What’s up in November 2012?

What’s up? A lot of work during and after our Bureau meeting in very windy Iceland. We published the minutes on our website, so please check them out if you want to know what’s up.

An important decision: making a second reserve mandatory in paragliding XC Category 1 championships. A specific News was published.

The month summerized…

• Autumn Bureau meeting: four days in Reykjavik, Iceland.
• Wrote, reviewed and published on the web a short report then the minutes of the meeting.
• Appointed Raymond Caux and Igor Erzen to review SafePro and ParaPro documents.
• Reviewed and published through FAI the 2013 Plenary invitation and timetable.
• Agreed to change the Meet Director for the 2013 FAI World Hang Gliding championship in Forbes, Australia: Davis Straub iso Vicki Cain.
• Denied this championship organisers to reopen registration a month after the deadline (on ground of fairness for far away countries).
• Reviewed and published statement on making mandatory a second reserve parachute in PG Cat 1 competition from May 1^st, 2014.
• Worked on new Internal Regulations and Terms of Reference.
• Worked on the Plenary Agenda.

What's up in October 2012?

The CIVL Bureau and others Officers are getting ready for the Bureau Autumn meeting in a few days. A look on its agenda shows that it should not be too boring...

• Decide how precise we want the minutes of this meeting to be.

• Decide if we want to turn SC and WG proposals into Bureau proposals.

Jury and Steward

Review of Jury and Steward reports for 2012 championships

• HG Euro – Kayseri, Turkey. 
Jury:Flip Koetsier.
 Steward:Claudia Meija.

• PG Euro – St-André, France.
 Jury:Dennis Pagen.
 Steward:Ali Gali.

• PG Asia –Linzhou, China.
 Jury:Agust Gudmundsson.
 Steward:Dennis Pagen.
• 
PG Accuracy Euro – Ohrid, Former Yugoslavia, Republic of Macedonia. 
Jury:Andy Cowley.
 Steward:Nikki Bodill.

• PG Accuracy Asia – Wai-ao, Chinese Taipei.
 Jury:Roman Pogacar.
 Steward:Violeta Masteikiene.

Review of Steward reports for 2012 pre-championships.

• PG pre-World – Sopot, Bulgaria.
 Steward:Leonard Grigorescu.
• 
PG Accuracy pre-World – Bjelasnica, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegivina.
• PG Accuracy pre-World Games – Cali, Colombia.
Steward: Louie Joselyn.

Selection of Jury and Stewards for the 2013 championships.

• PG World – Sopot, Bulgaria.
• 
PG Accuracy World Games – Cali, Colombia.

• PG Accuracy World – Bjelasnica, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Selection of Stewards for the 2013 pre-championships.

• PG European – Kapaonik-Raska, Serbia.

• PG Pan-American – Loma Bola, Tucuman, Argentina.
• 
PG Accuracy European – Vrsac, Serbia.
• 
PG Accuracy Malaysia – Ranau, Sabah, Malaysia.

Also…

• Extension of the Remote Jury to all Cat 1 competitions.

• Review of the process for recruiting, selecting, paying the right officials.

• Review of the Jury and Steward role.

• Necessity to rewrite the J&S Handbook.

Subcommittees and working groups

Review of reports.

• Paragliding – Calvo Burns.

• Hang-gliding – Oyvind Ellefsen.

• Aerobatics – Dennis Pagen.
• 
Paragliding Accuracy – Nikki Bodill.
• 
Safety – Raymond Caux.

• Software – Jörg Ewald.

• Record and Badges – Scott Torkelsen.

• Jury and Steward – Flip Koetsier.
• 
Sporting Code – John Aldridge.

• Competition Structure – Stéphane Malbos.

• Pilot screening – Brian Harris.

• Competition coordination – Brian Harris.

• Website content – Stéphane Malbos.

• Environmental Affairs – Thomas Sénac.

Also…

• How can SC and WG be restructured for efficiency?

• Prospective for SC and WG Chairs for next year.
• 
3-5-1 of FAI By-Laws allow us to elect the SC and WG Chairs for 2 years. Should we do that?

Budget

• Intermediary report.

• Who should pay for CIVL Bureau members’ expenses like this Bureau meeting? CIVL or the members’ federations?

Sporting Code

• Some modifications have not been implemented in the May 2012 edition of Section 7. 
(“… as far as appropriate”, French proposal for PG Cat 2").
• Should it be extended to other disciplines?

Bids for cat1 competitions

2015 is a FAI World Championships year : HG, PG, PG Accuracy, HG and PG Aerobatic.

• How can we improve the quality and screening of the bids within today rules?
 (Delegation from the Plenary to the Bureau to look for bidders)

• Should be change the rules altogether? Define proposals to the Plenary.
• 
Should we require signed Organisers Agreement with the bid?

Review of Bids’ documents:

• Guidelines for presentation of bids.

• Bids check-list.

• Budget sample.

Practical guidelines for organisers of competition

• Review report on the project of rewriting it – Louise Joselyn

• This includes a new template for Local Regulations.

PMA, EHPU and the future of PG Competition glider

• Review meetings and projects.
• 
Define strategy.

Internal Regulations

• They should be simplified, adapted to the reality of the way we work, modified so Bureau, Subcommittees and Plenary work better.
• Review the new document.

Other documents

• CIVL Handbook - Review this document published on the Web (see Front page).
• Bureau Handbook - Review this new document.
• CIVL Long Term Plan - Do we need one? 
What is really long term and what is aims and purposes? 
Include it in the Internal Regulations?
• Safe pro, Para pro - Needs reviewing. Who could be in charge?

