posted Aug 12th, 2023 - The start of the FAI Outdoor World Cup 2023 is coming closer, with Round 1 scheduled for August 23rd, little over a week away. Teams and competitors, host, judges and staff are in the final preparations and even begin to move closer to the competition site in Voss, Norway.

The NSL News used the run-up time after the transition to Europe for another visit in the Czech Republic, where the most successful 4-way junior operation is home at the Hurricane Factory in Prague. The NSL News mentioned earlier that several former 4-way juniors have transitioned to outdoor training and competition after years of participating in Jan Klapka's 4-way junior school.

The skydiving center in Most, home of the Skywalkers tandem, student and sport skydiving operation, is also Jan Klapka's training center for the 4-way juniors who decide to continue with exits from jump planes. That's the place where the Skywalkers Junior 4-way team, with an average age of under 17 (15 - 16 - 16 - 18), is training for their 4-way future.

The Czech Republic does not have a team registered for the outdoor world cup. The former national team, HF Flying Circus, are on a longer break, as the NSL News reported on May 10th, and the Czech national championship falls on the coming weekend. Skywalkers Junior have to win the 4-way title to become the new national team and compete in Israel 2024.

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NSL Live Talk with Skywalkers Junior

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The NSL News has met the Skywalkers Junior members regularly at international indoor competitions. Czech 4-way Junior teams have won all FAI/ISC gold medals in this category since 2019, as they did again earlier this year. Two members of the Skywalkers Junior (Michal Mikulisek, Martin Stransky) are still the reigning 4-way Junior world champions.

The events in the past still never offered a realistic opportunity for NSL Live Talk with the youngest generation of 4-way competitors. The visit at the Skywalkers Junior home in Most and the team's transition to 4-way Open Class outdoor training and competition seemed to make it the right time to introduce the team live on the NSL News stage.

Skywalkers Junior were in full training swing on Friday and added the extra time at the end of the day for NSL Live Talk. Jan Klapka, the creator of the 4-way Junior School, and his son Jakub Klapka, former tail of HF Flying Circus until Round 10 of the FAI Outdoor World Championship 2022, joined the conversation with the team. Jakub Klapka is now Skywalkers Junior's official team videographer.

The Skywalkers operation in Most is using a PAC as the local jump plane, the same aircraft that will fly the 4-way teams to altitude at the next outdoor world championship in Israel 2024. Skywalkers Junior have mastered the exits with a Side Body (P) for a standard formation and will apply it for the upcoming national championship in Most. Then they have a whole year on their home turf to train for the world championship rounds from the same jump plane.

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Skywalkers Junior training jumps in Most

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Skywalkers Junior have finally accommodated their slot scrambles, too. Michal Mikolasek has now settled in the point slot, after his center work for the Helicopters junior team until May 2022. Jan Klapka recruited him first for the HF Flying Rebels, where he met his current team mate Martin Stransky, and together they won the indoor world championship title in Slovakia.

Michal Mikolasek and Martin Stransky then joined forces with Filip Lukavec and Antonín Ondracek of the HF Chameleons after the indoor event in April. Filip Lukavec switched from Point to Inside Center, and the Skywalkers Junior team was born.

Michal Mikolasek and Filip Lukavec both have switched to different pieces, and they had to learn their new slots for outdoor training and competition quickly. Team mate Martin Stransky developed a challenging training plan that forces both pieces to perform slot-switching sequences in each training jump, at least on Friday.

The videos are showing that Block 5 (Opal - Opal) and Block 17 (Danish Tee - Murphy) take turns in every other training jump. Only these two blocks switch the slots for all four team members and require the performance of the B-slots. This was the Skywalkers Junior's strategy to become familiar with the new slots, and the first results will be on the Czech leaderboard on the coming weekend.