Gold Team Brings #Army Strong to Florence, South Carolina

The Gold Demonstration Team performed twice today the 5Th of June at the Pee Dee Florence SC airshow.

The team opened the airshow exactly at noon, With one jumper exiting the aircraft at 5000ft. The jumper was SSG Noah Watts, he was the narrator for that performance and also flew the American flag to the Star Spangled Banner. Once back on the ground SSG Watts narrated the rest of the team as they jumped from the F-27 Fokker. The first three jumpers were SFC JD Berentis, SFC Greg Windmiller and SSG Steven Robertson. These three completed a three way star formation then turned and tracked to gain separation before opening their parachutes at 2500 ft. At this time the team leader for the Gold demonstration team lowered a smoke chain to the delight of the estimated 2000 people that showed up at the airshow today. SFC Windmiller and SSG landed at show left as the team leader landed just left of show center.

The three remaining jumpers were performing canopy relative work. These three jumpers were SSG Ryan Ray, SSG Aaron Figel and SGT Chris Clark. They opened their parachute immediately after exiting the aircraft and built a three stack. Which is three parachutes stacked upon one another. From this position they immediately brought it into a Tri-Bi side configuration before ultimately performing the three way down plane. At 1000 ft these jumpers separated from one another and landed at show right. After the opening performance the Gold Team went to the Army recruiting booth to pack their parachutes and meet with some of the people in attendance at the airshow.

The afternoon performance and the close of the airshow started at 4:15 pm. With the narrator SGT Clark exiting at 4000 ft with the POW/MIA flag to the music of God Bless America. This was the start of the teams full show. The next pass of the aircraft had SSG Ray and SFC Windmiller performing the Baton Pass.

The next pass produced the teams most exciting maneuver, the cutaway. SGT Cook exited the aircraft with three parachutes instead of the two normally worn. He opened his first parachute and let it fly for about ten seconds to let the crowd know he had a good parachute over his head. SGT Cook then reached up releasing one side of this parachute causing it to malfunction, after about ten seconds under this malfunctioning parachute SGT Cook released the other side that was still attached putting him back into free fall. At 2500 ft SGT Cook open his main parachute and landed dead center. This maneuver shows the crowd what would happen if a parachute did not work.

On the third and final pass of the performance, SFC Berentis, SSG Figel, SSG Watts and SSG Robertson performed the track out maneuver. This maneuver has all four jumpers exiting the aircraft at almost the same time and tracking to the four points of the compass, creating a bomb burst in the sky.

For the closing of their show the team performed the show line up and presented the baton the was flown in free fall by SSG Ray and SFC Windmiller to a member of the airshow for their outstanding performance.

This concluded the airshow in Florence for the day but the team went to the fence line to meet the people that stuck around in the 90 degree plus weather.

In these photos

SSG Noah Watts exiting as the narrator
The three stack formation
The three way down plane
SFC Berentis teaching a teenage boy interested in the Army how to pack a parachute.