Oz Report

Steve Pearson

Steve Pearson|USHPA Election 2022|Jamie Shelden|Paul Voight|Matthew Taber|Tiki Mashy|Bill Hughes

Vote for veteran BOD members:

Please check your email for the USHPA election ballot. For those of you who might be undecided, please consider those who have contributed so much to our community and association over many years: Jamie Shelden, Paul Voight, Matthew Taber, Tiki Mashy and Bill Hughes. We need your votes!

I guess it all comes down to experience and previous contributions. The work of USHPA evolves from grinding deliberations in committees rather than wholesale proclamations of change (directors only approve the work of committees). It's so easy to break what we have and much harder to restore it. Even the most well-intentioned and executed big ideas, like self-insurance and the governance proposal, have resulted in unforeseen consequences with significant damage. I favor a path of continuous incremental improvement, where we identify and fix specific and well-defined issues with a large consensus of support from all stakeholders rather than strong-arming short-sighted and self-interested policies. Big-new ideas more often fail, as anyone who has been around knows. Understanding and embracing the constraints of our diverse leadership and membership is difficult and frustrating at times. *None of us get what we want*. These 5 individuals are long-term participants and contributors in the committee process and appreciate both the opportunities and limitations of the bureaucracy. I hate politics and bureaucracy and I'm not good at it either. I was blessed with 45 years in a partnership without these dynamics and where it was so much easier to get things done. The best directors are those with a large well of experience in community development, with diverse ideas and passion for implementing them, but also the ability to listen, support others, and compromise. It only takes one disruptive person to suck the oxygen and derail all progress.

If you read my reply to Davis, you would understand that directors don't have any mechanism to advance their ideas except through the committee process. That requires a lot of work, compromise, listening and consensus building. The people that I identified in my initial post are the only ones with committee experience. Beyond that, they *each* have many years of participation on multiple committees and had advanced to the leadership chair position based on the support of their peers, before I even became a director.

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Day two

Andrew "Andy" Hollidge|Babs King|competition|Dave Matthews|Gordon Rigg|Graham Phipps|Great British Aerotow Revival 2022|Jamie Shelden|Joe Bloggs|Johnny Carr|Justin Needham|Kathryn Cole|Ollie Moffatt|Paul Harvey|Ricardo Marques da Costa|Richard Lovelace|Steven "Steve" Blackler|Tim Swait

(Deenethorpe Airfield, Corby, UK)

«Kathryn Cole» writes:

The forecast has been suggesting that today might be the best day for the competition, and there was a palpable sense of anticipation in the air.

Briefing at 9:00am turned out to be relatively amusing as Steve Blacker collected his day prize for winning the first day of the competition he organised! In addition, Babs King gave a highly amusing summary of the text messages she had received from pilots the previous day. Apparently just texting "Joe Bloggs down safe" is incredibly hard for pilots desperate to let someone know that he made it to goal!! The Flyability kitty grew quite nicely thanks to a number of £5 "fines" for not following basic instructions.

The task was set. An 80km triangle for the flexwings and an ambitious 100km triangle for the rigids. Sport Class were tasked with and out and return of 40km.

Eager to get on with the days flying, and with not long until launch opened, the pilots began rigging in earnest on the day's allocated runway - which was even more crosswind than anticipated. As a result, meet head Jamie Shelden had to make the difficult call to relocate everyone to the cross runway. Begin the mad rush to move 50 odd gliders in various rigging states, trolleys, paraphernalia etc. Thanks to the sterling work of the volunteers everyone got moved across and back into a sensible launch order in record time.

Then the fun began of tugging up first the rigid pilots, followed by the flexi's. It was a boiling hot day, and with the rougher runway claiming a number of flat tyres and an engine getting a bit grumpy, we were down to two tugs at one point. The aptly named 'fun' tug decided it wanted to be renamed to 'not so fun' after all! All in all, 52 tows were achieved, with two pilots grabbing a relight.

Nine pilots from Class 1 made it to goal, with Dave Matthews, Gordon Rigg and Steven Blacker taking the podium. Other pilots in goal were Richard Lovelace, Johnny Carr, Graham Phipps, Justin Needham, Andy Hollidge and Ollie Moffatt. Special mention goes to Ollie who was one of the last pilots of the day to launch and still made it to goal, skimming in out of the sunset, landing well past 7pm!!

In Class 5, Paul Harvey and Ricardo Marques da Costa both made goal. Another four pilots made it more than 80km, nothing to be sniffed at with today's task!

None of the Sports Class pilots made goal but Tim Swait made it 31.4km taking the win for the day.

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Day one

Carl Wallbank|competition|Gordon Rigg|Great British Aerotow Revival 2022|Jamie Shelden|Johnny Carr|Justin Needham|Kathryn Cole|Neville Almond|Paul Harvey|Paul Leary|Steven "Steve" Blackler|Tony Smith

(Deenethorpe Airfield, Corby, UK)

«Kathryn Cole» writes:

Day 1 of the Great British Aerotow Revival competition at Deenethorpe! After all the usual "Hellos!" and friendly chat, Tony Smith and Steve Blackler opened the comp.

Jamie Shelden briefed the pilots on day ops, and Carl Wallbank briefed the pilots on the task- a race to anywhere: 50km out for Class 1, then back to 45km from the airfield; 55km out for Class 5 (rigids), then back to 45km to the airfield. Sport Class had to get to 45km from the airfield.

Steve Blackler took bragging rights for Class 1, followed by Gordon Rigg, then Justin Needham. Johnny Carr in 4^th place was the last flexwing in goal.

In Class 5, only Neville Almond and Paul Harvey made it to goal. No Sport Class pilots, made goal, but Paul Leary led a valiant effort, taking his Bautek Kite 20.43km.

We hope to fly again tomorrow - fingers crossed for another successful flying day!

Photos at: https://www.facebook.com/katycolehobbyphotography

I would say that there was no actual goal.

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/20151563.burgess-hill-man-72-wins-national-hang-gliding-competition/

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May 29^th - June 4^th

Canadian Nationals 2022|Jamie Shelden|Tyler Borradaile

Tyler Borradaile writes:

I am pleased to announce that Jamie Shelden and I will be hosting the Canadian national Hang Gliding championship this year out of Savona BC. May 29^th - June 4^th with May 28 set as a practice day.

Some quick details:

• $175 CDN entry
• Open and sports class
• foot launched
• Live trackers for scoring will be used
• Expecting to cap registration at 45 pilots (a number I think is attainable based on the interest I have received and the demand for us to host this contest)
• Primary launch will be Savona (Deadman’s), there is camping 2 km from the main landing area, plenty of accommodation and dining in Kamloops 22 km east of Savona.

I personally am very excited for this event, 2019 was a fantastic time with word of the good flying in the area spreading. With travel being a thing again, I expect this will be a very well attended contest so please sign up ASAP if you’d like to join us.

More information to come, I will post as soon as registration is set up, please also follow the Oz Report for updates.

I hope to see many of you soon.

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It's sunny in southern California and raining here in central Florida this week

Andy Jackson Flight Park|Jamie Shelden

Jamie Shelden flying at Andy Jackson Flight Park:

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Are the monsoons still here?

(Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, AZ, USA)

Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|photo

Jamie Shelden|photo|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

Photo by Jamie Shelden

Heavy rains today, the day before the start of the SCFR. Rain in the desert. Will the field be passable?

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

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42 pilots have registered

(Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, AZ, USA)

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Now, forty two pilots have registered for the SCFR including four Swift pilots, thirteen sport class pilots and twenty five open class pilots. To bring out two tugs from Wilotree Park, Jamie says that she needs to have forty two pilots registered and paid.

Thirty one pilots have paid. Eleven pilots haven't paid.

Jamie writes:

Entry Fees: The entry fee for the competition is $275 (does not include tow fees) if paid by August 1^st. After August 1^st, $375. Entry fees are required in full to complete your registration and to secure your entry.

So we'll probably know by August 1^st who is committed to coming to the SCFR. You might also want to make your room reservations.

She also writes:

We will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

Personally I think that there is a bit more flexibility and we could do okay with thirty or so pilots and actually with more than forty two, but those arrangements haven't been finalized yet. It depends, again, on how many pilots commit to coming and the tugs from Wilotree Park will definitely not come out unless forty two have committed.

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Race to Register and Pay

(Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, AZ, USA)

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

To secure your slot in the SCFR you need to register and pay Jamie Shelden at <<jamie>>. Just like the race for the first twenty four slots, there is now a race for the next eighteen with two pilots already secured and ten on the waiting list. But being on the waiting list means nothing. Crossing the finish line before others means getting in your payment of $275 before the number of pilots goes to eighteen paid in addition to the twenty four already confirmed.

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24 pilots confirmed, 25 pilots paid.

(Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, AZ, USA)

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Jamie has written previously:

We will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

I take that to mean that 18 (now 17) additional pilots need to register and pay before Jamie will call for the tugs from Wilotree Park. You pay by sending $275 to <<jamie>> after you register.

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Register and pay the entry fee ASAP

(Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, AZ, USA)

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/pilots

Check and see how many pilots are confirmed. On Monday morning there were 31 registered, but 42 need to be registered and paid to bring the tugs from Florida. Twenty two pilots were confirmed on Monday morning, so two "open" slots left.

See Jamie's requirements re registration and payment here: https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/info/details

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Registration to open on Friday

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-2021/info/details

Jamie says that registration will open on Friday, June 11^th at noon Pacific Daylight Time.

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Register and pay next week

April Mackin|COVID|Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021

"Jamie Shelden" <naughtylawyer> writes:

We're really happy to be organizing the Santa Cruz Flats Race again this September after a year off due to COVID. But, I wanted to explain the tug situation so everyone understands how registration and payment will work this year. Thanks to Sonora Wings, we have two dragonflies in Casa Grande. If we have no more than 22-24 pilots, we’ll be covered with these local dragonflies. However, if we have more than 24 pilots register, we will need to bring tugs from out of the area. This is where the issues start. Bob Bailey and April Mackin are able to transport two dragonflies from Florida via trailer. This requires removing the wings and carefully packing them into a trailer and driving them across the country to Casa Grande. Bob and April have done this nearly every year that we have held the event and we are eternally grateful. Here’s the hitch though: the cost of driving the trailer out to Arizona is the same if we put one tug or two tugs in it and that cost is extremely high. What this means is that it is only cost effective to pack up the trailer and bring 2 dragonflies. Bringing just one would make towing very very expensive.

So, we are in a situation where we can have either two or four dragonflies at the Santa Cruz Flats Race, but not three. If we have 42 people register, pay and commit to attend, all is great. But, if we have only 30, the tow fees to each pilot would be prohibitively expensive. With this in mind, it is critical that pilots register, pay registration fees and commit to participate no later than one month before the start of the competition.

When registration opens in about a week, we will initially accept only 24 pilots and they will be accepted in the order of payment of registration fees. If we fill up with 24 paid participants, additional pilots will only be accepted after we have at least 18 more (for a total of 42) confirmed. Once a total of 42 pilots have registered, we can then accept all 42 and confirm the tugs from Florida once all 42 pilots have paid their registration fees.

I realize this is complicated, but we don’t want to wait until the week before the competition starts to determine how much tow fees will be and we don’t want to risk having more than 24, but fewer than 42 pilots because that would make tow fees in excess of $550/person.

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Why did it suck so bad on Airtribune?

Crestline XC Classic 2021|Jamie Shelden

«Jamie Shelden» asked Brett at Airtribune:

I wonder if you were able to look into the trackers we were using last weekend? We had a lot of issues with them, but they were strange ones. On each of the three days of the event, Airtribune showed incorrect and inconsistent information. For example, on day one, for the entire task all pilots were listed as “landed”, despite the “distance to goal” decreasing as they flew.

On day three, the two leading pilots showed at the bottom of the leader board as if they hadn’t left the start for the entire task. However, when you clicked on the track for either of those pilots, you could see that they were flying the course. By the time I thought to actually check their tracks, it showed their breadcrumb trails for the entire course, hitting all the waypoints, etc., but at the same time, it still showed them in last place on the leader board. So, while the trackers seemed to work ok for scoring purposes, they were kind of useless for spectator or monitoring purposes. Any thoughts on what went wrong or how we can fix this? We’re hoping to run the same event again in September, but I want to be sure the trackers will work properly before we commit to using them again.

Brett responds:

I just watched the replay, and it all looks correct to me. Zac and Bruce are showing as in goal.

The fact that the trackers worked for the scoring shows that there is nothing wrong with the trackers. The problem is with Airtribune, and how a leader board is created.

Leader boards are only an indication. They will never be accurate. Ever. You need to understand how the technology works to see why.

Firstly, the trackers are just mobile phones. They only work when they have phone signal. At cloudbase they rarely work. To help with this, Flymaster add a 4 minute delay before releasing the data, to give the trackers a chance to forward the data, if the pilot re-acquires signal in the meantime. Airtribune then adds a further 2 minutes, for a similar issue, but also related to data being taken from multiple sources and needing mixing. So everything is delayed by 6 minutes. (Unless you use XCguide, where things are live. But that is for organisers to run safety, not for spectators.)

Next you have the issue of scoring formulas. Airtribune cannot hope to replicate all the formulas. And the very first one it falls foul of is the tolerance. What tolerance did the scoring software have? 0.5%? So maybe those two pilots jumped the gun. Scoring would allow this if it is within the tolerance, Airtribune would not as it has no tolerencing. You could teach Airtribune this by altering the cylinder sizes, but that requires maths. But in this instance, I don't think it was that. But there are numerous other reasons why it could have failed in the moment. Maybe Airtribune received data that indicated they had taken off, then landed, then taken off again. Maybe the trackers were still obtaining GPS lock. Hard to say without some detailed research. But the data is not available to me to do that any more because after the scoring was done, the scorer, rightly, uploaded the Scored tracklogs to Airtribune, as created by the Scoring software (FScomp?). This is the correct thing to do because the Scoring software cleans up the tracks, and clips them to only the relevant lengths, ie from SSS to LandByTime/Goal/Landing. When these are uploaded to Airtribune, post task, then Airtribune removes the live data and puts the scored data in its place and recreates the replay. In this case, it seems to have resolved whatever the issue is/was.

Next year we plan on integrating the new Live Scoring system, Airscore or similar, so this will become a whole lot better. For the moment, I can't hope to invest the time that it takes to make Airtribune a live scoring system. This is why for my own events I rely on the PWC's Leader board, as Ulric created an excellent output from the scoring system to create a live leader board that is truly live (it even uses a back door to the Flymaster server to bypass the 6 minute data delays). But this isn't something we can recommend as it also needs a lot of management.

So for the moment, all I can say is the Trackers appear to have worked perfect. Airtribune handled it as best it could, and the uploading of the tracks after the task created the correct replay.

