Alexandra Serebrennikova (Sasha) «multikss» writes:

I haven’t expressed myself in a while, but I think it might need to become an open discussion, as I alone cannot get through to FAI/CIVL so far.

The matter concerns my four women world record claims that I made after flying an FAI triangle 210 km and a distance to goal of 408.1 km at Forbes in Dec’17 – Jan’18 last year. Altogether there were five claims made, but one, namely open distance, got cancelled earlier, since it was only 900 m longer than Corinna’s current Record (407.2), which is by a 100 meter not long enough to be a new record. So the other four were as follows:

Straight distance to a declared goal: 407.99 km 02 Jan 2018, Alexandra Serebrennikova (RUS), dossier under review

Free distance using up to 3 turn points: 417.2 km 02 Jan 2018, Alexandra Serebrennikova (RUS), dossier under review

Distance over a triangular course: 210.4 km 27 Dec 2017, Alexandra Serebrennikova (RUS), dossier under review

Speed over a triangular course of 200 km: 37.83 km/h 27 Dec 201.7 Alexandra Serebrennikova (RUS), dossier under review

Here is just a little introduction on how the records have to be processed after they are flown. The rules of Section 7 are pretty straight forward. According to them, my national aero club  and I were to prepare and send a dossier with the confirmation documents, tracklogs, declared tasks, etc. These dossiers are then to be sent to FAI within strictly defined time of 120 days after the preliminary claim is received. At first I was a bit worried about this paper work with Russian National Aerosports Federation, but to my relief I have to admit they were really helpful and quick in preparing everything, so all the dossiers were sent well before the deadline. Here I’d like to underline that they were sent a year ago.

When you make a claim you have to pay a 200CHF (~200 Euro) fee for each one (so 800 Swiss Francs for my four records) to cover the administration costs of the FAI to process them. Here again I've got to thank my federation for finding the way to do it for me, everything was paid on time.

Now coming to my point. After patiently waiting for about nine months and not receiving any news, notes, enquiries, whatsoever, I started wondering about the claims. I wrote a couple letters to the official email, «records», asking if there is any news and when I can hope to get the claims finalized. Today is about a year since sending in the dossiers, and despite these letters, there is still no answer. All that I once got was "We are doing what we can according to the work load".

At the same time I was following some other claims, for instance, in paragliding. They were sent in later than mine and have already been ratified. I’m happy for those guys though, having things working motivates one to attempt the new records, doesn’t it?

As for me, I don’t think my motivation to fly for records and overall good interesting flights will fade, but this sort of situation isn’t helping  the rapidly fading women's hang gliding. I hope the Florida women's worlds will take place, but apart from it there are virtually no competitions for women only. Records are one of the last ways to push it on the official level and to keep it viral. Honesty I had an impression CIVL and FAI were sort of caring about this.

So guys, if you’re thinking of flying records, go for it, it’s fun and your grandma and all your friends will be very impressed with your skills, one of which should be patience. Train it, ‘cause you’ll need it during the flight as well as to a much bigger scale afterwards.

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