Kapowsin WOWS competition

Kapowsin is always a great place to come visit, it's the Mecca for all things Squirrel and there is so many talented Wingsuiters in the area. Along with that, the Farrington family who own and run Kapowsin Airsports have one of the lengthiest family histories in skydiving and they really have perfected the art of making this sport as fun as possible while running a super tight ship.

The Wide Open Wingsuit Series is a relatively new format for Wingsuit Racing. It's now in it's second year and offers something a little different to help bridge the gap for those Pilots that lose focus when training by themselves for Performance Competitions.

The comp has 2 elements, Speed and Distance and both events see competitors line-up in the sky underneath the "pace car" who signals the start and then the drag race begins. GPS devices are used to determine the first Pilot to cross a visual reference such as a road for the finish of the Speed task. An absolute distance covered before dropping below a predetermined altitude will highlight the winner of the Distance task. Both events are bracketed heats where the first 2 move on and the last 2 compete in a sudden death heat with another losing bracket.

I came in to this competition with a clear intent of redemption, after only making the semi finals in both tasks last year. As it turned out, I was able to finish 2nd in both tasks, making me the most consistent competitor.

A big thanks to Joe Ridler for putting this new format together and to everyone involved that has made this possible. It's great to see anything which encourages the continual progression of Wingsuiting!