What you can do, to help reduce the clutter from multiple servers trying to process and display live data is give a link to the Flymaster leaderboard instead of the Airtribune one. It often does a little better as it works exclusively from the trackers, whereas Airtribune also refers to iOS, Android, Spots etc, and mixes that data in. It helps in some places, but can cause problems in other areas.

I hope there is something in that to help.

My response:

Do not use Airtribune for Live Tracking. The problem here is that Jamie wasn't able to connect the FlyMaster trackers with the FlyMaster Live Tracking web site. I am unaware of what the problem was for her, but have again pointed out that this is the solution.

Use Airtribune for replay (Not Live Tracking) as the FlyMaster tracking web site is terrible for replay.

Jamie has an iPhone, so she is not familiar with XCGuide. XCGuide is by far the best app to use if you are the meet director and want to keep track of your pilots during the task.

We never use the Leader Board for the reasons that Brett points out.

Setting up Live Tracking for a competition is not a trivial exercise and I'm sure that it was not clear to Jamie that Airtribune is not to be used for Live Tracking, but using Airtribune to set the trackers to each pilot is an immense help in scoring.

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I truly hope that Jamie is serious about organizing the SCFR

Jamie Shelden

I look forward to her article encouraging pilots to come to the competition in Casa Grande. I love flying there, even when the conditions are weak. She needs forty pilots to sign up and pay for the competition before she can have tugs brought out from Florida. Jamie told me that half the pilots who originally signed up for the Crestline competition backed out. Other than the Santa Cruz Flats Race pilots in the west and on the west coast other than a few standouts like Zac, Phil, Bruce, Owen, and a few others who come to Texas or Florida, have not been supporting competition nor organizing them for years now. Jamie came in and did it for them (with lots of help).

I did not write anything negative about the organizers of the competition, because there was no reason to complain about all the good work that they did to put on this competition.

The day after the competition:

So high that you can't tell who is who.

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Had a great time

Jamie Shelden|Crestline XC Classic 2021

https://OzReport.com/1622565472

«Jamie Shelden» writes:

Well, I’m really sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy the Crestline XC Classic. Those of us who were actually there, very much did enjoy it, so much so that we will likely do it again in September. With the tremendous support and sponsorship of the Crestline Soaring Society, Cross Country Ranch and Hangar 24 Brewery, we all thought it was a great time…great enough to do again soon. Of course, conditions were not as good as any of us would have hoped for, but as you know, we can’t control the weather and we can’t even always count on an incredibly consistent flying site to deliver perfect weather. We could only work with what we were given and what we were given was challenging conditions that tested different flying skills than you are probably accustomed to.

As for the trackers, I’m trying to find out from Airtribune what went wrong with them. I know the cell coverage in that area isn’t fantastic, but that doesn’t account for the strange inaccuracies and inconsistencies of the Leader board and other aspects of the tracking interface we all saw on Airtribune.

Just for your amusement, I’ve attached a really cool photo of Rob & Diane McKenzie.Rob was the launch director at the Crestline XC Classic. This is a fun shot of them doing a tandem above the “Regionals” launch. The reason they call is “Regionals” is because for years they held regional competitions there - that’s where we got the Crestline XC Classic name from.

Finally, I have been on the fence about organizing the Santa Cruz Flats Race again this year. No one knows better than you what a huge and time consuming job it is to organize hang gliding competitions that are not just unremunerated, but often end up costing me money. As for your comment “maybe this is why we don’t have competitions in the west anymore”, I have to say that the lack of competitions in the west and elsewhere is not the result of a weekend of less than ideal weather conditions at Crestline. It could more likely be the result of stories like the one you just published. With respect to the Santa Cruz Flats Race, you may have just tipped the scales for me.

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Jamie Shelden is going back to Casa Grande

Jamie Shelden|Risk Retention Group|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2021|USHPA

The competition will be held September 19^th through the 25^th. The USHPA and the RRRG consider Jamie to be a worthy and reliable meet organizer.

Be prepared for high rental car rates and airlines making up for pandemic era loses.

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Every Day Since the Competition Ended

Maybe it will rain tomorrow

Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

This is what the sky has looked like every day since the Wilotree Park Nationals ended on April 25^th:

The cu's started forming at 9:30 AM.

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Task 4, the last day

Attila Plasch|Bobby Bailey|Butch Peachy|competition|Davis Straub|Derrick Turner|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Leonardo Ortiz|Moyes Litespeed RX|PG|Robin Hamilton|Tim Delaney|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

The Replay: https://airtribune.com/play/5021/2d

It was a difficult day to end a meet that proved to have difficult days. The day started with a little bit of rain as a thin line of thunderstorms brushed by, then dark skies for a few hours which made the prospects of staying up seem remote, then after 2 PM the sky started to open up, the clouds went away and we had a blue day. The wind was out of the west but not nearly as strong as all the models as well as the National Weather Service predicted with not so strong gust factors either.

Yes, Derrick, Willy Dydo, and Alan Arcos took off and only Derrick was able to stay up for a good while before landing. The task committee then changed the task to an open window. Pilots were very reluctant to get going while there were start gates because they feared getting blown out of the 5 km start cylinder with weak lift and strong winds (those were forecast at least).

Pilots kept hesitating which is why we changed to task to make it so there would not be a penalty for leaving the start cylinder, but finally they started launching after 3:30 PM, and I was able to get pulled up by Bobby Bailey at 4:06 PM. It was the best tow I've every had from him as I insisted that he tow me straight up wind and do not do any turns. With the wind still seeming to be strong I wanted to get upwind as far as possible and he took me as far as Osborn field.

We had been in lift it seemed and I found 300 fpm right off tow. I was all alone and could not see any other pilots so I was completely happy to be turning at a radius that maximized my climb rate without having to look after other pilot's circling. That did not last long. Bruce immediately came over to me, just above me and JD just below so at least they were not a bother. Then Zac and Robin, but again Robin was below and Zac up with Bruce, but it was starting to get crowded. At least no one else was at my altitude. Bruce was 60 feet above me.

The wind was only 12 mph out of the west, so all the scary forecasts about 22 mph at 2,000' were not the case and I wondered why the pilots who had gone up earlier reported strong winds and kept us on the ground.

Alan Arcos, Derrick Turner and John Simon joined the thermal and things got very choppy. You can see the result of going in and out of the core on the SeeYou altitude graph. We quit going up for a few minutes then slowly climbed to 3,600'.

Following Zac we all headed southwest into a 17 mph west wind. We found it a bit to everyone else's east and nine pilots came together to bother each other in another weak thermal (100 fpm). I was only able to climb to 2,700' before JD and John Simon lead out and headed southwest again.

They found weak lift just west of highway 33 at 1,400' I came in at 700' and wasn't willing to stay under them for more than one turn not finding anything. There was a very inviting field to the north a little and I landed there followed soon by Alan Arcos and Butch Peachy.

After that it was only six pilots left in the air and slowly Robin, Zac and Bruce had them drop out below them. Zac and Robin were able to make it a total of 30 kilometers down the course line landing near the mines north of Wallaby Ranch.

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 4:

Finals:

Sport Class Final Results (they didn't fly on the last day):

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2771828

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/25.4.2021/20:06

Pedro and Tyler collide while thermaling

CIVL|collision|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Below you will see frames of the period just before and at the time of the collision taken every two seconds from their track log files. You can make your own interpretation of who should have done what to avoid this incident. Tyler is the red glider (978) and Pedro the blue one (969). I have left the pictures at their original size as taken on my computer.

Be aware that at launch Pedro's instrument measured 140' and Tyler's measured 120' of elevation (GPS altitude). Therefore the altitudes displayed in these frames could easily be off from each other by 20' (or more) or not at all.

You can make your own interpretation of what you see here. Note the different climb rates between the two gliders. Both gliders were flying after the collision and both pilots followed the CIVL section 7 rule: "A competitor involved in a collision in the air must not continue the flight if the structural integrity of his glider is in doubt."

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

We don't go that great up wind when it is windy

Dragonfly|Larry Bunner|PG|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Dragonfly|Larry Bunner|Naviter Blade|PG|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

Replay of the task: https://airtribune.com/play/5020/2d

On Friday, after a delay to move the start box to the west side of the east/west runway we had the first start window at 3 PM. Launch went smoothly for the open class, but there were further delays for the Sport Class.

I had a galloping tow behind Mick Howard in his 582 2-cycle powered (under powered) Dragonfly and when the rope went completely slack at 1,600' and we both went sideways, him to the right, me to the left, I pulled the release, but the weaklink (200 lbs.) broke at the same time and the bridle went for an unexpected flight into a small pond. We had just been in 400 fpm so it was easy to turn around and start climbing.

Half a dozen pilots were soon at cloud base which was over 4,000'. There were plenty of cu's and they were all working and you just had to be careful about the 11 mph southeast wind and not let it blow you too far outside the 5 km start cylinder. I was able to start at 3:04 PM as I watched the count down on the Naviter Blade and listen to its messages about when to get to the edge of the start window. It seemed to know exactly when to go.

With a strong southeast wind we were racing over the ground at almost 50 mph. There were multiple cu's ahead so little worry about finding lift. The first turnpoint was downwind to Center Hill.

With everyone in the first thermal along the course line we were going up at 400 fpm on average to 4,900'. After touching the turnpoint at Center Hill we headed north toward the 15 km turnpoint cylinder around Dallas, a waypoint at the northwest corner of the Villages. The waypoint had been expanded to account for the delay at launch.

It was 12 km to the next thermal from the previous one with a 17:1 glide ratio. A 300 fpm climb rate and then the next thermal just northwest of the prisons and south of the Turnpike at 400+ fpm to 4,900' before heading for and tagging the Dallas turnpoint just on the south edge of the Villages.

Now we had to turn into the wind and things did not go as well. The lift miraculously got much weaker with a climb of 100 fpm and then a little less than 200 fpm over a lake on the north side of the Turnpike with a 13 mph east southeast wind. About a dozen pilots were all in the lead gaggle just north of the Turnpike.

I left the thermal at 3,800'. We were getting to almost 5,000' just a few minutes earlier. Now we weren't getting as high as we would like heading into the east southeast wind. The half dozen gliders above me headed a little more southerly as I headed right down the Turnpike trying to get upwind of the course line back to Wilotree Park. Zac was heading that way also as there were good looking clouds in that direction and a lot fewer clouds south of the Turnpike.

The back and forth had begun. I found 230 fpm 4 km to the east and climbed to 4,300', then went east again and climbed to 4,500' at 150fpm with Larry Bunner. Heading toward the better looking clouds north of the Turnpike I was able to gain a total of 8 km to the east and get upwind of the course line but I was now down to 2,700' and not finding anything.

I saw Larry turning back behind me and turned around to see if I could get up in that thermal. That cost me half the distance I had gained and I found only weak lift that I'm able to use to climb to 2,500'. Larry got to 4,000' and flew to the south southeast landing soon there after.

I hooked up with Maria Garcia in the light lift and after topping out we headed south east toward the east west road for a safe landing with good retrieval. Down to 900' AGL we found a little spot of lift and started turning in an extremely pleasant climb. We climbed at 80 fpm and then I noticed Tavo Gutierrez circling below us just south of the highway and went over to him to find almost 200 fpm. I climbed to 3,800' over the prisons losing 4 km.

Topping out I headed east down the highway toward highway 48 and along the Turnpike toward a good looking cloud but found a net pf no gain at 1,000'. I should have just kept going, but I turned around and landed in a friendly field to the west. The lift was negative on the upwind side of the cloud. Retrieval from the Turnpike was not as easy as from the surface roads, but it was possible.

Pilots were scattered about in this area except for Bruce, Zac and Robin who while also had to do back and forths were able to get further south and a lot closer to Wilotree Park.

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/23.4.2021/18:23

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/2768418

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Results from Task 3

competition|Davis Straub|Gary Anderson|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Larry Bunner|Moyes Litespeed RX|Raul Guerra|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

Replay of the task: https://airtribune.com/play/5020/2d

Results: https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 3:

Cumulative:

Results from Task 2

competition|Davis Straub|John Simon|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Willy Dydo|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

The forecast for the day:

How is Thursday different from Wednesday?

The wind shifts from northwest to northeast.

Day starts off sunny.

Be aware of the lake effect where Lake Apopka suppresses the lift just to our east and over us.

Winds are lighter at 4 PM (about half the wind speeds on Wednesday).

There will be a high pressure centered on the Florida/Georgia border.

Six degree lower surface temperatures and lower high temperature for the day, 79 vs. 84.

NWS:

Thursday

Sunny, with a high near 80. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.

Hourly forecast for the afternoon: Northeast surface winds at 9 mph decreasing to 7 mph, cloud cover 7% dropping to 4% by 4 PM.

https://www.wunderground.com/maps/surface-analysis/24hr

Shows cold front in Miami at 2 PM tomorrow, clear skies to the north.

HRRR

1 PM:

Northeast surface wind at 1 PM: 9 mph, 2000' 11 mph

TOL at 1 PM: 3,300'

Updraft Velocity at 1 pm: 440 fpm

CB at 1 PM: 3,300'

B/S at 1 PM: 3.4

Cloud cover 7%

4 PM

Northeast surface wind at 4 PM: 7 mph, 2000' 9 mph

TOL at 4 PM: 3,800'

Updraft Velocity at 4 PM: 460 fpm

CB at 4 PM: 0'

B/S at 4 PM: 5.6

Cloud cover 9%

Skew-T:

1 PM:

TOL: 3,200'

Temperature: 56 degrees at TOL (73 on the surface)

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 2:

Cumulative:

Eleven Sport Class pilots made goal with Attila winning the day and he is first overall afater two tasks. See results at link above.

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Results from Task 2

Butch Peachy|competition|Konrad Heilmann|Moyes Litespeed RX|Robin Hamilton|Tyler Borradaile|Wills Wing T3|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021|Zac Majors

https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/results

Task 1:

2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Rain on day two, but blue on day three

Task 1:

Zac and Tyler way far in the lead.

Tyler and then Zac first and second for the day. All other pilots who are in the air are 40 km behind.

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2021 Wilotree Park Nationals

Rain

It cleared up around 3 PM, but didn't show much prospects of lift then. We went for a bike ride, https://www.strava.com/activities/5156726742.

Good chance of rain on Tuesday then things clear up on Wednesday.

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Amazing Grace in the Age of Covid

Ron Kittredge

Covid|COVID|Jamie Shelden|John Bilsky|Mike Holl|Paul Allen|Paul Voight|Rob Kells|Ryan Voight|sailplane|triangle

Steve Houser <<shouser>> writes:

For every season there is a purpose under heaven. So it tells us in Ecclesiastes. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.

Ron Kittredge was not a religious man, though he had no objection to those who are. His spiritual nature, though, was hardly suppressed, manifested as it was in his enthusiastic embrace of nature in any way it could be experienced. Foremost in that expression of passionate energy was his love for hang gliding. He loved also to hike, to ski, to fish, scuba dive, paddle, and motorcycle. He preferred a campfire or a good book (Larry McMurtry or Mark Twain) to a television. Knowing the wildflowers, trees, plants and animals, and how they were interwoven, was important to him. He enjoyed mowing the grass and fields on his property where he had built his second home and raised his two children, Anna and Steen, with his wife Katharine. Chopping wood was a common part of his fitness routine.

