PARACHUTE PAGEANT

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29178, 12 April 1960, Page 18

PARACHUTE PAGEANT

N.Z. Contest At Wigram

A public pageant of parachuting on Saturday will precede two days of national championships at the Royal New Zealand Air Force Station, Wigram. North Island jumpers are coming to Christchurch on Good Friday specially to take part in the pageant which will help to raise funds for the championships. The championships, because of field .restrictions by the Air Force authorities, will not be open to the public. Thirty jumpers are expected to participate in the pageant and 25—one of them a woman—are entered in championship events. Four aircraft will be used by the parachutists. One will be a seven-seater Dominie aircraft flown by Captain Brian Chadwick (from Harewood), and the Others will be Cessnas flown to Christchurch with North Island club jumping teams. Saturday’s exhibition will include sky diving, delayed dropping, stick and mass displays. Skydivers will be dropped from 8000 feet in a spreadeagled position facing downwards. Air resistance and hand movements combined enable the performer to appear to fly. Ripcords are generally pulled after a delayed drop of about 6000 ft. Gliders To Take Part Gliders will also take part in the pageant and there will be light aircraft aerobatics. Should the weathet be unfavourable on Saturday, the pageant will be held on the Sunday, and it will be open to the public. The New Zealand championships will begin at 10 a.m. on Sunday. They comprise four events, three individual and one team. Points won in the individual events will go towards each three-man team’s aggregate. The first event will be a (comparatively) simple jump from 3300 ft to land as near as possible to a marker on the field. The second event is similar but the jump will be from 4300 ft with a 15 seconds delay in ripcord pulling.

The third and most difficult individual event is a jump from 7300 ft with a delay of 32 seconds before parachute opening. On the tenth second the jumpej has to complete a 360 degree flat turn in a direction nominated before leaving the ground; on the twentieth second he has to do a half turn in the opposite direction and then land near a marker. The teams event is a group jump from 3300 feet. All four clubs comprising the New Zealand Parachute Federation—Auckland, Waikato, Manawatu and Christchurch—will be represented in the championships. A prominent competitor will be Mr J. Fullerton, of Auckland, who last year (with Mr J. Charnick) won the premier trophies at the Australian contest when a Dominion representative there. Mr Charnick will not be competing in the championships this year. The sole woman competitor is Miss Valerie Lowen, secretary of the Christchurch club, who has logged more than 40 jumps.