What’s up in August 2012?

Summer is a busy time for leisure or competition pilots. CIVL Bureau though it was a good time for holidays, but, hey, no way!

John Dickenson, inventor of the modern hang glider, has been honoured with the highest FAI award: the Air Gold Medal. The glider that John Dickenson built in September 1963 proved to be unprecedently simple, unprecedently user friendly, unprecedently easily copied. It became the template for almost all hang-gliders, giving access to the sky to thousands of people, opening the doors to a new sport.

Paragliding aerobatics is a relatively young discipline, recognised by CIVL from 2005. One of the difficulties that potential organisers encounter, is the lack of qualified PG Aerobatics Judges available to work at competitions. CIVL is asking the Federations and NACs who have PG Aerobatics Judges in training, or who have candidates they would like trained, or indeed, those who have aerobatics pilots they wish to encourage, to help provide some financial support for these trainees and pilots.

The 3rd FAI European Paragliding Accuracy Championship was run in Orhid (FYR Macedonia) last July. Report and links are published on our website.

The Paragliding pre-World was run in Sopot (Bulgaria) last July. The Steward report was carefully read and the Bureau will make sure that all recommendations made will be implemented.

Paragliding Accuracy is one of the discipline of the 2014 World Games in Cali (Colombia). The pre-World was run earlier this month. Reports are published on our website.

The letter we sent to EHPU and PMA to re-state CIVL position on the evolution of competition gliders and the answers we got show that we are still far from a consensus on what these gliders should be. So CIVL has invited EHPU and PMA to a top level meeting in St-André-les-Alpes (France) on September 15th, closing day of the European Paragliding championship.

The Competition Structure Working Group will also hold a meeting in St-André-les-Alpes, on September 16th. It’s intermediary report published on our website did not get many comments. It’s still time people! The way CIVL chooses between bids for Category 1 events has been added to the Working Group agenda.

Finally, we published our analysis on selection criteria and nation size for the next FAI European Paragliding Championship.