But those all frequently had to wait their turn when the wind was blowing out of the northwest. That’s when you would likely find him at Harris Hill in upstate New York, just outside of Elmira. It was his favorite flying site. And it was there, on a hot and L/V day, July 25, 2020, that family, friends, and fellow pilots gathered to honor his memory and to celebrate the gift that his life was to so many of them. On that day, still in mourning, we chose to laugh and to dance.

I started hang gliding in 1974 and I met Ron in 1984 when he first began lessons under local instruction. His progress was smooth and steady…and fast. I spent a lot of time with him in the training days, passing on what knowledge I could. It did not take long for him to absorb all that I and other mentoring pilots had to offer before he became an even more reliable source for mentoring newer pilots than we had ever been. Our regional director, Paul Voight, remembers him this way. “Ron and I were friends for almost 4 decades…albeit we didn’t actually see each other for long lapses sometimes, due to proximity. Ron was a fantastic, enthusiastic pilot, and a really good mentor to newer pilots. He had a trustworthy demeanor and a knowledge base to back it up. I remember him missing flying time on several occasions, paying attention to inquisitive new pilots’ questions and helping them with glider tuning. The pilot community will surely miss him on the hill.” There are at least a dozen pilots in upstate NY who could have penned a similar message about Ron. He had flown nearly every site in the state, from Ellenville westward to Binghamton, Syracuse, Elmira and Rochester. Sites in Pennsylvania and New England were also included in the hundreds of hours of airtime logged by him. Ron emphasized safety in his approach to the sport. None of his fellow pilots could recall a single serious accident or incident in all his years of flying. There was no broken or bent metal in his storage shed.

Ron died on June 18. In February he had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Chemo was attempted but failed. Other treatment modalities were explored but none were viable. He remained relatively active up until the last couple of weeks, taking daily excursions for coffee and exploring the surrounding state forests and parks with his wife Kathy. At his memorial, Kathy commented that in those final days he had taken them on some seriously treacherous mountain roads and trails and in so doing, had even turned “getting coffee” into an extreme sport.

Planning a funeral in the time of covid seemed an unlikely possibility. Funeral homes at the time were limiting services to 8-10 people. Kathy knew that that would not satisfy the large number of family, friends, customers and recreational pals that Ron had amassed over the years. She asked instead for help in having a day of memory at Harris Hill. That hatched the plan, with sensitivity to covid related concerns, that came to fruition on that sunny Saturday. In the meantime, word went out among the flying community about his passing, and the regrets, expressions of sadness and loss, condolences and kindnesses began pouring in. A fund was established to purchase a memorial bench and the contributions quickly mounted to well above what would be needed. It will sit to the side of launch facing the inviting view that every pilot gets to experience when standing in takeoff at Harris Hill.

In some ways we were fortunate. Free Spirit Flight Hang Gliding club owns the 5-acre set up and launch area at Harris. In recent months there have been far too many families and friends nationwide who have not had the opportunity to say farewell to a loved one in a meaningful manner. We were able to create a proper and safe social distancing environment in which to gather and express our thoughts and feelings about a valued husband, father, pilot and friend.

Canopies were set up in the tree shaded western end of the property. Masks, gloves, wipes and hand sanitizer were available at a sanitizing station located between the tables holding a picture board and other mementos of Ron’s life and the table for the guest book commentaries. Attendees respectfully maintained social distancing as they took turns at each of the tables. People brought their own chairs and picnic lunches and parking was no problem at all for the 70 plus who attended, half of whom were active or former hang glider pilots. Harris Hill has hosted a national fly-in and other flying related activities, but this was the largest crowd the site had ever seen.

Club President Jim Kolynich’s assembled WW Falcon was the backdrop to each speaker as stories of the phases of his life were told. His wife, his sister Julie Smith, and his daughter Anna recounted his family life. There was his childhood friend and best man at this wedding. Coworkers and partners from his successful career as a contractor reported on the quality of his work and his concern for his customers and their appreciation for and loyalty to him. I spoke on behalf of the flying community. It was clear from each of the testimonials/eulogies that Ron had left a meaningful impression in every arena of his life. While I was speaking, hang glider/sailplane pilot Jamie McGuire, having towed up from the Harris Hill glider port east of our launch, buzzed overhead, tipping a wing in tribute. His timing couldn’t have been better.

Pilots then stepped into launch and took turns releasing some of his ashes into the gentle updraft as part of their personal goodbyes. His daughter then spread some onto the hillside. All the while a friend of Kathy’s sang Amazing Grace. Not a dry eye in the place.

As if the sky Gods themselves had been waiting patiently for the ceremonies to end, the windsock began to flutter, and light cycles began to drift into launch. And so, to make the day even more perfect, family and friends who had never seen what Ron so loved to do, got treated to over a dozen launches and short soaring flights of hang and para gliders. With that, the mood shifted to one of joy and gratitude, that we could come together and say goodbye and love on one another and be more a part of what Ron loved to do. He would have liked that.

When I left Harris at around 5:30PM, many attendees were staying to visit and catch a glimpse of any further flying that would occur. On the hour-long drive home, my thoughts drifted not only to Ron but to the good fortune we in upstate New York have had in not only the development of some quality flying sites, but to the quality of pilots we have produced. I thought of Ed Jowett, Ron’s near constant flying companion over the past decade and a half. How he will miss his friend! I thought of how much Ed contributed to making Ron’s memorial happen. There are names the flying community will not recognize or remember, the guys who got landowner permission to use their property, that wielded saws and blades to cut out launch slots and maintain them, that discovered early on the hazards of 360’s too close to the treetops. Some have passed on. I thought of Dave Black and of Bob Murphy, and Mike Holl, early pioneers who are no longer with us. I thought of Rob Kells and Dick Reynolds and the energy they infused into the upstate flying community. I thought of Jay Gianforte and his contribution to harness design and improvement, not to mention his flying skills. There is Linda Salamone from the Rochester area, a one-time national women’s champion and competition pilot. I could never forget Paul Allen, now of the Idaho flying community, who also fledged in upstate New York. Dan Walter showed many of us the altitude and cross-country potential of our sites. Still does. Jack Slocum did over 175 miles from Hammondsport to north of Philadelphia. They were also the ones who showed up for the work parties and made sure the sites were maintained and safe for the newcomers and the rest of us.

The loss of instruction over last several years has stalled the growth of the sport in upstate NY, but there is still some new blood to carry on the passion and helpful tradition of pilots like Ron. I think of Ryan Voight out of Ellenville, of Dave Koehn in the Catskills, of John Bilsky in northern Pa. Rochester Area Flyers continues to make efforts to produce new pilots and teaching continues at Susquehanna Flight Park outside of Cooperstown.

So, while the numbers may have dwindled, the passion hasn’t, nor the willingness to help and encourage those who are new to the sport, much as we saw from Ron. Some of us have contributed more than others but we have all shared the spiritual experience of being truly in the moment that hang gliding brings. Ron was the best of us, ever reminding us to be better people, not simply better pilots.

The week after Ron’s memorial, Dave Koehn enjoyed a 52-mile triangle out and return flight from Mt. Utsayantha, an amazing feat in our neck of the woods. Paul Allen once told me he thought a 25 miler in the northeast was like a 50-60 miler out west. He would know. He’s done both. Dave emailed me privately after the flight and said, “on my way [flying] back from Grand Gorge, I thought about Ron, so in a way, it wasn’t just me up there.” How better to honor the best of us.

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We almost lost it

COVID|Facebook|Oz Report|Paradise Airsports Nationals 2021|Wilotree Park|Wilotree Park Nationals 2021

You might have noticed that it's been a tough year for most of us. Hang gliding continued without many competitions which would have lead to gatherings which were either frowned upon or completely forbidden by the authorities. Here in Florida we continued life outside where it is is 19 times safer (https://bestlifeonline.com/coronavirus-indoors/). Due to travel restrictions we canceled the Sport Class, Rigid Wing and Women's Worlds as well as all the Nationals competitions. Same for Big Spring.

Now a year later we are planning for the 2021 Paradise Airsports and Wilotree Park Nationals in April to be run under COVID protocols with continued international travel restrictions: https://airtribune.com/2021-paradise-airsports-nationals/info and https://airtribune.com/2021-wilotree-park-nationals/info.

During the year of crises mode we also decided to move to a new web server to reduce our costs. This transition has not been without numerous glitches as the Oz Report is a complex web site. For example, yesterday the host automatically updated PHP which caused all sorts of problems for Scare. Hopefully over time the situation will stabilize.

At one point we considered just going strictly on Facebook which would relieve us of all the web hosting issues (the high cost being the primary concern). We also were getting most of our content via Facebook posts, so it made sense to go to our Facebook version of the Oz Report.

This would mean that we would drop our email push of Oz Report issues. Also, those who find Facebook objectionable would no longer get to see our content. After a few disappointing experiments we decided to leave well enough alone. There is a Facebook version of the Oz Report and a stand-alone version. Sometimes content from the Facebook version comes over to the stand-alone version.

You can just go to the Oz Report on Facebook and ignore your news feed: https://www.facebook.com/ozreport

We don't know where things stand with our readers. We've decided not to publish every weekday unless there is news every weekday. Before it was publish or perish five days a week for 24 years. Now we are taking a bit more relaxed attitude and publishing when something interesting is happening, and hopefully with a new year and good changes to our pandemic situation coming, there will be more interesting things happening.

Thanks to all the Oz Report readers for their support over the years.

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New USHPA President

Steven Pearson

Jamie Shelden|Risk Retention Group|Steven "Steve" Pearson|USHPA

The USHPA BOD just elected Jamie Shelden and Matt Taber to the board. They also elected new officers, Steven Pearson as the President, Matt Tabor as the Vice President, Bill Hughes (the competition committee chairman) as Treasurer (a position that Mark Forbes held for many years) and Jamie as Secretary.

I would qualify that as a huge reform if not a revolution.

Steve has for years pressed the case for supporting small flight schools. We know that they have been severely impacted by the self insurance issues.

I ask all Oz Report readers to send Steve a note of congratulations and please send him any ideas about what you want to see from the USHPA and the RRRG.

<director02>

https://www.ushpa.org/bio/board?ID=137706

https://www.ushpa.org/page/board-of-directors

The Class 1 Worlds in 2021?

The Sport Class Worlds have already been cancelled

CIVL|COVID|Jamie Shelden|Stéphane Malbos

When we were discussing the changes in the nominal organizer of the 2021 Sport Class Worlds, we received the following possible proposals as relayed by Stephan Mentler, the new organizer:

I just finished a long conversation with Jamie. The CIVL board is having a virtual meeting tomorrow (we are welcome to attend). Jamie let me know that CIVL will not approve the 2021 Worlds with me as organizer. Even with her in the meet director role. This is due to their rules regarding a change of organization team requiring a new bid. My lack of experience just compounds the issue. Additionally, they are expressing doubt that the COVID travel restrictions between Europe and the U.S. will have eased enough to support it. Having said that - there are a couple of options:

1. Davis gets sucked back into the organization team with Jamie as meet director, me as the official organizer understudy. We set a drop dead date of February 1 for either lifting of COVID travel restrictions or established government plans to lift restrictions (e.g. on January 30^th Italy announces that they will permit unfettered travel to and from the U.S. without quarantine requirements). If there is no lifting of restrictions or planned lift as of February 1, the event gets cancelled.

2. We reapply and do another Sport Class pre-worlds. Jamie is meet director again. And I lean on Davis as necessary to get things working for a World Championship in 2022 - which means Jamie and I are committed for the next two years.

We felt that the likelihood of being able to run a Worlds in April 2021 given the likelihood of continued travel restrictions was pretty small, so we opted for the second alternative, which it turns out wasn't actually being offered by CIVL. (We still have the option of applying for the 2022 Sport Class Worlds.)

You might note that the organizers of the 2021 Class 1 (and Class 5) Worlds still think that they are going to be able to run their competition next year, https://hgworlds2021.mk/

Here is what Stef Malbos, CIVL President, has to say about that:

In fact, we doubt that any Cat 1 will be able to take place before Q4 and so doubt the FAI Medical Commission.

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Vermont State Paragliding Distance Record

120.9 km

Facebook|Jamie Shelden|PG|photo|record|Steve Kroop|USHPA

Calef Letorney writes:

After a half dozen years trying, yesterday I set the Vermont State Paragliding Distance Record at 120.9km with a 5:10 flight. When I first set my sights on it, the record was only 65km. It's been broken a handful of times since and I was always just behind the new record. The record has been held by pilot friends from the UK, Massachusetts, Mexico, Germany, and Russia and secretly the local pilots mused that a Vermonter needs to set the Vermont record at least once.

The flight was an emotional roller coaster as I landed thinking I had it, but 15 minutes later I learned Andrey Kuznetsov, the Cosmonaut (previous record holder at 110km), had gone further, landing 40 miles East. So close, but at least I had smashed my personal record.

It was not until midnight that Andrey loaded his track log and messaged to congratulate me. He had broken his record and gone 116km, but 30 minutes after he landed I landed at 120.9 km. The record is mine (for now).

What a wild day. I've never seen so many pilots at Burke. We were SUPER excited to have Isabella Messenger and Jamie Messenger flying tandems for Paraglide New England for the first time. So honored to have these pros on the team.

They took a bunch of my new solo students out flying to introduce them to the mountains and teach them further about paragliding. Later in the day they had a "little glass off flight" of 50km. 

And, of course, Andrey Kuznetsov did a morning tandem too before his big flight.

On the mid day flight, I had a tricky start and missed the first wave of pilots leaving XC. Then 25 KM in I was in PERFECT position with Bianca Heinrich, Eduardo Garza, Tim Coleman, and Dan Deleo, the gaggle I wanted to be team flying with when I rushed off and made a mistake.

All of a sudden I was alone in 700fpm sink scrambling for a landing zone. Womp, womp. The gaggle (correctly) left me for dead (metaphorically speaking), but I fought back up wind to spot where I thought I might find a thermal and got a save below 1,000'.

It took 2 tries and 30 minutes of patience to get up and out again. By then I was all alone,  so I just took my time and stayed high for the next 100km. High and slow is fast.

Throughout the whole flight I knew if I wanted a record, I had to go west of the Class D airspace around Hartford, NH, so I was always pushing west every chance I could get. In the end, all that working west (into the west component of the northwest wind) paid off as I was in perfect position to get around the airspace and get the record.

We had 7 pilots break 100 km yesterday, all of which would have been a record three months ago: Eduardo, Tom, Bianca, Tim, Andrey, Taru Fly, and I. What a day.

