Registering for skydiving events is important, but this year with the CRW World Record happening it is going to be even more important for most of these upcoming events.
In skydiving in general there are all sorts of events going on, e.g. Summerfest, Invasion, Spring Fling, etc. In the general skydiving world event coordinators/drop zones have a pretty good idea of what to expect for numbers so they typically have a predetermined number of aircraft and load organizers for the various disciplines.
In CRW, the event planning is a little different. There typically is not an expected number of participants or an event cap based on lift capacity because most events that are CRW specific are typically not that large. With the world record camps and the actual record itself happening there is going to be a greater number of CRW dogs coming to events. Not just to try to be selected, but also to stay current and continue to refine their flying skills.

This past year at Dawg Daze had 43 people pre-registered, but 84 total jumpers. This was the largest Dawg Daze ever! Which ended up being the problem. When registration is put out it’s there so that the event coordinator can communicate with the drop zone the expected people to attend. There is always a percentage built in to accommodate people unable to pre-register.
The above 52% of the attendees pre-registered. That is the number that was communicated to the drop zone. For them it was manageable with their lift capacity to still run normal operations. At larger events drop zones will either tell their fun jumpers/students that it may be tough to get jumps and may block out that stretch on their calendars for tandems or lower their numbers. They also could look at more lift capacity to keep the event happy and maintain normal operations.
In addition to lift capacity, the event registration also helps the event organizer ensure there are enough load organizers for the event. As you can imagine, when there is a 42% increase in attendance the event did not have enough load organizers and that put a lot of extra stress on the load organizers in attendance.
The flip side is event organizers need to ensure that registration for an event is easily accessible so that everyone can attempt to. If you are unsure how to register for an event, talk to one of the organizers/experienced CRW dogs in your region and they can probably help direct you accordingly.
We know not everyone can always pre-register because schedules can be a bit chaotic sometimes.
With proper pre-event registration knowledge, there should be a reasonable expectation to get 4-6 CRW jumps a day at an event. So, if we all do our part and pre-register it will make it that much easier for the event organizers to work with the drop zones to have the lift capacity and the load organizers to accommodate us all without overly long wait times between loads.
See you at circle up!
Travis Johnson
Raw Dog 19
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