posted Nov 28th, 2006 - The Kaleidoscope Divers completed 15 of the 17 planned 100-way jumps at SkyQuest 2006. The last NSL News update on November 17 mentioned that BJ Worth's group would take on the 100-way Diamond on Saturday.

The World Team founder and organizer had designed a total of four different puzzles for the four days of Kaleidoscope Dives at SkyQuest 2006. Thursday fell victim to bad weather, and the first design kept the 100-way group busy on Friday. The quality of the jumps was promising at the end of the day, so the team capains decided to skip one design in the planned order and take on the challenge of the 100-way Diamond.

The Kaleidoscope Divers invested five jumps on Saturday into building the Diamond and came very close. The team captains were ready to move on to the next design without the completion, but the high motivation of the group convinced the leaders to give it one more try Sunday morning.

The 6th attempt of building one of the most challenging big-way formations did not succeed, as well. Finally, the Kaleidoscope Divers moved on to the next design and committed to re-visit the Diamond at SkyQuest 2007. The remaining four jumps on Sunday brought the best jumps of the SkyQuest 2006 weekend.

The 4-way competition was already completed earlier on Sunday. The teams had completed two rounds on Friday afternoon and six rounds on Saturday. Only two rounds were left for Sunday morning. When the 4-way award ceremony was completed shortly after the last round, a few 4-way competitors had the opportunity to join the last two Kaleidoscope Dives of the weekend.

4-way world and national champion Shannon Pilcher was also invited to be a part of the very last 102-way jump and had 30 minutes to prepare for the slot. He was welcome by the Kaleidoscope Divers who celebrated the successful completion of SkyQuest 2006 with one of the best jumps of the weekend at the very end. BJ Worth already followed up on the Kaleidoscope Dives at SkyQuest 2006 with a summary of the event from his perspective.

BJ's Kaleidoscope 2006 summary

Hello Kaleidoscope Divers:

We trust that everyone returned home safely from DeLand, and that all the Americans had a good Thanksgiving holiday.

We want to thank each of you for participating on the 2006 Kaleidoscope Dives. We know it’s a significant commitment of time and resources to take part in this event, and we sincerely appreciate your support and great attitudes – as does everyone from SkyQuest, the National Skydiving League, and Skydive DeLand.

While we did not complete as many formations and transitions as planned for during the Kaleidoscope Dives this year, we did have three days of perfect weather. Cool! We had a perfect safety record. Thank you for being so aware! And, we did make some great dives. As a team, we learned a lot and improved a lot during the weekend – especially when working on that elusive 100-way Diamond. It will be completed yet!

While we wait to receive our copies of the Kaleidoscope DVD, we can watch some of our dives on the SkyQuest website. Also, Craig, Andrey, and Willy have (or will soon have) photos of the 2006 Kaleidoscope Dives up on their websites. You can find these images by going directly to the following websites: Craig O'Brien; Andrey Veselov (navigate: > photo gallery > Kaleidoscope); Willy Boeykens (navigate: > skydiving > Kaleidoscope). We encourage you to check out these photos to see what we accomplished, and to contact these great camera-flyers if you see an image that you want displayed on your wall.

When conducting our self-evaluation of this event, we tried to identify elements that may have contributed to some of the difficulties we experienced this year: We increased the degree of difficulty for our dives; we had a larger turnover of team members than we’ve had for previous events; we had more aircraft flying in formation than usual; and we had to deal with some unexpectedly cold weather. All of which did not help our dives.

On the flip side, there seemed to be lots of smiles on the DZ; there was an impressive learning curve during the event; we did make some very good dives; team members consistently showed up on time for the early calls, and we had an appreciative public audience for the first time for any SkyQuest / Kaleidoscope event – due to the pre-event publicity efforts by NSL. And, most importantly, everyone played safely. We had no safety-related incidents during the event.

In order to make the 2007 Kaleidoscope Dives better still, our Organizing Team would greatly appreciate hearing your input on this event. If you have the time and inclination, could you please answer the few questions below, and/or add anything that you believe could be beneficial for future Kaleidoscope Dives?

Did you like the Dive Designs – formations and transitions?

Would you like easier dives that have multiple relatively-easy points?

Did you like the new venue at Skydive Deland?

Is four days the right length of time for this event?

Do you wish to see any changes in the communications for this event (pre-event or during the event)?

Please add any other comments that you believe would be constructive.

We thank all of you for participating in the 2006 Kaleidoscope Dives, and we hope to see you again next year!

BJ Worth, Kate Cooper, Larry Henderson, Rusty Vest, Roger Ponce, Mike Johnston