And it would not have been possible without the community effort. This route has a big class E extension to class D airspace sticking out into it, which we previously thought we could not go through. But Bianca, Tom, and Alek Jadkowski did a bunch of research which I pushed up to USHPA and Martin Palmaz got clarification from the FAA that a Drone exception also applies to us.

The last piece of the puzzle was Steve Kroop at Flytec USA (Naviter importer) worked with Naviter to get their Oudie instrument updated to show the airspaces all correctly, so we confidently plowed through the class E and I dodged around the much smaller Class D airspace at the end with 180 meters to spare (The Oudie 4 instrument displays this all so well) before blasting downwind on final glide.

Of course, the flight is only half the adventure as getting home is the other half. I landed with mild hypothermia, 2+ hours drive from my car.

I jogged a bit with all my layers on to warm up and get to a busy road where I pulled out my trusty "glider pilot landed, needs ride" sign and quickly got a ride to the highway. There the signs worked again and Liviu Victor Rusu picked me up as he just happened to be on his way home from Morningside Flight Park. He was headed to a Tesla charger in the right direction and he was super kind to treat me to sushi and hot tea while the dead batteries charged. From there Bianca and Eduardo picked me up and got me north to Saint J, where I met the real heroes of the day, Sarah Robinson and Petunia who I'd abandoned with the truck and completely unpacked adventure trailer on top of Burke.

Big thanks to AJ Siebel who had earlier gone back up the mountain to help helping Sarah hook up the trailer and do a bit of 4x4 to get back to the road.

Super happy to be flying that Gin Camino! What a lovely wing! And that was my 3^rd flight on the new Woody Valley GTO Light 2 harness. Love it, she's a keeper. Photos by Sarah Robinson, Tim Coleman, and Taru, because I was too cold to take my hands off the controls and take photos.

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It's hard to set a record

Willy Dydo gives it a try

Jamie Shelden|Owen Morse|record|video

Jamie Shelden|Owen Morse|record|video|Willy Dydo

Flytec 6030|Jamie Shelden|Owen Morse|record|video|Willy Dydo

Scot Huber writes:

I heard it through the grape vine. It costs nearly $1000 to get your world record recorded. At least this is what Willy Dydo told me Owen Morse told him it costs. I was there the day Willy looked like he would beat Owens record.

Owen and Jamie showed up at the finish point at Bartlett below Walts Point. Apparently the New York Times sent a photographer out that day to get some shots of Owen flying his wing. Willy had talked to them at launch that morning so they knew his radio frequency and his intentions.

He had reported being at 16k and having an 8/1 glide on his 6030 to finish the task, maybe 20 minutes earlier.

I was resting that day after going 200+ the day before trying to break the open distance record, but wanted to be there if Willy made it. To take some video and record his accomplishment.

When Owen and Jamie drove in myself and Jay, Willy's buddy and driver that day, were in the lower LZ talking and listening to the radio.

The look of anxiety and apprehension on Owen's face when he said , "he is going to make it, isn't he " were priceless. I said I don't think so, as the wind was about 12 mph out of the south/south east and I knew where Willy had sent his radio communication from, and there was no way in my experience that he had the altitude to get in.

He soon came on and informed us he was landing south east of Lone Pine near the 136 Hwy. He had done a 222 mile out and return, but having gone out 3 miles further then Owen had, was now 6 miles short of closing the task.

Owen and Jamie had big smiles and I just had a big grin inside of the whole episode. That Owen is dating Jamie and she is on the rules committee just adds more flavor to the mix.

I don't have any intention of paying anyone to get my name in a record book. I fly hang gliders for the joy of being in the sky, and pushing the limits. Politics and payments are a disgrace to the freedom and joy of flight.

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Canadian Border to Stay Closed

To "non-essential" travel

COVID|Jamie Shelden|Tyler Borradaile

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/us-canada-border-coronavirus/index.html

Ottawa, Canada (CNN) — Calling the border with the United States a clear point of "vulnerability" for Canada in terms of Covid-19 infections, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Tuesday that by mutual agreement, the border will remain closed to nonessential travel until at least June 21.

Trudeau did not rule out a further extension of the border closure. The US-Canada border has been closed since March 21.

"It was the right thing to further extend by 30 days our closure of the Canada, US border to travelers other than essential services and goods, but we will continue to watch carefully what's happening elsewhere in the world and around us as we make decisions on next steps," Trudeau said during his daily press conference in Ottawa.

Therefore US pilots will not be able to travel to the 2020 Canadian Nationals if it is held at the end of the month.

https://airtribune.com/canadian-hang-gliding-nationals-2020/info

Jamie Shelden writes:

We are going to cancel the competition, so there will be no meet director.  We decided a few weeks ago that if the border didn’t open up, we would not hold the competition because there would be very little participation without the US pilots.

They may postpone it until August or September. It appears that the Prime Minister will have a lot to say about that.

Tyler Borradaile writes:

We are changing the Canadian Nationals dates to from August 30^th to September 5^th with option of September 6^th if we do not have five valid days. Still held in BC Canada (Kamloops area).

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2020 Canadian Nationals

They take place outside after all

Canadian Nationals 2020|Jamie Shelden

Jamie Shelden, the meet director, <<naughtylawyer>> writes:

The Canadian Nationals have been scheduled for May 31 through June 6 in Savona, BC. Although the US-Canada border is currently closed, the closure is set to expire on May 21^st. Of course, there is a chance that the closure will be extended another 30 days. But, as of today, we are moving forward as if the competition will happen as planned. If the border closure is extended another 30 days, we will let everyone know ASAP.

Keep in mind that social distancing will still be required. Daily briefings will be held outdoors, at launch each day. Pilots shouldn’t plan on piling up in vehicles for retrieve. We recommend that everyone brings their own vehicle/driver.

So, if you’re ready to escape the quarantine and come do some flying with our brothers to the north, go to AirTribune and register now. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

https://airtribune.com/canadian-hang-gliding-nationals-2020/info

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Investigating and Reporting

It started innocently enough.

Belinda Boulter|Daniel Vé|Daniel Vélez Bravo|Daniel Vélez Bravo|Elena Filonova|Facebook|Flytec 6030|Gordon Rigg|Greg Kendall|Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Kraig Coomber

https://ozreport.com/23.190.2

I do not recall how I found out about this issue. Jamie Shelden, the meet director and organizer probably told me about it. I received what I thought was Jonny Durand's Flymaster tracker track log in the morning on Friday the 20^th for the task on Wednesday the 18^th. I didn't look at the file using Notepad but rather displayed it on SeeYou and subsequently published the screen captures showing the difference between it and his 6030 the track log. If I had looked at the IGC file from what I thought was the Flymaster tracker using Notepad I would have seen that it was actually a "copy" of that file taken from the Airtribune web site.

I had already heard that there was no Live Tracking on the Flymaster Live Tracking web site for the Santa Cruz Flats Race. I also knew (but didn't connect) the fact that Belinda could follow the race on XCGuide with the group number that would normally be used on the Flymaster Live Tracking web site.

Daniel Velez, the remote scorekeeper, then informed me that there was another case of a missed turnpoint from the Wednesday task that needed to be corrected with the pilot's flight instrument. The track log that Daniel had showed him missing the last turnpoint so Daniel got Jamie to have Greg Kendall send in his track log from his 5030.

On Saturday the 21^st, the last task after two days of not flying when there were high winds, we got two bogus track logs that required track logs from pilot's flight instruments be sent to Daniel, mine and Kraig Coomber's.

https://ozreport.com/23.193

Both Daniel and I were still referring to the track logs that he was downloading from the Airtribune web site as Flymaster tracker track logs, when in fact they were "copies" of the track logs from the Flymaster web site, and it would appear later not very good copies.

Not only were there missing track log points there was also the weird altitude values from the Airtribune tracklog points which got further above the track log points from the pilots' flight instruments the higher the pilot got. That still doesn't make any sense.

With this height discrepancy really bothering me (and apparently no one else except the always perceptive Gordon Rigg) I decided to look further into it. 

https://ozreport.com/1569588107

I was beginning to suspect that something was wrong with the Flymaster trackers.

That's when I checked out my Flymaster track logs from the 2019 Big Spring Nationals against my 6030 track logs. I checked three flights. They were all identical. Whoa.

Finally I decided to look at the track log files using Notepad. Whoa again. The Flymaster tracks were certainly producing different designators for the trackers in the track logs from the SCFR. I still didn't get it but I was getting warmer.

After thinking about what was right in front of my face I thought to ask whether the track logs for the SCFR were coming from the Airtribune site and not the Flymaster web site. I was just hard for me to believe that this would actually be the case. I asked Daniel.

By the time he replied that they were indeed taking the track logs from the Airtribune web site I had already concluded that was the case.

I followed the data and kept looking and looking again and despite not just figuring it out when perhaps it should have been obvious I finally found enough clues to take me in the right direction and away from my preliminary and incorrect assumptions.

So I was left with the task of getting access to the Flymaster Live Tracking web site to download the actual Flymaster tracker track log files for the SCFR. So far that's not going very well. I've reached out to Jamie, Daniel, Brett, and even Kate who was our scorekeeper at the Big Spring Nationals and obviously did it right. I just want to confirm the theory that the actual Flymaster tracker's track logs don't have the drop out problem. Kate has told me that she didn't experience any dropouts during the Big Spring Nationals.

Finally on Monday morning I was able to get access to the Flymaster track logs on the Flymaster server for the Santa Cruz Flats Race. Crisiano at Flymaster was the one who gave me the final clue that I needed to be able to login to the correct account. After that it was trivial to download the files and check out the Flymaster tracker track logs against the Airtribune track logs.

The Flymaster tracker track log did not have the dropouts that the Airtribune tracks had. I had remembered that Brett had told me and others not to use the Airtribune track logs for scoring purposes only for Live Tracking. The problem was not placement of the trackers in the harnesses. Even Kraig Coomber's tracker worked just fine even though it was placed underneath his carbon back plate.

Elena Filonova wrote to me to say:

When you download the track log from Airtribune it is reprocessed by it and filters out baro data.

That explains the different altitude values displayed in the previous articles. Here is an example of the baro track from Jonny Durand's flight from the Flymaster tracker vs. the baro (now GPS) track from the Airtribune web site:

The blue line is the GPS altitude. Since you as the pilot are making decisions about how high you can go if you are flying under airspace based on your baro altitude, you might want to be sure that the scorekeeper is using your baro altitude and not GPS altitude to determine if you infringe on airspace or not.

When I get ready to launch I set my baro altitude at the GPS altitude of the launch site. This is easy to do with the Flytec 6030.

All this is traced on these two Facebook threads:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118763844883239/permalink/2421537051272562/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118763844883239/permalink/2414056872020580/

Congratulations to the Moyes Boys

On their sweep of the podium and beyond at the SCFR

Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Kraig Coomber|Tyler Borradaile|Vicki Cain

Vicki Cain <<Vicki>> writes:

SCFR 2019 is a wrap with a clean sweep for Moyes taking out the top five places.

Once again for 2019 the competition was decided on the final day with a complete switch around of the podium.

Tyler Borradaile takes the win on his Moyes RX3.5Pro Skylite.

Jonny Durand takes 2^nd place just a single point behind flying the Moyes RX4Pro Skylite.

Olav Opsanger rounds out the podium flying his Moyes RX3.5Pro.

A very close competition with only 27 points separating the first three positions.

Kraig Coomber 4^th Moyes RX 3.5 Pro Skylite

Phil Bloom 5^th Moyes RX 3.5 Pro Skylite

Congratulations and thanks to Jamie Shelden and the crew for hosting another great comp.

Casa Grande Boys and Girls Club

Giving back to the community

Jamie Shelden

Jamie Shelden writes:

For the past ten years or so, competitors, crew and organizers at the Santa Cruz Flats Race have supported an organization that does great work with the kids of the Casa Grande community. We have generously donated to the Boys & Girls Club of the Casa Grande Valley. This organization welcomes us each year by bringing kids out to see us land at the resort and talk to pilots about hang gliding and flying in general. These latchkey kids would have nowhere to go after school each day if not for the Boys & Girls Club. They provide a safe, supervised environment until parents are home from work via caring adult mentorship that allows kids to learn and grow. The club serves more than 4000 local area kids and we would like to give back to the Casa Grande community by supporting them with our donations.

We’re teaming with the Cloudbase Foundation. They will kick in 50% of what we raise and we're shooting for $3000, which means the CBF would add $1500 to that and we could present the Boys & Girls Club with a check for $4500.

To give, click on this link to the CBF website:

https://secure.givelively.org/donate/cloudbase-foundation-inc/boys-girls-clubs-of-the-casa-grande-valley

Discuss "Casa Grande Boys and Girls Club" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Hang Waiting

At the Beach at la dune du Pyla

Jamie Shelden|video

Our SCFR competition organizer: https://youtu.be/H1wVGDUtlT0

Discuss "Hang Waiting" at the Oz Report forum   link»

USHPA - the not so slow suicide

Death by a thousand cuts

Belinda Boulter|Jamie Shelden|Jim Shaw|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Mitch Shipley|Risk Retention Group|Steven "Steve" Pearson|USHPA|Wilotree Park

For me, personally, the USHPA works great. I have excellent interactions with Beth Van Eaton regarding all my competition requirements. I work with volunteer Mitch Shipley on the Tow Device Supplement Applications, but then he lives at Wilotree Park part time. I send our competition results in to volunteer David Wheeler. Volunteer Jamie Shelden contacts me regarding membership on the national team.

The incident report system is up and running. It's easy to renew my membership. Same for Belinda's family membership. We, obviously, have very specialized needs when it comes to dealing with the USHPA.

But the bigger concerns are with both the short and long term health of hang gliding and our association Steve Pearson has some concerns about how the USHPA is handling these bigger concerns. He writes:

1) There has been an extraordinary amount of discussion and good ideas shared over the last 20 years. (2) These ideas and efforts have been ineffective at arresting the decline of hang gliding.

I would argue that there is no recipe that the USHPA can conceive of that is likely to be adopted and implemented by, or even that is even helpful to a successful school. That’s not to say that the ideas are flawed, but that they are in conflict with our experience. Make a list of the top schools in the last 45 years—KHK, Lookout, Windsports, Mission, Morningside, Wallaby, etc. and ask if any of them would have been receptive to adopting a USHPA business plan for managing their business. Every school and community is unique—what works in Kitty Hawk is different from Morningside, LA, Chattanooga and San Francisco. The ideas that have been shared are a great resource for schools to consider for business development, but they are not a stand-alone solution.

I’m suggesting that revisiting this subject with clean whiteboards and new participants is unlikely to do any better—we are looking at this from the wrong perspective. It’s like trying to push a rope uphill—forcing top-down management on a system that doesn’t respond to that approach.

