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AXIS Flight School offers structured, progressive training designed to help sport skydivers of all levels achieve their personal and competitive goals. Whether you’re looking to improve your canopy skills, master new freefall techniques in the tunnel and sky, or prepare for competition, our world-class coaches will guide you every step of the way.

XF Dive Pool and Rules Updated

On January 4th, 2015 AXIS Flight School created an experimental dive pool for what was then referred to as XRW (Extreme Relative Work). This is a still developing discipline where canopy and wing-suit pilots build formations. In essence, an XRW skydive is a dissimilar formation flight.

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Photo courtesy of Dan Dupuis.

The first dive pool developed by AXIS was called XF. The name change from XRW was proposed similar to how RW (Relative Work) was changed to FS (Formation Skydiving); and since CF (Canopy Formation) is already taken, the XF abbreviation was introduced for “Cross” Formation. The first draft only had 3 Randoms and 6 blocks.

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Dive pool images from 2015

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Since wing-suit technology has dramatically increased flight performance over the past few years, new formations have become possible. The updated 2020 version now features 8 randoms and 10 blocks dispersed over three classes: intermediate, advanced, and open. In addition, the XF rules have been updated to evolve with the times and practitioners can even make use of the AXIS DrawGenerator. There are now two orientations for the wing suit pilot to fly in:

  • Normal (belly to earth) – indicated in gray, and
  • Inverted (back to earth) – indicated in red.
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New 2020 XF Dive Pool Images

Back in the day 🙂

AXIS coach Niklas Daniel started experimenting with XF back in April 2010, and has posted videos and written articles about the subject.

2010 – Nik’s first few attempts at Skydive Elsinore.

2011 – Training Camp at Skydive Arizona

2011 – MOAB Boogie.

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Photo by Taya Weiss.

2014 – Getting a bit braver. Post by Blue Skies Magazine.

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2015 – XF gets some exposure on Discovery Canada with first 3-way Night Formation.

Continued fun, experimentation, and introducing the discipline to others.

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Wing-suit pilot and photo by Alex Swindle.
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One response to “XF Dive Pool and Rules Updated”

  1. Steve Brothers Avatar
    Steve Brothers

    Nik, it was nice seeing you the other day. I am gonna try to get up there and jump soon. I know currency and practice are really the keys. The main take away for me from your class is break off higher if doing group stuff and/or pull higher. For me, the decision altitude is 2500 feet. The window ends there, it does not begin there. I also went to Erin’s emergency class and John L ‘s Anatomy of a reserve class. I am a little fuzzy on some aspects of the MARD. At some point, I will probably ask you a couple of question about that subject. For me , the realities of my life and my philosophical approach to skydiving don’t Incline me to do 100 jumps per year. However, I think, but do not guarantee, that the stuff you helped me pound into my head allow me to have a safe small niche to do a few safe jumps occasionally. When I drive into that very serious DZ now, I do feel more confident getting on a load. I feel that I can safely, but not impressively, do it. From there just being in freefall solo is a gas to me. At that point, it can be akin to a spiritual feeling for me. Different strokes for different folks. If everybody is thinking alike, somebody is not thinking. Well, that is it. I hope that I didn’t ramble too much.

    On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 12:30 PM AXIS Flight School wrote:

    > AXIS Flight School posted: “On January 4th, 2015 AXIS Flight School > created an experimental dive pool for what was then referred to as XRW > (Extreme Relative Work). This is a still developing discipline where canopy > and wing-suit pilots build formations. In essence, an XRW skydive is” >

    Reply

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