posted Sep 27th, 2010 - A year goes by quickly, and the end of the competition season in most parts on the planet means at the same time that SkyQuest is not too far away, each year's final event for the National Skydiving League.

SkyQuest always takes place on the weekend before Thanksgiving and is scheduled for November 18 - 21 this year. BJ Worth's Kaleidoscope Divers will once again mix with the 4-way teams and competitors who would like to add another fun event to the meet experiences in 2010.

BJ Worth and his team captains begin to fly with the Kaleidoscope Divers with warmup jumps on Wednesday and get more serious Thursday morning. The 4-way teams will be introduced and get their competition draw on Friday at noon. Then they will make two or maybe three meet jumps Friday afternoon, get in full swing on Saturday and clean up what's left on Sunday morning.

SkyQuest video clip

Last year, Kaleidoscope Divers and 4-way competitors were literally mixing up at SkyQuest 2009. Mario Mauro (Teiwaz Eagle) and Janna Wynne (Perris Jimani) competed in 4-way directly with each other at the NSL Championship 2009 and did the 100-ways, as well. They had a busy schedule between Friday afternoon and Sunday but got it all done and had twice as much fun as all other participants.

BJ Worth had two 100-way groups last year, which were trying to make the best jumps in the first live 100-way meet ever. Mario Mauro and Janna Wynne joined forces for BJ Worth's Eagle Team, while they were seriously battling for the 1st place in 4-way at the same time.

Perris Jimani with Janna Wynne eventually won by two points after ten rounds. There was no scoring system applied for the 100-way jumps...

BJ Worth and his team captains for the 2010 event in November will invite Kaleidoscope Divers for only one 100-way group this year, which makes the invitation more selective. The World Team leader wants to raise the quality level once again and decided to invite the best on his list this year.

However, he is also planning to work with one smaller group, which will have fun and somehow train as a farm team for the Kaleidoscope Dives. Details of this new SkyQuest project will be posted soon. The SkyQuest website has been activated with updates again in preparation for this year's event.

BJ Worth recently sent his first invitation and bulletin to the Kaleidoscope Divers where he presents the basic outline for the 2010 event.

Kaleidoscope Dives 2010

Kaleidoscope Dives: On each dive, the geometric shapes of the formations are transformed - similar to the shifting images one sees when looking through a kaleidoscope.

The 2010 event marks the 10th anniversary of the hottest triple-digit sequential dives in the world. The Kaleidoscope Dives started in 2001 as a show-element of the SkyQuest 4-way nationals. From its inception, this challenging event has attracted a stellar talent-pool of international big-way skydivers, resulting in numerous multiple-point 100-way completions per event.

In 2009, two separate teams were completing 100-way sequential dives – a first in skydiving history. In the future, this semi-competitive format may be brought back. But for the tenth anniversary of the Kaleidoscope Dives, we will go back to our roots and field just one very hot 100-way team.

If the 100-way team fills up and there are more A+ skydivers who want to come play, a second team may be formed to make some smaller versions of the 100-way dives (probably with a 40-way team). The 40-way team members will also fill any on-site vacancies due to injuries, etc. on the 100-way team. The 2010 theme is to challenge ourselves to raise the bar to the next performance level of big-way sequential skydiving.

16 jumps are scheduled for the 2010 event, including four different dive sequences – each consisting of two to four formations with dynamic transitions. One of the dives will include a carefully scripted 4-point sequence. Another will be a 3-point random dive. The other two dives will be totally new and creative. The 2010 Kaleidoscope Dives – designed by BJ and drawn via AutoCAD by Rags Raghanti – will soon be available on the SkyQuest 2010 web pages.

The participation is by invitation only. An international team of 100+ highly skilled skydivers who want to skydive hard, and have lots of fun in the process, are being invited to participate at the tenth anniversary of this special event. Although it’s important to introduce big-way sequential to many up-and-coming skydivers, the 2010 Kaleidoscope Dives have been specifically designed for proven experts.

Once again, a world-class camera team will record the dives with videos and stills. The camera team will be led by Andrey Veselov, and include Henny Wiggers, Willy Boeykens and other world class camera flyers. Video reviews will be conducted with World Team's digital media players viewed on HDTVs. High-quality photos of the dives will be available from each camera-flyer.

BJ Worth and the SkyQuest management even agreed to crunch the numbers and offer a special anniversary package for the Kaleidoscope Dives, which will be offered for an even slightly lower registration fee than in 2009. BJ Worth explained the reasons:

"The 2010 K-Dives registration fees are a reduction from 2009, albeit a token one due to increased expenses beyond our control. World Team, however, is committed to lowering the costs of big-way skydiving, and this is the start of a serious effort to make future big-way events affordable to as many skydivers as possible."