Let’s recognize that new pilots only come from flight schools (rather than marketing programs). That the root of our problem is that sustaining a flight school is near impossible, and compliance with the rules, regulations and expenses imposed by the USHPA is a significant burden. And ultimately, the only mechanism for stabilizing hang gliding is to make teaching both easier and more rewarding.

There are a couple of familiar refrains that we need to address head-on: (1) commercial interests are in conflict with the best interests of the association and (2) ideas for promoting growth are too expensive or otherwise subordinate to other priorities.

1. There is a direct and immutable correlation between the health, safety and vitality of every hang gliding community and the status of the local flight school. When flight schools close, even thriving communities of pilots diminish within a few short years. I can’t even think of any exceptions to this. Schools, more than any other factor, are the foundation of our association and we need to stop seeing them as beneficiaries and sources of revenue. We should be supporting them, not taxing them.

2. How can we pretend to have be successful association with unrelenting declining membership? Membership is the only product that the USHPA sells, and all of the associated services are to support membership. We could argue that there are a lot of metrics to evaluate the performance of a business, but I can’t imagine not including product sales. Most successful and sustainable businesses invest the majority of their discretionary resources in product development and those who don’t more-often fail. That’s not to say that investing in product development is any guarantee, just a fundamental requirement.

Why don’t we try something different, like investing in and listening to individuals who have demonstrated aptitude and commitment to achieving our goals? Instead of analyzing and dictating the minutia of how to run a successful flight school, why not ask our instructors, “what can we do to help?” What incentives (product and services) can we offer to achieve the outcome we want (growth and pilot retention)?

What specific actions can the USHPA implement develop hang gliding, i.e. to support schools ?

1) Provide financial incentives for the development of new pilots. I’m suggesting that a program like rebating the entire 1^st year membership fee, and 50% of the second year would relatively increase membership and long-term income for the USHPA. It would also focus the efforts of schools on making pilots rather than other income opportunities like tandem rides.

2) Mandate a reduction in the administrative burden of PASA/RRRG compliance.

3)  Reduce the instructor fee, and perhaps even make the first year free.

4) Provide funds and support for instructor clinics rather than requiring participant to organize and pay for them. Wills Wing did this for years—we paid for Tim Morely, Jim Shaw and others to give clinics around the country. More flight schools = more pilots = more glider sales.

5) Reduce the administrative costs and requirements for sanction competitions.

6) Eliminate all fees and requirements for local chapters to hold fly-ins and other community events.

I don’t mean this to be an exhaustive list, just the first things that occurred to me. Certainly we can do better than this?

Finally, these new policies don’t address the structural problems with hang gliding like how long it takes to learn, or the physical requirements, or the inconvenience of carrying and storing bulky equipment. That’s for us to solve.

All CIVL re-elected

Jamie and Mitch also

CIVL|Jamie Shelden

https://www.fai.org/news/civl-president-and-bureau-are-re-elected-pg-committee-changes-chair?type=node&id=24473

Discuss "All CIVL re-elected" at the Oz Report forum   link»

What's the point of these games again?

calendar|CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|PG|Stéphane Malbos

Early on in our discussions with Stephane Malbos, the CIVL President, the desire on the part of the FAI not to have conflicting international hang gliding competitions take place after July 2020 was an issue. The CIVL Bureau went ahead anyway and approved the 1^st FAI Pan-American Hang Gliding Championships for August 2020. Now the calendar is clear and there is no conflict, except, no doubt, for the European Hang Gliding Championships in 2022.

There has never been a "real" hang gliding or paragliding presence at the World Air Games, mostly because the venues are not conductive to actual competitions. By "real" we mean a cross country competition. The proposed site in Turkey for the hang gliding competition was apparently pretty sketchy and was going to be reviewed by CIVL Bureau members (as I recall, Jamie Shelden and Mitch Shipley). Also the idea of holding a Women's Worlds there as a part of the WAG was discouraged given the attitude of Turkish males towards women.

https://fai.org/news/supercharging-fai-world-air-games-2022

The FAI and the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK) have announced that the FAI World Air Games in Turkey have been moved from 2020 to September 2022.

Discuss "World Air Games postponed to 2022" at the Oz Report forum   link»  

Here is one response.

Belinda Boulter|calendar|CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Stéphane Malbos

https://OzReport.com/22.222

Earlier I asked:

Sport Class pilots, have you asked CIVL to allow us to run the 2020 Big Spring Sport Class Nationals as the 1^st FAI Pan-American Sport Class Championship? We will be running the 1^st FAI Class 1 Pan-American Championships at that time (along with 2020 Big Spring Nationals).

Goran dimiskovski «Goran dimiskovski»;

Jamie Shelden «Jamie Shelden»;

Mitch Shipley «Mitch Shipley» ;

Stef-CIVL «Stef-CIVL»;

Eduardo Fonseca from Colombia wrote to Stephane Malbos:

With this note I want to express my desire for the 2020 Big Spring Sport Class Nationals to be recognized as the 1^st FAI Pan-American Sport Class Championship.

As a hang glider pilot entering the competition world in the Sport class, I do appreciate the effort that Mr. Straub and Ms. Boulter have put into preparing great competitions in USA for 2019 and 2020, and having the 1^st FAI Pan-American Sport Class Championship here in the USA (and here in Texas) will strengthen the outreach of this sport on this side of the planet.

Additionally, I am beginning to coordinate increased participation of pilots from Colombia (my country) to come to Big Spring. Making it the FAI championship will most likely increase pilot participation.

Stephane Malbos, the CIVL President, wrote back:

I believe that a pan-American and World the same year and just a few months apart is not a good idea. It favours local pilots and rich pilots too much. We’ve never done it, it bends the FAI rules a bit too much to my liking. Why not organise one in 2021?

Eduardo Fonseca's response:

Thank you for your reply.

I have analyzed some data from the FAI website, and I have the following details to share and discuss:

· I used the comps that currently count towards pilot ranking in the sport class
· You will notice that comps are located mostly in Europe and America. Some in Australia and very few in Asia. See map here
· For 2018 and 2017 the number of comps in Europe was larger than the number of comps America
· The participation of pilots tends to be larger in America, with Mexico comps having the largest number of pilots (~30+) while the largest in Europe has 10 pilots (Monte Cucco International Trophy 2018 Class Sport)

Can you direct me to where the FAI rules state the limitations of the comps?

I believe the fact that for the past two years most comps having been in Europe, as you stated, favors European pilots more than American pilots. Thus, having the 2020 Pan-American Sport Class Championship in Big Spring would serve at least two purposes:

· Balance the number of comps between Europe and America
· Potentially have a larger number of pilots, thus promoting the sport to a larger audience.

In the end, all I want is for the pilots in my category (Sport Class) to have a great event where we can all learn and continue growing the sport.

Let me know if you would like to discuss further.

Stephane Malbos, the CIVL President, wrote back:

General Section of the Sporting Code states…

4. 4.5 FREQUENCY AND LOCATION OF EVENTS: each ASC shall determine the frequency and location of its events in accordance with the following principles:

4. 4.4.1 World and Continental Championships should be held approximately every two years in any discipline or class in accordance with the provisions of the Specialised Sections of the Sporting Code.

4. 4.4.2 As far as possible World and Continental Championships should not be held in the same calendar year

I think that a Pan-American is a great idea in all disciplines and especially in Sport, as you underline. But why the same year as the World ? I see only disadvantage. Do it in 2021 and get into the rhythm: World in 2022, Sport in 2023, and on and on…

Sport Class at the highest level (Cat 1) is still to be built. The criterion of selection of pilot is crucial. They were very different in Annecy 2014 World from what is planned in Big Spring. Tasks are still the same but maybe we should think outside the box and see what we get (maybe nothing, XC still being the favourite game). Big Spring 2020 can help us define better rules, to be used in 2021 and further… Step by step long-term development.

I wrote back to all:

1. The rule that Stef cites allows for us to do exactly what we want to do, which is run the 1^st FAI Sport Class Pan-Americans in 2020 at Big Spring.

2. The point being that the focus on Texas and the Americas represents a particular reason to have this competition in 2020 without consideration of the 2020 Worlds in Florida. CIVL still has not fully realized what it means to the American countries to have this Pan-American Sport Class Championship.

3. These meets are extremely expensive to run. We have budgeted $19,000 for CIVL personnel in Big Spring in 2020 (hopefully it won’t be that much). Running the Sport Class along with Class 1 in 2020 means that we don’t have to incur that expense twice. Frankly, we would not do it again.

4. The Worlds in April of 2020 allows us to refine any rules.

5. We certainly understand Stef’s point. I believe that we rarely have these opportunities. Obviously, there hasn’t been a Pan-American Hang Gliding Championship at all. Period. We are taking the risk of making it happen. This helps us make sure that it is successful. Everyone wants meet organizers to be successful.

We ask CIVL to go with what the pilots want.

Stef responds:

I will take your proposal of a Sport Pan-American to the Bureau.

As soon as you call a competition other than ‘championship’, you can do what you want. PanAm Cup is fine with me. But if it is a ‘championship', it is a Cat 1, the rule applies, and Bureau will have to agree that ‘as far as possible’ the championship could not be held another year

I write back:

Thanks.

We all appreciate your flexibility and thoughtfulness. We know that you are trying to do the right thing by the pilots.

Stef will contact the American NAC's to see how they feel about this.

Discuss "Pan-American Sport Class?" at the Oz Report forum   link»  

If you want it, you have to ask for it

CIVL|FAI|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Pan-Americans 2020 Sport Class|Goran Dimiskovski

Sport Class pilots, have you asked CIVL to allow us to run the 2020 Big Spring Sport Class Nationals as the 1^st FAI Pan-American Sport Class Championship? We will be running the 1^st FAI Class 1 Pan-American Championships at that time (along with 2020 Big Spring Nationals).

Goran Dimiskovski «Goran dimiskovski»;

Jamie Shelden «Jamie Shelden»;

Mitch Shipley «Mitch Shipley» ;

Stef-CIVL «Stef-CIVL»;

https://OzReport.com/docs/2020panam_trackingchanges.pdf

Discuss "1^st FAI Pan-American Sport Class Championships in 2020?" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Is that okay by you?

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Stéphane Malbos|Wilotree Park

Sport Class pilots from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and other countries?

Is it okay with you that we hold two Category 1 Sport Class competitions in 2020? The Worlds in April 2020 at Wilotree Park and the Pan-Americans in Big Spring in August. The real question is do we want to call the Sport Class competition in 2020 at Big Spring the 1 FAI Sport Class Pan-American Championships or the 2020 Big Spring Sport Class Nationals.

Stef at the CIVL Bureau writes:

"There is also the issue of fairness. Sport is big in Colombia. Can their pilots finance 2 Cat 1 the same year?"

Tell us and the CIVL Bureau what you think.

Goran dimiskovski «Goran dimiskovski»;

Jamie Shelden «Jamie Shelden»;

Mitch Shipley «Mitch Shipley» ;

Stef-CIVL «Stef-CIVL»;

We are only trying to do what pilots want.

Discuss "Two category 1 sport class competitions in 2020?" at the Oz Report forum   link»  

Approved by the BOD

Applegate Open 2019|Belinda Boulter|East Coast Championships 2019|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|Jamie Shelden|Quest Air Nationals 2019|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2019|USHPA|US Nationals 2019|US Open of PG 2019

https://www.ushpa.org/page/competition-calendar

2019 Approved Sanctioned Competitions
	2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location:Quest Air, Sheets Field, Groveland, Florida Event Dates:March 23 - 30, 2019 Register Dates:November 1, 2018 - March 23, 2019 Organizer:Belinda Boulder | «Belinda»
	2019 Quest Air Nationals (PRE-WORLDS) - Week I A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location:Quest Air, Sheets Field, Groveland, Florida Event Dates:April 13 - 19, 2019 Register Dates:November 1, 2018 - April 13, 2019 Organizer:Belinda Boulder | «Belinda»
	2019 Quest Air Nationals - Week Ii A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location:Quest Air, Sheets Field, Groveland, Florida Event Dates:April 20 - 27, 2019 Register Dates:November 1, 2018 - April 20, 2019 Organizer:Belinda Boulder | «Belinda»
	2019 East Coast Hang Gliding Championship A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location: Ridgley, Maryland Event Dates:June 8 - 15, 2019 Register Dates:November 1, 2018 - May 15, 2019 Organizer:Dan Lukaszewicz | «Lucky_chevy»
	2019 Us Open Of Paragliding Chelan A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Pg Race To Goal Location:Chelan Butte, Chelan, Washington Event Dates:July 6 - 13, 2019 Register Dates:March 1, 2019 - July 6, 2019 Organizer:Matty Senior | «Mattysenior»
	2019 Big Spring Nationals (PRE-PAN-AMERICANS) A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location:Mcmahon Wrinkle Airport, Big Spring, Texas Event Dates:August 10 - 17, 2019 Register Dates:November 1, 2018 - August 10, 2019 Organizer:Belinda Boulder | «Belinda»
	2019 Santa Cruz Flats Race - Mark Knight Memorial A Ushpa National Championship Series Event* Ushpa Sanctioned Hg Race To Goal - At Location:Francisco Grande Golf Resort, Casa Grande, Az Event Dates:September 15 - 21, 2019 Register Dates:December 15, 2018 - August 15, 2019 Organizer:Jamie Shelden | «Naughtylawyer»

* Pilots attending a race to goal USHPA National Championship Series event are encouraged to get an FAI Sporting License at least 14 days prior to the event, available through NAA.

Discuss "USHPA Competition Calendar for 2019" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Likely to be approved by the CIVL Bureau

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Worlds 2020

After a brief discussion with CIVL Bureau member Jamie Shelden Saturday afternoon, it appears that we are more than likely to have our edited bids approved by the CIVL Bureau for these championships. We have submitted the edited bids to Jamie for circulation among the Bureau members. Jamie will also take our proposal for restrictions on pilot eligibility to the Sport Class Worlds to the Plenary in February.

https://OzReport.com/docs/2020panam_trackingchanges.pdf

https://OzReport.com/docs/2020worlds_trackingchanges.pdf

Discuss "2020 Worlds and Pan-American Championships" at the Oz Report forum   link»  

Without your support now, they won't happen

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Stéphane Malbos

Between September 25^th and 29^th, the CIVL Bureau will make the decision about whether 2020 Pan-American and 2020 World Championships take place at all.

It is up to you to contact the CIVL Bureau and convince them that this is a good idea, if you want to make sure that they agree to let these championships happen.

The contacts as far as we know are:

Stef-CIVL «Stef-CIVL»

Shelden Jamie «Shelden Jamie»

Mitch Shipley «Mitch Shipley»

There are other members of the Bureau which we do not have email addresses for.

Please tell them if you want to come to the Championships. Please contact anyone else that you know of who would like to come to these championships. Please contact your national free flight organization to have them support these championships.

Stephane Malbos, the CIVL President, has indicated that he is against the Pan-American Championships, so it is very important that you contact him and the other Bureau members if you want to have the first Pan-American Championships.

