posted May 27th, 2019 - HF Flying Circus was another 4-way team with the outdoor comeback last weekend, after a long indoor season. In fact, they were the first national team posting outdoor scores after the FAI Indoor World Meet.

HF Flying Circus attended a total of ten indoor meets since October 2018 and finished off the indoor season with a 24.7 average in 10th place at Weembi Lille. The young Czech team also contributed Indoor Cloud League points for the Hurricane Factory month by month in the same time period.

It was not the step up into a new dive pool category, as it was for SDC RhEvolution XP last weekend, that raised the challenge level for HF Flying Circus, and it was neither the actual transition from indoor to outdoor competition. The team stepped up into the AAA Class in 2017 and is familiar with exits from jump planes after a long indoor winter season.

It was a different challenge that waited for all team members, including Vaclav Prokes on camera, when they traveled to Jihlava where the Aeroklub Vysocina was hosting the small competition, which was the 2019 outdoor season opener. It was not even the cold and rainy weather that preceded the meet day and may have kept other Czech teams from showing up. The exits made 4-way life very difficult for HF Flying Circus and M Team both.

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NSL Meet Weekend May 25th, 2019			1		2		3		4		5		6		Total	Avg
Rank	AAA Class		M,21,E,O		C,10,1		F,A,K,13		7,5,11		19,17,D		4,8,12		Total	Avg
1	HF Flying Circus	CZSL	18		11	-3	17		10	-1	13	-1	10		79	13.2
2	SDC RhEvolution XP	VPC	17		9		17		8		10		10		71	11.8
3	M Team	CZSL	10		6		8		7		7		5		43	7.2

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Jump plane was the Antonov AN-2, which is not really quite conducive for 4-way exits. The door frame has no handles or steps, neither for the videographer nor for any other slots. The meet videos are showing that there was no camera in the rear position. Videographer Vaclav Prokes followed the team from the inside of the plane.

The problem was not only the camera angle and the visibility of the first formation, which alone caused three point deductions. HF Flying Circus were not able to find a way how to exit the plane together in the first three rounds. They had to use up one third of the working time in the first three rounds to build the first formation of each sequence.

The Antonov AN-2 is not being used at any Formation Skydiving competitions these days, and HF Flying Circus had never jumped from a plane with a very narrow door frame and no handle bars or steps to support a linked exit formation.

However, both teams enjoyed the visit at the Aeroklub Vysocina, and HF Flying Circus was surprised that they still finished with a 13+ average under the circumstances. The numbers will surely be significantly higher at the next outdoor meet.

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M Team has also been a regular at the Czech Indoor Cloud League and World Tunnel League events at the Hurricane Factory. They have seven indoor meets in the team records since October 2018.

Of course, M Team had to deal with the same exit challenge. However, they also attended their first AAA Class outdoor competition at the same time. In fact, M Team still competed in the A Class at the three meets of the Czech Republic Skydiving League League last year.

Former Bad Boys member Jan Klapka joined the team last year and guided them carefully and straight into the AAA Class indoor competition, without any previous stops on AA Class leaderboards. M Team continued in the AAA Class when it was time again for outdoor competition last weekend and started with the 7.2 average, after four slot-switching sequences in the six rounds and exits from the Antonov AN-2.

M Team had used the indoor winter training and the seven indoor meets of the winter season to get familiar with AAA Class sequences. The 7.2 outdoor average was just as much a promising starting point for M Team, as the 13.2 average was for HF Flying Circus. The next meet is scheduled for July 5th, which will be followed by the Open Czech Nationals 2019 in August.