Interview Craig Poxon

A round up of today. Frustratingly, whilst the ground winds were well within tollerances, the uppers were around 30 knots, so jumping was on hold until 15:00 this afternoon. So only a few loads were completed.

In the mean time, how about another interview? This time it is from competitor and BPA Vice-Chair, Craig Poxon.

1.Tell us about the team you are competing with at the World Champs.

CFUK, 4-way canopy rotations with Gavin McLeod, Martin Robiette, Doug Preston and Colin Dickson. Although Gav had a bit of a rough off landing yesterday so we might be having a rearrange until he’s fitter. I might be alternating 2-way sequential camera with Martin moving in to cover Gav’s slot.

2. Is it a particularly difficult role to do as CF camera?

Like anything in skydiving, it gets easier with practice and experience. It’s very dynamic chasing four canopies around the sky. Most competitive skydiving disciplines are active, but with rotations it’s a two minute full on work out. The stack mostly falls out of the sky but there are also some speed changes as the rotating person moves down. I use all the tools in my box to stay in the optimal position, front risers, rears, toggles, cross control (opposite front and rear risers) and sometimes a combination! A four stack is quite tall and not suited for the landscape nature of cameras plus I like to get close so I’m always kept on my toes making sure I’ve got the points and not getting in the way! As with most disciplines, speed is your friend and the trend in CF is smaller, faster canopies. The boys are on PD Storm 107s and I’m on a 97! Landing a short-lined 7-cell loaded over 2:1 that is trimmed for CF, and isn’t cross-braced, in the heat can be sporting! Free packing it into my Aerodyne Icon built for my Sensei 91 with open corners on the container for wingsuiting is also entertaining!

3. Apparently, you have developed a new mobile phone app which is useful for competitors. Tell us about it.

As most people know, I’m a bit of a geek and I love to combine my passions for skydiving with technology. So I’ve written an Android app called Skydiving Draw that creates skydiving competition draws. There are several such apps for Apple devices already but none for Android. It covers FS (2,4,8,10,16-way and hopefully 6,12,14 way soon), VFS and CF (2 and 4-way). Draws can be random or people can construct their own. It even does full NSL draws where the lower classes are created from the AAA draw, substituting formations as necessary. Draws can be copied, shared, saved, loaded and exported to PDF with a handy crib sheet for competitors. I’m currently working on getting Kurt’s SkyLeague draws being pushed to the app automatically as he publishes them. The app can be found on Google’s Play Store.

4. You are known as a competitor and a member of the BPA council. How come you have never sat on the Competitions Committee?

Apart from Speed Skydiving many years ago (although the image of the red latex suit is still burnt on many people’s psyche! Good luck in your demonstration event here at the Mondial Simon!), I’ve only really started competing in the last 6 years or so with CF camera, and 4-way FS in the past couple of years, so being on Council predated that. Being on Council is hard work; I already sit on Communications and Development and am the Vice-Chair of Council and it’s overwhelming as it is. I really couldn’t do any more. Being on Council is a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” job, and Comps gets this more than any of the committees being the ones who dish out the money from our limited funds. I really don’t envy the guys on Comps and they are the best people for the job. I think my experience is better suited elsewhere.