You can find our bids here:

https://OzReport.com/docs/2020_Pan-American_Championships_bid.zip

https://OzReport.com/docs/2020WorldsatQuestAirbid.zip

Discuss "The 2020 Championships" at the Oz Report forum   link»  

CIVL Bureau to meet September 25^th-29^th

Yes, it's up to the Bureau

CIVL|Jamie Shelden

Jamie Shelden <<naughtylawyer>> writes:

The Bureau does, on occasion, make decisions about bids outside the Plenary and that is the plan for the bids you have submitted. Any such decision must then be “ratified” by the Plenary in February.

Discuss "CIVL Bureau to meet September 25^th-29^th" at the Oz Report forum   link»

2018 Santa Cruz Flats Race

Waypoints and airspace

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2018

Flytec 6030|Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2018

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-mark-knight-memorial-2018/info

You'll find one waypoint file there: https://airtribune-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media/contest/files/2018/01/nbmfi8kQN7u2.wpt

Here are two other versions of that file that I created using GPSDump:

http://ozreport.com/data/2018scfr.cup

http://ozreport.com/data/2018scfr.gpx

and a printable PDF file of the waypoints (useful to drivers, etc.):

http://ozreport.com/data/2018SCFRwaypoints.pdf

The cup file can be used with the SeeYou program or downloaded into your Flytec 6030

The gpx file can be copied into your WPROUTES folder on your SD card in your 6030 and then uploaded into the 6030's memory.

I do this as a public service for Oz Report Readers.

Airspace file?

http://ozreport.com/data/az.faf

You can put this on your SD card in the CTR folder and upload it into your 6030 memory.

The first file above is official. Everything after that is just my attempt to help out. Jamie said that she would put them up on the SCFR Airtribune web site (see above). So I guess that makes them official.

Discuss "2018 Santa Cruz Flats Race" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Looking ahead to 2020

CIVL|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2019|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|Quest Air Nationals 2019|US Nationals 2019|World Championships 2020

You might have noted this article https://OzReport.com/22.145#1 which was a call from CIVL to prospective meet organizers about international category 1 competitions in 2020 and 2021. Which means test event next year and in 2020. And CIVL wants to see the bids for those 2020 events within a little over five weeks. For the 2021 events by the end of the year. And preparing a bid is no simple matter.

Doesn't give one much time to plan and think about what pilots might want and that's the first thing a prospective meet organizer needs to look at. Now holding a Category 1 competition in European is a no brainer. The place is stuffed with multiple countries and multiple pilots and they can all get together for a competition. Last week we had the Class 1 European and Class 5 World Championships and next week it is the pre-Worlds. You could easily trip and fall down hurting yourself trying to get around these competitions. This doesn't include the ongoing European Paragliding Championships right now.

But, try to put together a World Championship in the US or other North or South American country and things are a lot tougher. We last held a class 1 Worlds in the US in 2007 in Big Spring, Texas. It was very successful as we have great flying conditions there.

We are right now in the process of creating bids to CIVL for a number of category 1 competitions:

2^nd FAI Sport Class, and 14^th FAI Women's, and 8^th FAI Class 5 World Hang Gliding Championships
Sunday, April 19^th, 2020 to Friday May 1^st, 2020
Wilotree Park, 6548 Groveland Airport Road Groveland, Florida, USA

and:

1^st Class 1, Sport Class, Women's, Class 5 and Class 2 Pan-American Hang Gliding Championships
Sunday, August 2^nd, 2020 to Friday, August 14^th, 2020
Big Spring McMahon-Wrinkle Airport, 3200 Rickabaugh Drive, W. Big Spring, Texas

These are combined events.

As you can see we are being very ambitious. In addition, we would have to put on test events:

There are two possible test events in 2019 for the first competition. The first is the 2019 Green Swamp Sport Klassic. Saturday, March 23^rd, 2019 through Saturday, March 30^th, 2019 and the second: 2019 Quest Air Nationals, Saturday April 13^th through Sunday, April 27^th, 2019. Next year

For the Pan-American: 2019 Big Spring Nationals,
Saturday, August 3^rd through Saturday, August, 10^th, 2019.

As you can see from the numbering scheme this would be the first time ever that anyone has run a Pan-American Hang Gliding Competition. There have been three Pan-American Paragliding competitions.

But some Europeans are very skeptical about whether anyone (they mean other Europeans) would be willing to go to any of these competitions (travel expenses and all).

So we have to ask, are you interested in any of these competitions? We have to tell the CIVL Bureau in advance that there is in fact interest in these competitions, before they will consider letting us put them on. So, you need to send Davis an email to davis and he's at davisstraub.com and tell him that you are interested in coming to one or more of these competitions. Also send your email to Jamie Shelden «naughtylawyerelektratow

We realize that this is almost an impossible ask on our part. Who knows what they want to do in two years? But please if you have any desire to come to these competitions please email to davis. Also please spread the word around. Without your interest they are not going to happen.

Six months late

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Pre-Worlds 2018|Stéphane Malbos

I sent his email out today:

From: «davisestraub»
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2018 7:40 PM
To: «stephane.malbos»; «elenfilon»; «naughtylawyer»; «elektratow»; «worlds»; «flavio.tebaldi»; «info»
Subject: Re: Local Regulations for the pre-Worlds?

Having received no answers nor any indication that there would be an answer I am forced to ask:

What exactly is the spirit of the CIVL rule that requires that the local regulations be published at least six months in advance?

Is the fact that there are no published local rules eight days in advance of the competition in the spirit of the rules?

Am I now to be designated the little dipshit because CIVL can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for this rather major discrepancy? Do they not even have the intestinal fortitude to answer a simple question from the press?

Are we now the enemy of the people?

I was civil in my previous emails. Now, I’m not after being disrespected.

2018 Santa Cruz Flats Race

53 pilots registered for 50 slots

Gregg "Kim" Ludwig|Jamie Shelden|Quest Air|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2018

Unlike in our competitions I believe that Jamie is really not completely expandable to handle whoever shows up. We have the gift of having many Dragonflies on site at Quest Air and Russell is bringing five to Big Spring. Along with Gregg Ludwig's trike this gives us plenty of resources in Big Spring. So I would make sure that you are confirmed for the SCFR.

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-mark-knight-memorial-2018/pilots

https://airtribune.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-mark-knight-memorial-2018/info/details__info

CIVL Plenary is meeting

The committees

CIVL|Jamie Shelden

https://www.fai.org/news/civl-plenary-2018-committees-work

Jamie and Mitch in the hang gliding committee meeting:

Discuss "CIVL Plenary is meeting" at the Oz Report forum   link»

2018 Santa Cruz Flats Race

So how does one register?

calendar|Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2018|USHPA

https://www.ushpa.org/page/competition-calendar

Location: Francisco Grande Hotel and Golf Resort, Casa Grande, Arizona
Event Dates: September 16 - 22, 2018
Register Dates: December 1, 2017 - August 16, 2018
Organizer: Jamie Shelden | <naughtylawyer>
Website: http://santacruzflatsrace.blogspot.com

Web site last updated in 2016. No way to register.

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October 25, 2017, 4:02:15 pm PST -0700

2018 Santa Cruz Flats Race

September 16-22

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2018

Jamie Shelden is again organizing the SCFR. I'll provide the registration page link soon as it's up.

Here's the previous web site: https://airtribune.com/santacruzflatsrace2016/info

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OzGAP 2005

Double your Arrival Points

CIVL|Davis Straub|Jamie Shelden|Joerg Ewald|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|PG|record

Michael Zupanic introduced OzGAP 2005 in September of 2005.

http://www.hgfa.asn.au/Competition/downloads/OzGap2005.htm

Place based Arrival Points are gone. OzGap 2005 is simply a time based Arrival Points system that constitutes ¼ of the available speed points, that means that if the maximum Distance Points available is 600 points, 300 will be available to speed and 100 points will be available for arrival points.

If you use the OzGAP 2005 scoring system in FsComp, the official hang gliding and paragliding scoring program from CIVL, which uses Arrival Time Points and no Leading Points, you'll get the results that Michael intended. But starting with the FS2025 R4 version of FsComp, if you use Arrival Time Points and Leading Points (an option in FsComp) the Arrival Points available are cut in half, equal to the available Arrival Position Points in GAP 2000.

We recently found this out because Mitch Shipley looked into the matter. He wrote:

Using Arrival Time points vs Arrival Position points in FS. I know checking that block in FS in Mexico 2015 on the practice day resulted in 200+ points being allotted to Leading/Arrival. Since then I thought it had not been fixed. I just re-ran a task from Brazil using arrival time points and it looked fine, both with Gap 2016 and several earlier versions of GAP. I’m checking with FS guys to see if they did something with FS that fixed the problem because it doesn’t seem to have been caused by the Gap version. Can you check with one of your comps as well to see if it works now?

Joerg Ewald wrote back

Previously, whenever you chose arrival time points, the arrival weight was (1 – distance_weight) / 4. This was the “too much” you observed in Mexico.

Now, this is only the case if you don’t use leading points as well.

If you do use leading points, the arrival weight is (1 – distance_weight) / 8, the same as for arrival position points.

This correction came with FS2015 R4.

Numerous times scorekeepers attempted to replace Arrival Position Points with Arrival Time Points without being aware of the fact that they did not provide an equivalent number of points. They just assumed that there were two different ways of calculating the distribution of the same number of Arrival Points. There was no obvious warning in FsComp that this was the case.

It appears that we were not told of the change that Joerg made at the time that he made it, at least I can't find any record of his informing us. Paraglider pilots use only one start time so they don't need to be concerned about these particular issues (although the issue of how leading points are calculated is a big concern for them).

We were looking at scoring issues at the time:

http://ozreport.com/19.116#2

http://ozreport.com/19.118#0

The results of all this is that if you as a hang gliding competition scorekeeper wish to use Arrival Time Points and Leading Points instead of Arrival Position Points and Leading Points, you are free to do so without over counting Arrival Points.

Update:

Joerg writes:

Arrival time points were introduced before my time when OzGap was added to FS. At that time, nobody had thought that they would ever be used in combination with Leading Points, so nobody realized that they were overvalued in that case. When people started substituting arrival position points with arrival time points in “regular” GAP, this became obvious, and I was asked to correct it. I do not remember by whom, may well have been Mitch after his experiments in Valle. So I created the corresponding ticket in Trac:

http://fs.fai.org/trac/ticket/337

After fixing it, the fact that it was fixed was logged the usual way:

http://fs.fai.org/trac/wiki/FS2015R4

I was the one that wrote to Joerg. I just don't have any record of specifically hearing back from him. I don't go checking the ticket logs that frequently: I wrote:

From: Davis Straub
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2015 9:20 AM
To: Joerg Ewald
Cc: Jamie Shelden ; Jonny Durand ; Mitchell Shipley
Subject: Arrival time points in FS.

Hi Joerg,

As you well know the Arrival Time Points check box presents a problem as scorekeepers in the past have assumed that they could just uncheck Arrival Position Points and check this box. Jamie, Mitch, and (as I vaguely recall) Jonny hoped to be able to do that once again at the 2015 Santa Cruz Flats Race. I had to point out that this was not a good idea.

The points apportioned for Arrival Time Points (which are calculated using the formula from OzGAP 2005) are equal to the total of the points apportioned to the combination of Leading Points and Arrival Position Points. Therefore combining Leading Points and Arrival Time Points reduces the points that would be given to time (speed) points.

What is trying to be accomplished is to just replace Arrival Position Points with Arrival Time Points without reducing the points given to time points.

This can be accomplished by a minor change in the underlying code. In addition a change should be made in the user interface to make sure that scorekeepers who wish to do this and use leading points also should be able to do so without reducing time points.

I hope that I have been clear here without also including the formulas.

August 18, 2017, 3:55:13 pm MST -0600

21^st FAI World Hang Gliding Class 1 Championship

It's been covered

Corinna Schwiegershausen|Facebook|Jamie Shelden|Niki Longshore|Worlds 2017 Class 1

Thanks to all "my correspondents" in Brasilia. Heather, Jamie, Vicki, Elena at FAI, Derreck, Christian, Zac, Alex, Harrison, Richard, Gerolf (not actually in Brasilia, but watching it on the computer), Flavio, Jennifer, Wolfgang, Rudy, Niki, Corinna, Flymaster Live Tracking, Brasilia scorekeeper, Daniel, CBVL - Confederação Brasileira de Voo Livre, have I forgotten any one?

Lots of reporting over here also: https://www.facebook.com/ozreport/

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August 18, 2017, 2:44:26 pm MST -0600

21^st FAI World Hang Gliding Class 1 Championship

Short task, Petr Benes wins the Worlds

Alessandro "Alex" Ploner|Christian Ciech|Jamie Shelden|Worlds 2017 Class 1

https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=2040

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.mx/2017/08/waiting-for-task-briefing-to-start.html

>

Gerolf writes:

Just watched the last task of the Worlds via Flymaster live tracking, and could not believe what an unbelievable tactical plunder the great Italian team produced today. Holding the main gaggle back to fly the task on a later clock.

That opened up the opportunity for the Czech pilots, Benes and Vinhalik, to actually be successful if they could manage to eventually break away from the Italian pilots, Ploner and Ciech. And break away they did!

Now imagine, how much harder it would have been for Petr Benes to do this if Alex and Christian had taken the first clock and then there would be no one marking the thermals ahead over the last 50km? Unbelievable, truly unbelievable!

So, we can say the young Czech well and truly deserves the title: He cleverly launched one single, decisive attack and he managed to pull it off in style. Bravo!

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August 17, 2017, 12:24:33 pm MST -0600

21^st FAI World Hang Gliding Class 1 Championship

Sneaking in under the wire

Jamie Shelden|World Class 1 Championships 2017

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/third.html

Aside from that great news, there's been much grumbling about guys making very dangerous approaches into the Esplanada on several days. I mentioned one such approach in one of my earlier posts, and they have continued. The field just adjacent to the Esplanada landing field has been approved for landing in situations where the Esplanada has many other pilots coming in at the same time. However, as this field just to the north is the first one you reach on a low approach, a few guys have used it because they couldn't make it in to the Esplanada and a few have come straight in on final, landing downwind having just barely made it over the buildings, trees and very low power lines.

At the same time, it was decided that although there was no perfect solution, the best criteria for what the Meet Director would consider a "safe" landing was the ability to make a circuit (downwind-base-final) approach prior to landing. Coming straight in on final and landing downwind because no other turns could be made beforehand, would be considered a dangerous approach and would be penalized. So, this is what we are using now and this guideline will be used for duration of the comp.

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August 9, 2017, 7:16:13 pm MST -0600

21^st FAI World Hang Gliding Class 1 Championship

Results

Alessandro "Alex" Ploner|Christian Ciech|Christian Pollet|Filippo Oppici|Jamie Shelden|Primoz Gricar|Worlds 2017 Class 1

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/worlds-day-1.html

A mid-air with a broken outboard leading edge. Pilot landed okay under canopy.

