I broke out another of my skydiving videos to post on YouTube the other day. This one, below the fold, is what is known as a “speedstar”. Most formation skydives are meticulously planned to be “slot perfect”: that is, every skydiver has a very specific place in the formation, as in the jump I blogged about previously. A speedstar, on the other hand, is all about everybody getting together as fast as they can! Nobody leaves the plane together: everyone piles out single file and then rushes to the formation. In the video below the fold, we were doing a speedstar with 10 people (a “10-way”) and we planned two points…

I’m the guy in the darker green jumpsuit, who near the end of the video is in the lower right corner of the formation. Emphasizing the nature of a speedstar, I was planning to be part of the initial group of 5 people forming the inner “round” formation, but I was too slow and ended up taking an outer leg grip. Speedstars are fun because almost everyone gets some diving practice in, and you don’t have to remember a lot of complicated formation details. This video represents a highly successful speedstar (though the formation shouldn’t be turning like it is around the 46 second mark); maybe I’ll post one of the less successful jumps I was involved in later…