posted Mar 17th, 2005 - The NSL News story that came with the last round of NSL-TV made some waves and initiated a discussion of the omission. The SSL team Equinox gave teams, competitors and judges the opportunity to think more about the rule situation of a possible omission when the first Inter of Block 1 (Snowflake - Offset) in round four went wrong. The specific jump can still be viewed on NSL-TV.

The NSL News story compared the official score for this jump with the meet video and offered two different interpretations of the critical situation. The first interpretation explained how the official score (5 points) of this jump at the SSL Valentine's Meet could be reached and understood.

The second interpretation explained the same situation by considering the rule of the "Omission" (2.12. of the current IPC rules). This interpretation would have left Equinox with a final score of only 2 points after the deduction of a 3-point penalty for the potential omission.

The NSL News story included a new topic in the NSL Forum, which came along with a poll option for the visitors. It happened by pure coincidence that the forum's moderator, Elsinore GT member Steve Miller, resumed a different discussion in the forum of the World News at the same time.

This topic was brought up on December 23, 2004, long before the IPC Meeting decided over the rule changes. The NSL News had posted the IPC agenda for the meeting and had asked the NSL audience to provide feedback. The discussion of this topic continued even after the new rules were already posted.

The German veteran competitor Uwe Soppa questioned the clarity of the new rules on February 11 and received an answer from USPA's FAI Judge, Judy Celaya on March 3. NSL moderator Steve Miller had a different question for Judy Celaya on March 15. This question was related to the omission and the Equinox case on NSL-TV. It was the same day when the NSL News story covered the same case, and when the same topic was posted in a different location of the NSL Forum.

The discussion in the NSL News Forum offers very interesting view points of the potential omission and defends the official score of five points in this Equinox case study. However, the topic created enough controversial feedback, and Steve Miller has not heard back from Judy Celaya yet.

The NSL News directed the case study to additional IPC officials in an effort to help with a clarification. The response came quickly from Klaus Wellens, who is one of the four Advisors to the IPC Formation Skydiving Committee. Wellens was also the Chief Judge for Formation Skydiving at last year's World Championship in Croatia and at the Mondial 2003 in Gap, France. He runs a separate website only for judging purposes in Germany.

Wellens provided clarification for the Equinox case after reviewing the video. However, it was not great news for the defenders of the official score at the SSL Valentine's Meet in Eloy. Wellens interpreted the critical situation as an omission and would have posted the official score of 2 points:

Thanks for the clarification from the highest ranks - whether it is a popular one or not. Wellens seems to indicate that it is probably not a great idea to completely skip any formation of the required sequence in any case. Next logical question would probably be: what to do if the inter goes bad? The NSL News will follow up with more information.