Live tracking: https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=2040

http://eventos.cbvl.esp.br/en/21-fai-mundial-de-asa-delta-brasilia-2017#results

http://www.cbvl.esp.br/evento/resultado/117

Task 1:

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August 8, 2017, 10:30:20 pm MST -0600

The Americans are in Brasilia

Barely

Jamie Shelden|Niki Longshore

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/getting-there.html

Getting here to Brasilia has been quite a journey. But I'm happy to say that all of Team USA is here and ready to get this thing underway. Niki and I left Houston on Tuesday night with three gliders on a direct flight to Rio. United never fails to come through for us. We checked in in Houston with zero problems and very few questions asked. In the end we paid a total of $200 for four oversized bags - three gliders and a harness that weighed more than the gliders. We laughed all the way through security and straight to the bar at the lounge where we celebrated with a bit of tequila.

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August 7, 2017, 8:04:49 MST -0600

US Team at the Worlds

No Dustin

Dustin Martin|Jamie Shelden

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/brasilia-worlds-opening-ceremonies.html

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July 10, 2017, 8:03:12 MST -0600

USHPA pilots are generous

Almost at the limit of giving

Foundation for Free Flight|Jamie Shelden|Jayne DePanfilis|PG|USHPA

Jayne DePanfilis <<jayne.depanfilis>> writes:

I advised Jamie today that USHPA is approaching their annual $30,000 limit for matching Foundation for Free Flight (FFF) contributions and once that limit is met, FFF contributions that pass through USHPA will no longer be matched. In other words, those who want to donate to the hang gliding and paragliding national teams, to take advantage of the USHPA match, need to donate now, before the USHPA matching funds are exhausted.

Note that donations using the national team link on the USHPA website are matched, up to $500. Yes, we've received donations for the national teams that exceed $500 and in those cases, we've contacted the donor to execute their intent for the matching portion of their contribution.

The USHPA matching initiative for the hang gliding and paragliding national teams and XALPS closes Sunday, July 30.

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July 3, 2017, 8:14:01 MST -0600

15^th FAI World Paragliding Championship

Training day

CIVL|Facebook|Jamie Shelden|Kari Castle|PG|World PG Championships 2017

http://www.fai.org/civl-news/43135-event10517-pg-worlds-2017-rd

https://www.facebook.com/fai.civl/

You'll notice Jamie Shelden and Kari Castle. That's three pictures of Kari in this issue.

https://airtribune.com/worlds2017/blog

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June 23, 2017, 10:06:31 pm MST -0600

Dinosaur 2017

Results

Ben Dunn|Bill Soderquist|Bruce Barmakian|Christian Ciech|competition|Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Jon Durand snr|Kevin Carter|Lawrence "Pete" Lehmann|Mike Degtoff|Pete Lehmann|Wayne Michelsen|Zac Majors

Jonny being teleported over launch. Photo by Mike Degtoff.

Christian was 400' to 500' below launch before he got up.

Chitty at goal:

https://airtribune.com/dinosaur2017/results

Task 4:

Cumulative:

June 19, 2017, 9:08:13 MST -0600

Crying for his mommy at Dinosaur

White knuckles

Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/2017/06/dinosaur-day-1.html

Late June was chosen for the competition this year to try to avoid the sometimes scary overdevelopment they have experienced here later in the summer. Although conditions are typically quite strong in June, late in the month normally brings little precipitation. Before arriving here, we were happy to find the expected forecast for sunshine and no overdevelopment. Unfortunately, there were three decent sized wildfires burning and very strong wind (70mph) right here just a few days before the comp was to start. A temporary flight restriction was in place due to firefighting aircraft right up until 9pm Saturday evening. Luckily, it was lifted, the wind died down and other than some large sections of scorched earth, the fires are out and won't be effecting our flying.

I've heard stories of days of 1500-2000 fpm lift to 18,000+ feet here, but for Task 1, we got slightly more mild conditions. With the high pressure here at the moment, lift was forecast to be only between 600-800fpm with an inversion around 12,000'. So, the task committee called a smallish (for this area) task east to the town of Meeker - about 110km. Turns out it may have been a little short - at least for those that were happy to hold on tight and endure the rodeo. The first pilots made easy time of it and the goal crew wasn't even able to beat them there.

It's interesting to see the reactions of various pilots to this kind of big air. Nene Rotor had a giant smile on his face at goal and seemed to genuinely enjoy the same rough air that Jonny and Ollie whined about all evening. Ollie said he was crying for his mommy at least three times during the flight and suspected that he may have crushed his carbon basebar holding on so tight. Some reported very turbulent air, others said it felt no different than Crestline in the summer and still others found it to be strong but not overly rough for the mountains. I suppose it all depends on the air you happen to be in.

Scores are slow coming - with very weak mobile phone service around here and pilots being rather spread out, it's tough to get scores posted as quickly as we would like. When yesterday's task is scored, it will be up on AirTribune. Meanwhile, it's likely that Zac won the day, although he was unsure whether it was him or Nene that crossed the line first. I also spoke with Christian last night and he came through very lifty air to goal and was fairly high - so it's even possible that he was above Zac and Nene and came in ahead of them.

We're using Flymaster live trackers here rather than AirTribune for a variety of reasons. Although they are tracking well in this very remote area, we've had trouble with the interface - pilots show simply as a number, so unless viewers know everyone's number, they have no way to see who is who. We also haven't been able to get the task up on the Flymaster site. It's been frustrating, but we're working like mad trying to get it all fixed up so that people can watch from afar.

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June 12, 2017, 6:14:35 CST -0500

2017 Midwest, the organizers' thoughts

At least Greg Dinauer's

Dragonfly|Facebook|Greg Dinauer|Jamie Shelden|Midwest Championships 2017|weather

Greg Dinauer <<gdinauer>> writes:

Organizing a major sanctioned hang gliding competition is something that Larry, Kris and I have always talked about and, indeed have attempted in the past. Plagued by low turnouts, and of course, the always dubious weather up here in the Midwest, we just lost interest.

This year we finally decided to give it another go. With the lack of sanctioned competitions, due to the complexity of negotiating the minefield of insurance imperatives, and the huge gap in years of having any large scale events like this, we agreed it was a perfect storm of wide open doors.

In October we started drawing up plans. Since then every door has opened, even though the insurance hurtle almost discouraged us out of it. We always had the back-up plan that if only 20-25 pilots signed up and we skimped on everything, we could just pull it off without having to dig too deeply into our new glider funds.

So when after merely five days of the event registration being open, I received a late night call from Larry and Kris confirming that we had 60 registered pilots, I felt like the co-inventor of some unique product that just went nationwide overnight.

Of course we had to have another meeting at Larry’s home (the geographical midpoint) to access what to do about the monster we created. We wanted to limit it to 60, but before we knew it there were 80 pilots registered. So we had to draw a sharp line in the form of strict deadlines to control every ones flying sickness for this event. The glee we shared with the break in the really gloomy weather in the upper Midwest over the prior month well; it was just another of those open doors which seemed as inexplicable as Kris’s “need” to schedule during a full moon. If he is silently gloating, he deserves to be.

In as much as we considered every contingency, now that the competition is over, there were weak places; places that we could have better addressed, had we not also been competitors ourselves. Better communication with the launch process volunteer staff, management of civilities like: the portable bathrooms and waste containers, and the damp condition of the ground, particularly on the first day, are among them.

With all that, the pilots’ response was overwhelmingly positive, and while the soaring was not particularly epic, we did have one or two good days along with some challenging ones.

I really want to say that the three of us never scuffled with each other over decisions or ideas (often done over Larry’s favorite beer), in spite of the daunting insurance mitigation forms that Larry labored endlessly over. Our individual tasks in this came about more or less naturally; just three flying buddies cooperating to make a bigger dream happen.

We want to again thank everyone including the pilots, tug pilots, all the selfless volunteers, and the (more than patient) local pilot community for participating in what we feel was a bit more like what these events use to be. I, for one, while watching Rhett’s vivid green dragonfly depart this morning couldn’t help but feel a bit sad to see it end.

Will we do it again next year? We’ll see. A lot of the busy work is done and as with Jamie, Davis and other organizers in the past, we have learned a lot.

Otherwise known as the Women's Sport Class Championship

CIVL|Corinna Schwiegershausen|Jamie Shelden|PG|Stéphane Malbos|Women's Worlds 2017

Corinna Schwiegershausen «Corinna Schwiegershausen» writes:

Please understand that I want to do everything I can to make a women's title possible, because it is important to me to promote and support more women into our great sport of hang gliding.

From this whole conversation, it seems to me that CIVL does not want to change the status quo of holding a separate competition for the hopefully eight women we might get for the worlds in Brasilia. I still see a great conflict there. The following points seem discriminating to me:

1. I have worked many years to become part of my open national team to fly the open worlds and be able to score for my team and score high in the world ranking, thus being more likely to qualify for my open team again to be able to compete at European and World Championships.

2. It is important for me and my sponsor that I am able to compete for my gender title, aka the women's world champion title.

3. It has not been my fault or intention that the open and women's world championships collide in time as separate, individual competitions - this has never happened before in the history of hang gliding or paragliding, and it is impossible to see the advantage of why it should be happening now in Brasilia for the first time.

4. The top 50% of the women's world ranking can be nominated for their open national team and have to choose between flying for their gender title OR being able to score for their national team and for high points in the world ranking, thus improving their chance to qualify for their worlds team again, motivating other girls by seeing that it is possible (and returning possible points for their team as a return for their NAC's support to join the world championships)

5. In my, Françoise's, Claudia's and Sasha's case, you are cutting out qualified team pilots of scoring for our national teams if we try to make a women's world title possible and decide to fly in the women's competition - in this way, a fair team competition according to the Sporting Code Section 7 is not possible, because the French, Russian, Colombian and German teams are disadvantaged by possibly loosing one of their top scoring pilots.

6. Imagine that you make the top 50% of the male pilots choose between flying for their gender world champion title OR being able to score for their national team and for their individual world ranking, thus qualification for the next world's team - do you agree that there would be a huge irritation, possibly a protest of the guys? This is what you are doing to the top performers of the women. Yes, we are a minority and not as loud as the guys, but we do exist. And the majority of the women concerned had not been asked or involved before a decision had been made at the meeting in Salzburg.

For sure I see your point that you wanted to motivate more women into flying competitions and qualifying for the worlds. I appreciate yours and Jamie's work a lot, and I think we all need to stick together much closer with ideas how to make this possible. Just for Brasilia, it is a different situation altogether, cause most girls can only do this big trip with support by their NAC. The NACs see the greatest value of us girls if we can score for our national teams as well, in case we have the open and women's worlds at the same time.

Please reconsider your decision of making smaller, separate tasks for the 8 women that we hopefully might be, and instead allow us to fly in the open world championships as in Forbes and as in paragliding competitions, enabling us to score world ranking points, to score for our teams if we managed to get nominated, and still have a well deserved women's world champion title in the end of what is going to be a tough marathon competition.

Stef-CIVL «Stef-CIVL» writes:

It is a no win situation. If we agree with you, some women will not go and we might fall short of the 8+4. If we don’t, some women will fly with the Overall so Women and we might fall short of the 8+4. This has been discussed at length, CIVL has made its choice and will not change the rules agreed by its Plenary.

Sure there is a win win answer to this. It's just that Stephane wants to stick with a poor decision.

1) Let national teams include six national team pilots plus allow up to two women per team in addition to the national team members.

2) All women in the competition are flying for the women's world championship.

3) The two additional women per team are flying for the overall championship as well as for the women's world championship. They are not flying for the team championship.

Otherwise an asterisked women's worlds, if any at all.

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March 31, 2017, 10:08:33 pm EST -0400

Moyes Pro-Edge cloth

Something different

Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/03/jonnys-pro-edge.html

Jonny is flying Gerolf's glider in Valadares this week. It has a cool sail material on the trailing edge. Moyes is calling it the "Pro-Edge". It makes me think of a fashionably faded t-shirt material. It's apparently wrinkle-free and they think it improves high speed performance. Jonny said they may start putting on the leading edge as well. I like the look of it!

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Day 5

Davide Guiducci|Facebook|Filippo Oppici|Governador Valadares 2017|Icaro 2000|Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr

https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-57/#

Task 3:

Cumulative:

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/

Rain on course

Davide Guiducci|Filippo Oppici|Governador Valadares 2017|Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr

http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com.br/2017/03/valadares-day-4-task-2.html

Finally a second task here at Valadares. We had one day of off-and-on rain and a second day of steady rain all day. Many of the city streets were like little streams. But, flying was back on yesterday and they flew a nice out and return of about 90km that turned out to be more difficult than expected due to - yes - more rain!

Most landed between the turnpoint and goal where the clouds were heavy and the ground shaded. But, Jonny and David made goal first and apparently got to pack up in heavy downpours. Pippo, Andre and Konrado came in nearly an hour later after waiting out the rain. But, other than those, no others made it in and in fact some big names landed quite short near the turnpoint (Davide Guiducci and Nene). They're using an end of speed section goal here and another pilot, Jose, made the end of speed section but not the goal cylinder. Under Brasilian rules, when a pilot makes the end of speed section, but not the goal cylinder, he gets no arrival or other points - it's as if he didn't make goal at all, other than getting points for his distance. This is different than the score he would get using the current version of FS with GAP.

https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-57/#

Task 2:

Cumulative:

March 18, 2017, 10:27:28 pm EST -0400

Stephane Malbos, CIVL president responds

Previously he asked me not to publish his remarks

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Stéphane Malbos|Stéphane Malbos

Stef-CIVL <<stefmalbos>> writes:

First, be assured that CIVL objective is to promote and encourage women’s flying.

Second, as we often say, CIVL is us. Decisions are no longer made by bureaucrats but by pilots, team leaders and competition organizers who are now the vast majority of delegates and committee members.

Third, we regret that women don’t get involved more in the running of CIVL, except in Accuracy. It would be nice to find other Jamies, Reginas and Claudias whose voices could be heard.

Fourth, CIVL philosophy: it will be a long one.

Historically, until now, women have always flown in specific ‘women only’ World championships, except in Forbes 2013 (the organizers wanted a separate championship to allow more women, but CIVL Bureau decided against it as the local regulation with women integrated in the overall championship had already been published).

The ‘every two years’ rhythm has been hard to follow, with championships 2 years in a row (twice) or separated by 3 years (twice also). In recent years, CIVL had to play a proactive role so Women could have a championship.

After Annecy 2015 we had no bid for Women. We thought it was better to have a specific championship along with the ‘overall’ one in Brazil than no championship at all. The organizers accepted. It was discussed in the Hang Gliding Committee (March 2015), the Bureau implemented it, the 2016 Plenary approved it.

