posted Jan 5th, 2005 - The NSL News reported earlier this week that Ron Hill wrote a great story of SkyQuest 2004 for USPA's Parachutist. The other major skydiving publication in the U.S.A., Michael F. Truffer's Skydiving, a Parachuting Newsmagazine, covered SkyQuest 2004 with three full pages of beautiful pictures in the January 2005 issue, as well. The photos were taken by Gustavo Cabana, Andrey Veselov and the magazine's staff.

Owner and editor Michael F. Truffer also dedicated his regular "Editorial" of the same month to SkyQuest 2004. Truffer is a very experienced skydiver and mostly participates in medium and large formation events. SkyQuest 2004 was the first year for him as a member of BJ Worth's Kaleidoscope Dives team. He has known and respected Worth for decades and yet never been a participant of the several World Team events organised by Kaleidoscope Dives manager Worth.

However, there was one historical event where Truffer and Worth worked together very closely. Truffer says that he will always remember this most impressive event of his skydiving career, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games 1988 in Seoul, Corea. Thirty skydivers, including Mike Truffer, formed the olympic rings in freefall and landed into the olympic stadium in front of 100,000 live spectators and millions of people on TV all over the world. It was the most spectacular part of the opening ceremony when the freefall formation was shown live on the stadium's screen and on TV.

Truffer's participation at the Kaleidoscope Dives of SkyQuest 2004 gave him the opportunity to experience live the event atmosphere at Fantasy of Flight and write about some of his impressions in the January issue of Skydiving.

Truffer's Editorial evaluated mostly the performance of participants under open parachutes and the landings. He gave the 4-way competitors a lot of credit for great canopy control and even graceful landings. He compared the 4-way landings with the pond swoopers of the Fantasy Swoop 2004: "They looked like they could fly their canopies better. They usually performed same interesting and perhaps dramatic maneuvers but nonetheless touched down with the aplomb of a ballet dancer, or a gymnast who 'sticks' his or her landing."

Truffer's credit for the 4-way competitors came along with critique for the pond swoopers. He mostly complained about the terrible landings at the end of the longest swoops and had the spectators in mind with some of his critique: "The ungainly landings that often follow impressive swoops prevent the event from being more appealing. They make the skydivers look less competent than they are."

However, there is no doubt that the audience is divided over the landings. Some spectators might be more impressed with smooth and graceful landings, while others are more entertained by watching swoopers getting wet and dirty. Truffer hopes that there might be a happy medium and a change of the rules for swooping when he concludes with his dry humor:

"I hope those that are guiding the development of competition swooping will consider changing the rules so the entire landing is included in the score. A 350-foot toe drag actually isn't very impressive if it ends with the jumper sliding in on his butt like a student, or resembling Forrest Gump while gamely trying to run out a 20 mph touchdown, or ending up in a soggy heap at water's edge. Staying in control until the landing is truly completed takes more skill than the current rules require. And it earns more respect from onlooking skydivers."

The pictures on the SkyQuest pages of Skydiving include one with marks of the impacts and the capture: "Jumpers' bodies created these divets at one end of the swoop pond." It is well worth - as usual - to read Truffer's sharp Editorial, even though he delivers tough punches on a quite regular basis. NSL President and SkyQuest organizer Kurt Gaebel was in Truffer's front line in the January issue, as well:

"I did SkyQuest this year, paying big bucks to Kurt Gaebel to spend four days making large-formation jumps at a private airport in central Florida. It was all good - the people, facilities, weather, aircraft and, most importantly, the jumps. While I'd rather see the event held at a parachute center - the Florida museum that hosts SkyQuest only cares about our sport for four days a year - I can appreciate Gaebel's reasons for doing it where he does."

Gaebel usually listens and reads carefully what Truffer has to say and enjoys any discussion with Skydiving's editor. This time, the discussion took place in a written form, and Gaebel wrote back after reading January's Editorial:

"Thanks for publishing the beautiful photos of SkyQuest 2004 in the January issue of Skydiving. I was also glad to read that you enjoyed yourself as a participant of the event. I read the whole editorial of the January issue with great interest and enjoyed your feedback as of the safe and graceful landings of the 4-way competitors. I surely feel very blessed with the skydiving quality of the event and also with the injury records at SkyQuest Florida, especially since the event is usually in the public spotlight.

I would like to bring to your attention and to the attention of your readers that there is not much reason for the assumption that the money that was spent at Fantasy of Flight would have been better spent within the skydiving community. The by far largest chunk of US dollars is always spent for jump tickets at any skydiving event. SkyQuest 2004 hired Fayard Enterprises to run the whole jump plane operation at Fantasy of Flight. Paul Fayard is one of the truest and most loyal jump plane operators within the skydiving business, and he also operates the skydiving center Carolina Sky Sports. I feel very confident that the largest part of the money spent by the SkyQuest participants ended up in good hands and returned very much back into the skydiving community.

By the way, and to complete the financial part of this letter: the same as for the jump tickets above counts for the big bucks you paid to Kurt Gaebel. I wish these big bucks had ended up in my own pockets. This would have been very helpful to support the starving NSL operation. The largest chunk of your big bucks went to the jump plane operator, other smaller amounts of your dollars had to be spent for other usual event expenses. Very little amounts of your dollars were spent to run SkyQuest 2004 at an attractive and unique event site. The even smaller remainder ended up on the NSL account. However, I surely hope that the NSL will make some big bucks one day, so we can do even more for our sport."

The discussion can be continued at the NSL Forum, including the whole NSL audience.