Formation (Relative Work) Skydiving |
 Formation skydiving is the art of building formations in free-fall with multiple people gripping each others' limbs or specially built "grippers" on their jumpsuits. Formation skydiving can be further divided into several sub-categories, so named for the number of members in a team: • 4-way sequential • 4-way vertical sequential (VRW) • 6-way sequential • 8-way sequential • 16-way sequential • 10-way speed • Large formations (Big-ways) A competition in 4-way formation skydiving (FS-4) takes place like this: There are two kinds of formations, called randoms and blocks. The randoms are singular formations with full separation of all grips both before and after building the formation. The blocks are double formations with a special designated movement pattern in between, called an inter. The start formation may, or may not be similar to the ending formation. The inters are differently performed. Here are some examples: Inter 1: The grips are released between some of the flyers, so they become two pieces of two team members. they both do a 270 degree turn, and reconnect to a different formationInter 2: Three people stay connected, and do a 360 turn, while the last person, flies alone. Inter 15: All grips are released and everyone does a 360 turn back to the original formation. Source: Wikipedia |
