)
- Ozga Mariusz (Poland)
- Nowicki Tomasz – Cameraflyer (Poland)
Ledwon Bartlomiej Pilot 1 (Poland) & Winiarski Marcin Pilot 2 (Poland)
Photo by Tomasz Nowicki
Grateful for all the support and ready for future plans
Special thanks to all ground team supporting us and DZ Strefa Baltic giving me the opportunity to deal with all available assets, two planes (2x Turbo Finist SMG92 HA-YDM and HA- YDN) etc.
In the end, I know one thing, everybody who came wants to come for another event next year. Now I have a problem with how to make this event even bigger than it was this year. Can’t hardly wait! 🤣
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