Plenary meeting


• - How can it be restructured for efficiency? What can be omitted or done in simpler way?
• 
- Can the SC and WG meetings be reorganized for efficiency?
• 
- What do we want in the SC / WG / Plenary minutes? Who will write them?
• 
- Should we change the Plenary dates? January, December, November…? Make simulations…
• - Bureau elections - See new Internal Regulations project (to come).
- Can we adapt the way Bureau is elected within today rules?
(Formalising what happened in the last Plenary: the Prez presents the people he whish to work with. All candidates introduce themselves.) 
- Should we make proposal to the Plenary to change these rules? 
(According to FAI Law-bys 3-2-1, we can vote for as many secretaries as we want; we don’t need to vote for a treasurer; this could give us flexibility and the possibility to choose more Bureau members that are not delegates. According to FAI Statutes 5-1-2-8, we can elect the Bureau for 2 years.)
 - Should we make proposal to FAI General Conference to change these rules? 
(For instance, possibility to elect the Bureau for up to 4 years.) 
- Prospective for Bureau members and SC Chairs for next year.

CIVL Competition Coordinator, Secretary and PR

What is needed?

Section 7, CIVL Internal Regulation, Term of Reference

• We will need to prepare new wording to include eventual Bureau proposals to the Plenary.

• - Bid procedures?

• - Bureau members and elections?
• 
- SC and WG members and elections?
• 
- …?

Other pending matters…

Go through the Bureau To Do list.

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.

What’s up in early July 2012?

Two Asian Championships have been run in June. The 3rd Paragliding XC in Linzhou (China) had Japan win in the 3 categories: Overall, Female and Nation. The 1st Paragliding Accuracy in Wai-ao (Chinese Taipei) had Japan win in Overall and Female, and Indonesia in Nation.

Registration is open for the 2013 World Games test event in Cali (Colombia). The World Games takes place every four years, and is the second largest international multi-discipline sports event.  Of 33 non-Olympic sports participating in the 2013 event, only Paragliding Accuracy and Parachuting Canopy Piloting have been selected to represent airsports.

A letter has been sent to EHPU and PMA to re-state CIVL position on the evolution of competition gliders.

The Competition Structure Working Group has published an intermediary report. The CSWG hopes to get comments and suggestions from delegates and pilots.

What’s up? May 2012

Some ninety-three Jury and Steward reports of competitions (from 1995 till today) have been collected, scanned and filed. They are available to delegates only, who can get any of them through Bureau members.

Dates and venue of the next Plenary are set. The Sub-Commissions and Working Groups will convene at FAI office and the Plenary itself at the Mövenpick Hotel on February 14^th to 17^th in Lausanne, Switzerland.

We’ve had problem with change of organizers for events like the 2014 Asia Paragliding accuracy, the 2013 Asian Paragliding Accuracy, the 2012 Paragliding pre-World. Problems have solutions and CIVL has been working on them.

The 2012 Category 1 competition season is on! It has started with the Asian Paragliding XC and will follow with the Asian Paragliding accuracy in June. Reports and pictures are published on our website in the Event / News of Events pages.

What’s up? April 2012

As you know, Jiao-Xi February Plenary elected a Bureau with a few newcomers.

Getting organized was our first job, while Louise Joselyn, our former Secretary, was putting a final touch on the Bureau and Plenary Minutes (thanks Louise!).

Getting organized meant spreading responsibilities around, so all matters are covered by at least one Bureau member, from competition to safety, through communication, etc.

It also meant getting used to Basecamp. Basecamp is a software used by FAI, a web-based project management and collaboration tool. We decided that most of the Bureau exchanges and work would be done through it. Besides the functionalities that Basecamp offers, the exchanges and work done can be archived, and therefore used as references for future Bureaux.

This year projects are ambitious and we started working on them.

You know the difficulties the paragliding competition scene went through last year. The Plenary had to deal with a few contradictory proposals and decided to let the Paragliding Subcommittee and specific Competition Structure Working Group deal with them (check former News on this website). Discussions have started. We will let you know later what’s up on these matters. No consensus expected yet: we are just too early in the process.

Other subcommissions have, of course, also started their own work.

Also…

We want to update all documents, including our Guidelines For Organisers Handbook and Long Term Plan.

We will create new ones, like a CIVL Handbook, to help anyone find his way in the FAI – CIVL maze of documents, rules, ways of working…, and a Bureau Handbook to structure the way we work.

We will work on how to make more efficient our Plenary and Bureau meetings.

Of course the day to day job of running CIVL and dealing with problems as they come never stops. Local regulations were finalized and published, worries about such or such championship discussed, coming deadlines met…

All that induced in my personal CIVL mailbox some 500+ messages since the Plenary. So, yes, the people you elected are at work. They are all volunteers. They are thinking about getting professional help (communication and secretarial work) but are not quite ready for it yet. This would be the cherry on the cake, but we have to cook the cake first, i.e. have CIVL run smoothly with motivated and hard working people.

Please let us know what you think. I will be your contact and will transmit to the Bureau or whoever.

Stef Malbos, Website Content Coordinator

Jiao-Xi Plenary in short

• The minutes
• New faces
• Toward a new paragliding Competition Class
• The Competition Structure Working Group
• Hang gliding sum up
• Safety sum up
• Winning Cat 1 bids

The delegates voting.