05-11-2015

Posted by IBA

Introducing MXC

Introducing MXC

By Keith Creedy

www.keithcreedy.com 


It was 9am at Skydive Paraclete XP's Up In Smoke event and the forecast was right, no jumping this morning. Participants and organizers were loitering outside the team room, gazing at the clouds and kicking pinecones in circles.

Myself and Damien Germano, fueled with coffee and needing something to do, wondered if we could create a tunnel competition and divepool combining movement, points, flipping stuff, head down and head up, performed in 4way. We quickly created a hypothetical draw, walked it out with Devin Roane and Michael Brewer and BOOM! MXC was born.

 

MXC - Most eXtreme Tunnelfly Challenge:

The Draw = Snake + Layout + VFS Block + Sequential Flip.

Players perform the Draw first head down then head up; best time wins.

 

Actually, the original way of scoring was that you begin the round with a dozen seconds on the clock and earn time after completing each move and earn zero time for busting a move. If you don't complete enough moves and your time runs out, the tunnel shuts off, you fall to the net, and you're judged on how far in the draw you completed. This was nixed because flyers should still get the chance to fly all the way through because the Dive Pool not just laying on the net. But maybe we should add that again later... after all, we just wanted to yell "Don't. Get. Eliminated!"

Anyway, that night, 5 teams of 4 performed two random draws of MXC and wouldn't you know it, it worked! When the first team completed the sequence successfully on their first try, everyone knew we had something here; there's potential. 

In all competitions, players look for the shortcuts to make their runs faster. So that night, even in the first rounds of MXC, players were finding ways of taking grips and making moves to shorten their time; amazing.

Fun was had by all and they all lived happily ever after... except the goat... we'll come back to that...

So, in December, Paraclete XP is including MXC as an event in this year's Freefly Indoor Skydiving Championships.

As with any new event, we expect to be faced with obstacles to overcome. Defining the start and finish of moves is difficult, judging will be difficult (what if you're busted by your peers using a mobile app?....), and I'm sure things that we haven't even thought of will arise.

MXC is incredibly fun and challenging to fly. If you haven't tried it, go to the Facebook event 2015 Freefly Indoor Skydiving Championships, make yourself a draw, and go fly it. You're going to love it.

Oh, and we ended up doing three jumps that cloudy day, some of the most incredible freefly jumps ever, PLUS smoke (here's a short video of those jumps here).

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The IBA distinguishes between the sport of indoor skydiving (engaged in by patrons with IBA accounts seeking approval of flight skills though the IBA's Flight Progression System) and recreational flying (engaged in by entertainment customers who do not intend to pursue approval of skills). While indoor skydiving is safe for all ages, the inherent risk of the activity is necessarily greater for those engaging in the sport of indoor skydiving, particularly as they progress through more sophisticated maneuvers.