Having been in a fair share of large freefall skydiving formations, I can only tip my hat to the amazing and successful effort that just came to pass over Eloy (AZ). After over a year in planning, an intrepid group of freefalling skydivers managed to put together a truly mammoth freefall formation of 300 skydivers -- and held it for over 7 seconds, in order to officially qualify for FAI consideration as a World record.

It took 19 attempts over Skydive Arizona, but after a few jumps on December 12, 2002, this amazing group of free-fallers hit paydirt. Utilizing 14 aircraft flying in a V formation, jumpers exited at an altitude of 21,000 feet, while judges from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale kept close watch below and carefully examined each attempt, analyzing videotapes recorded by freefall videographers. The record jump was actually held for a total of 7.02 seconds, which exceeded the minimum requirement of 3 seconds. The successful formation (see diagram below) was an intricate series of smaller formations and rings with "tails," that allowed the group to exceed the previous record of 282 people set in Thailand in 1999. This effort required the use of a single Shorts SkyVan (the lead plane) and 13 Twin Otters!

World class freefall photographer Mike McGowan was one of the expert photo-flickers monitoring the "GoFast 300 Way" record attempts and was kind enough to offer us the use of the amazing freefall photo near the top of the article.

Congrats to all… as this is an amazing accomplishment, and to our knowledge may not only be the largest freefall formation ever achieved, but the largest aeronautical formation, of ANY kind, thus far documented, this side of WWII. Amazing…

FMI: www.300-way.com, www.funairproductions.com (Mike McGowan's site)