1989 – October 13-15
Location: Spaceland – League City
Plane – Otter, DC3
245 registered – 10 teams and 45 fun jumpers
Advertising by mail and videos sent to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, Perris, Lodi, Deland, Chambersburg, Dallas, Austin and Z-Hills. This year’s video challenge was shown on DZ TV at the Nationals. Some drop zones started seminars, training, and competitions for their team selection and paid the teams entry fees.
Again, the dives were kept secret until the night of the Captain’s Meeting before the competition. We thought the mystery of the dives contributed to the excitement. The dives were planned to allow each team to demonstrate all their skills in engineering, individual flying, and piece flying. The tops teams were working on their fifth formation when the 50 seconds of working time ran out.
Four rounds were planned however Hurricane Jerry reduced the meet to two rounds. Since we had a DC3 and Otter we designated what round was done from what plane, so it was fair. Some teams started with Round 1 and some with Round 2 to keep both planes in the air.
Arizona brought a team of heavy hitters in their DC3 and gave Deguello a challenge. As we watched the weather and decided to end the meet, we suggested to Arizona that they needed to fly out NOW! The eye passed directly over the DZ on Sunday.
One of my favorite memories, the incredibly young Aggie team of mostly students who never had much experience with large formation, watching the Arizona team. I think Arizona knew they were being watched during their practice climb out and did some ridiculous number of floaters with dangling floaters upon floaters which they did not do in the dive. Maybe it was meant to be intimidating but nobody told the Aggies. Next jump the Aggies put out a ridiculous number of floaters and completed their first 20 way and thanked Guy Manos and Dan BC.
Rose Wagner (of the famed Wagner family) catered breakfast.
Seven cameramen filmed the dives – Head VideoDude, Roger Pickens. Video crew included Roger, Curt Jarvis, Gregg Gerondale, Tim Addison, Ollie Reamy, Mark Price, and Martin (Pete) McAnally. The photographer’s plaques had a typo that year and said “Photgrapher”. We had them corrected but some of the guys chose to keep the original as a collector’s item.
Chuck and Suzanne Stenson organized the raffle that raised money for the US Parachute Team Trust.
20 way was considered at the USPA Board of Director’s Meeting.
Winning Team: Deguello
Captain: Jack Berke
