posted May 26th, 2010 - On July 31, 2010, Ben Liston will be organizing a 2-group dueling 16-way event (32 participants plus video flyers) at Connecticut Parachutists, Inc. The goal is to draw the best formation skydivers from the North East for a day of challenging sequential skydives and tons of fun.

Ben Liston said that this will be a quasi invitational event, meaning that participants will have to fill out a short form to register to ensure the quality. The event will have five structured jumps for the day, with optional additional jumps if there is time and interest.

Each of the two groups will be led by two or more team captains, all of whom have won multiple medals at the US Nationals as members of the Golden Knights or Arizona Airspeed 16-way teams. Ben Liston is planning a progression of dives that will grow in complexity and difficulty over the course of the day. Some jumps will be national style sequential dives, others will require more intricate and delicate builds, and some with be challenging Formation Skydiving tasks that the participants may have never seen or heard of before.

Ben Liston is looking for skydivers with the kind of skills that have at least a basic background in 4-way and/or 8-way training and/or solid experience in 16-way to 40-way events. He said that the required signup information is not designed to scare people off, but to get as much information as possible to work out the lineups.

It will be a 1-day event, running from 7 am to 7 pm. However, if the weather looks bad for Saturday and good for Sunday, Ben Liston will make the call to run the event on Sunday, August 1st instead. This decision would be made on Friday, July 30. Therefore, all participants need to be available to come out on Sunday. He said that this will still allow the participants to have a weekend day free.

The registration form can be requested by e-mail directly from Ben Liston. Registration needs to be completed by May 30th.

The rosters will be finalized by June 15th, and a non-refundable deposit of $75 will be due by July 1st. If weather prevents all or some of the jumps, a refund of $26 per jump will be issued. Food and T-shirts will be on site regardless of weather.

The registration fee of $150 will include an event T-shirt, a Subway catered lunch, five jumps, a raffle ticket and video. Still pictures will be available for purchase directly from the photographers, and an edited video of all jumps of both groups will be available for free via download shortly after the event.

Event sponsors include SkyVenture New Hampshire, Cypres, United Parachute Technologies, Performance Designs and Connecticut Parachutists, Inc. Mass Defiance members Ben Liston and Brian Stephens, James "Bu" Klinge and Scott Latinis will be captaining the two 16-way teams.