The problem of women not being able to fly in both overall and specific championships was discussed at all levels. We had to answer 3 questions:

—What do the women want? We know that the very top women (a handful) are happy to fly ‘overall’, but that the vast majority of lower-ranked women wants to fly ‘specific’.

—What is best for the sport? An ‘overall’ with very few women (8 or so in Forbes) or a ‘specific’ with a lot more (21 in Annecy)? We believe it is the second.

—Who is the truest champion: the one who is the best follower or the one who is the best leader? We believe it is the second.

At the 2017 Plenary, the Austrian pushed a proposal that a few of us found very much like male chauvinistic slandering against women. Basically it said that we should not accept women in ‘overall’ because ‘tasks for men should not be influenced in length and quality due to a much slower average speed of female pilots.’ Of course such proposal does not resist any basic analysis, as in Forbes 2013 and Valle 2015, women have left many men behind. Still the principle was discussed in the pre-plenary Open meeting, and if the proposal itself was withdrawn, a recommendation to the Plenary was done on how different tasks for women should be drawn. The Plenary discussed the recommendation and agreed with it without a formal vote taking place, the matter being a specificity for the local regulations still to be published.

So we can say that the CIVL philosophy about women in World championships have been constant along the years: specific championships is what we want in general and this applies in Brasilia.

Fifth, all this is a nice argumentation but it does not solve the Brazilian real issue, which now is not if we will have a specific or integrated championship, but if we will have a championship at all. It looks like there might not be enough women to validate a championship. And if we have just enough women (8 from 4 countries) to validate it, how will such a championship will look? A Women hang-gliding World with fewer pilots than a Class 2 one will be a very poor message sent to all.

March 17, 2017, 10:29:58 pm EST -0400

What World Championship will the women be going to in Brasilia?

If less than eight show up, there won't be a Women's Worlds

Chisato Nojiri|CIVL|Corinna Schwiegershausen|Jamie Shelden|Niki Longshore|Yoko Isomoto

http://ozreport.com/21.55#3

Right now if you want to go to the 2017 Women's Worlds in Brasilia you don't know if there will even be one. That requires at least eight women pilots from four different countries. At the last Women's Worlds in Annecy, France, there were twenty one women. But that is Europe, and the cost of getting to Annecy for European women is pretty small. Nothing like making it to Brasilia.

CIVL is very worried that there won't be enough women who want to go and can afford to go to Brasilia to make for an actual Women's Worlds. So right now women could be registering for a competition that won't exist. Not exactly a preferred situation.

If there was only one worlds in Brasilia in August and women were allowed to enter under a 6+1 or 6+2 arrangement, then this uncertainty would go away. Women would have a competition that was definitely happening and if eight women or more from four countries signed up, then a new Women's World Champion would be crowned.

Here are some responses I got to my article about the Women's Worlds linked to above:

Jamie Shelden writes:

CIVL delegates from several countries, including the UK, Germany, Russia, Japan and France were at the CIVL HG committee meeting in February and actively involved in this discussion and decision. I mention these specific countries because these are ones that have female competition pilots that could potentially be chosen for their national (“open”) teams. The delegates from the UK and Germany confirmed that their female pilots would not be chosen for the open team. Francoise, from France, is one that I have heard could be chosen for her national open team. However, the French delegate was at the hang gliding committee meeting and participated in the discussion. He never mentioned that Francoise could be chosen (I don’t know if that was just rumor that I heard or if it is a real possibility) and he voted for the current plan. The Japanese delegate was also actively involved in the committee discussion and also agreed with the current plan. He never mentioned any possibility that any of the female pilots in Japan could potentially be nominated for their national open team.

Sasha is one of the most active proponents of having completely separate women’s worlds, with entirely different starts, tasks, etc. She argued vehemently for this when CIVL had an open meeting of pilots in Krushevo last summer. So, I know this is not a problem for her. I have also heard that she does not intend to compete (either way) in Brasilia.

The bottom line is that I don’t believe this is an issue anyway. Something could change, but my understanding is that there will not likely be 8 women in Brasilia. I have heard that the Japanese will send 2, 1 will come from Germany, 1 from France, 1 from the UK and possible 1 or 2 from the US. So, if 7 women register, they will all be given special treatment and will fly the “open” task with everyone else. If 8 women register, potentially one woman will have to choose. It would be interesting to hear from the French that is a possible issue.

Alexandra, Sasha, <<multikss>> writes:

Lately there was an open letter published which proposed changing the local regulations of the Worlds in Brasilia in a way that women would fly and score together with men. According to this suggestion the Women title would have been given to the female scored the highest in the general list.

Since this letter seemed to open a discussion and get some public attention, I would like to step in and express an alternative opinion on the subject.

My opinion is that having separate tasks for women is better than having the same ones with men. It allows fair competition between women, which is necessary condition for defining the new world female champion. Indeed we have to separate two things -- General Worlds and Women Worlds from each other. In my opinion women would rather need to focus on what they really want to do -- to compete for their national team together with men in order to try wining the World Champion Title or to compete for the Women World Champion Title. I think sitting on two chairs and trying to do all at the same time hurts both ideas, especially it deprives Women Hang Gliding from being taken seriously.

It could be seen in Forbes Worlds that flying the same task with men instantly brings up the opportunity of being helped on the radio by the other male members of the team, which I find un-sporty.

Most of the time in a mixed task women are not in the front rows, so they resort to "follow-up and hang-on" strategy which drifts them off from their own decision making. I strongly believe that we want to define not the best follower but the best leader as a female world champion.

So if choosing from the current option of having separate tasks and the joined task suggested, I would personally stay with what I see is fair, that is the first one.

In addition to said above I'd like to mention a couple more things. My seeing is that the idea of having both male and female Worlds at the same time actually hurts already rather weak attention to female hang gliding. If CIVL has an intention to bring more women in sport by attracting the public to follow the women's competitions, then it would have more significant effect if the competition took place at different from the general World's time. This way it would be taken as a standing alone event. I understand that this option causes a lot problems, such as a need to run the whole Brazilian event for longer time, which is more expensive. For the national federations it would also make additional hassle like for instance organizing the retrieve. But unfortunately the situation in hang gliding is so, that women are presented as a disproportional minority. Minorities in sports inevitably cause more expenses for all sides. That is why it is so important to try to get more women into the sport, rather than mixing them up with men during the Worlds.

It is not a secret that the flying style in FAI-1 comps differs from rather relaxed events of cat. 2. A big part of potential female participants will be discouraged from participating in the FAI-1 competition when they have to stage and fly together with a hundred rather aggressive men.

I understand that nowadays it is very unlikely to make separate women worlds, when we basically see more and more of our female pilots dropping off comps, but essentially these are the points to consider in the future if we want more attention for this part of the sport.

I wrote back to her:

I find it very interesting that we agree. I think that everyone agrees that it would be much better to have a separate women’s championship. The problem is with Brasilia only and the fact that the two competitions present a conflict.

Given that there is going to be a world championship in Brasilia, then it should be one championship to get rid of the conflict.

Corinna Schwiegershausen <<corinna>> writes:

Davis stated: 1) Mostly men making decisions for women.

Davis is right here. Just for your understanding - not even the top 5 women, including me, had been asked and given the pro and contra arguments before this "vote" at the meeting in Salzburg had been made. Françoise had no idea about this decision, neither did Yoko or Chisato when I asked them. The only ones of the whole female world ranking that might have known about this vote and its result were Kathleen, because her husband Gordon was in the meeting, and Jamie of course.

Why were there not more female voices to be heard and seen at the meeting in Salzburg? Well, I would have come immediately and at my own costs, had I been invited to join this meeting that concerns our female hang gliding world! I have actually made the effort to contact and talk to Françoise, Yoko, Chisato and Sasha, I didn´t get an answer from Kathleen or Claudia, but I also talked to Niki Longshore. I talked to the women who are most likely to join the Worlds in Brasilia, which are the ones this topic concerns, and who should have had a voice in this process I think.

To me, this vote seems to have been a faulty process, taking place over the head of these hopefully 8 or 9 women who are concerned, and who could be affected in a very negative way by this decision. It should be revised and a new vote taken by the women concerned, the ones that will compete in Brasilia.

We want to motivate the rest of the flying girls by showing that if you are focused and dedicated, if you keep flying and learning, you can fly the same tasks like the guys, and you can win an overall task in an international comp like Sasha just did in Australia, that you can in fact even rank 15^th overall in an open worlds, like I did in Big Spring. It is important that women show up in the top 100 in the world ranking - but if you artificially cut out the ones who are most likely to get there (Françoise, Sasha, Yoko, Chisato and me) by forcing us to decide between either flying a women’s worlds without gaining sustainable world ranking points, or flying in the open with our team (that we are qualified and by our NAC nominated for), thus having the opportunity to score high points in the highest scoring comp in the world, it might probably destroy the possibility to get a valid new women´s world champion, which is also important in our sport!

Jamie said: I seems to me that Corinna wants women to have special treatment at competitions.

Françoise, Sasha and me are nominated by our NACs into the national team of 6, but if you want to put it like that, yes in fact I am asking for a special treatment for the other 5 or 6 women who are likely to compete in Brasilia and eligible to fly a women's worlds, to be allowed to compete in the overall worlds as well, so all of them can score good world ranking points, move up and be "more visible" to the rest of the world - to get into the guys´ heads that women can actually fly, sometimes even quite well. From a safety and endurance point of view, the 8 or 9 women I know of who are likely to join are all able to safely fly with the guys in Brasilia, as most of us have done that for years.

Further on, Jamie states: Encouraging women to compete is better accomplished by working on the women that aren't already competing at the level Corinna is. We don't need to encourage the Corinnas, Francoises and Kathleens of the hang gliding scene, we need to encourage less experienced women to compete - those very women who are NOT planning to come to Brasilia. Combining the events will not encourage those women, it will only satisfy the few that are not in need of encouragement.

But maybe even the Corinnas, Françoises and Kathleens need an encouragement to see what all their investment into our sport is good for? And I'm not just talking about around 6000€ that it costs everyone of us (from Europe) to go and compete at the Worlds in Brasilia, or around 10000€ a year (maybe more for the ones who don't fly on standby…) to keep our gear up to date and going to international competitions, but also about our voluntary, idealistic investment.

Keep in mind that by the current decision on local regulations for Brasilia, CIVL is not just "not encouraging" three of the women who dedicate most time, means and idealism to get into their open national team, but in fact CIVL is PUNISHING us three! Us three hardest, but the other 5 or 6 pretty hard as well. I know you want to do this to help the sport, but in this particular case of Brasilia, you could unfortunately reach the opposite.

I have not only been considering and talking to the top 10 women in the sport, but as you might remember from Monte Cucco and Tegelberg, Jamie, I have always been happy to pull other women along, share sponsorship, and in fact organize several training camps. I have worked voluntarily at the "Ladies Challenge," an international comp in Greifenburg, organized by DHV to support women to fly safer and better in competitions. As I have done this volunteer work for about 15 years now, in fact I know quite a few of the "vast majority" of the world ranking list that you like to talk about. Let's face it - at the moment, only 14 women in the world would be eligible to fly at a women's worlds without exemption, that's why I would like a decision for Brasilia to be made by the women who really are concerned - the ones who will go and compete! Just for this competition.

Apparently CIVL is unmoved by these arguments.

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Flying in Austria

What's up with that country?

Jamie Shelden|PG|USHPA

In response to this article: http://ozreport.com/21.035

Martin Palmaz <<Martin>>, USHPA executive director, writes:

Here is the letter Jamie drafted that I sent last spring. We never heard back.

Dear Mr. Kascich,

We are writing from the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, the US national Aeroclub governing hang gliding and paragliding here. We were recently informed by Sepp Himberger that the legal regulations for guest pilots in Austria are in final review until April 21, 2016. We understand from Sepp’s message that pilots holding a hang gliding or paragliding license from a list of approved countries are legally allowed to fly in Austria as of May 1^st.

However, we were never contacted by the Austrian Aeroclub who were apparently handling the evaluation of foreign licenses. Although we were not given an opportunity to provide information on our national licensing system for evaluation, we would very much appreciate the chance to do so now so that US pilots may be included in the guest pilot list for Austria.

We would be happy to provide any information necessary for this evaluation on an expedited basis given the upcoming deadline for implementation of the guest pilot program.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience regarding this matter.

Sincerely,

Martin Palmaz, Executive Director

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A few notes on what happened at the meeting

Mitch and Jamie

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Mitchell "Mitch" Shipley|record|Stéphane Malbos|USHPA

http://www.fai.org/civl-news/42839-whats-up-at-the-2017-salzburg-plenary

The Bureau members and Committee Chairs were elected for a two years term:

President: Stephane Malbos
Vice-President: Goran Dimikowski, Igor Erzen, Zeljko Ovuka, Jamie Shelden
Secretary: Mitch Shipley
Financial Secretary: Andrew Cawley
Hang-Gliding Committee: Jamie Shelden

The new Bureau then appointed:

Safety Officer: Mitch Shipley
Records and Badges Officer: Igor Erzen
Jury and Stewards Officer: Jamie Shelden

Mitch is in charge of safety for the USHPA and does the detailed safety analysis of the accidents that are reported to the USHPA. The USHPA has a database of accidents and it is closely guarded and not shared with anyone except when Mitch writes up a general report and then no details of specific accidents.

The USHPA accident reporting system does not work with the CIVL accident reporting system. Meet organizers are required by the USHPA and by CIVL to write up any reports of incidents during their sanctioned meets. In that past we have done the reports for the USHPA but not for CIVL because frankly one report is enough. If the USHPA and CIVL can't get it together to share one report we are not going to go to the extra trouble of writing two reports. The USHPA report is an on-line form. Otherwise we would just copy it for CIVL.

So it will be interesting to see how Mitch coordinates between the USHPA and CIVL re accident reports.

Our competitions this year are not USHPA nor CIVL sanctioned. They are both fully subscribed.

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Donnita Hall

Jamie Shelden asks CIVL for her recognition

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|PG|sailplane

Jamie writes:

Donnita Hall was, as we understand, the first female HG pilot in the world. She began flying on flat ski kites towed behind waterski boats , then moved into foot launching with her husband of the time Dave Kilborne. She built her own gliders and survived that, no small feat in those days.

Many US flying sites were pioneered by Donnita and Dave. Donnita has always been an ambassador for free flight. Not long after moving to San Diego in the 80's, she was instrumental in helping keep Torrey Pines (and world renown and highly visible hang gliding, paragliding and sailplane site) open to flight. Over the following years she welcomed and briefed hundreds of new to Torrey Pines pilots. Her friendly demeanor and emphasis on safety was appreciated by all.

Several years ago when the call went out for help from the US Foundation for Freeflight, Donnita stepped up, quickly becoming the Executive Director, where she serves to this day. The Foundation for Freeflight is a US nonprofit foundation dedicated to preserving hang gliding and paragliding in the US through, among other things, providing grants to the US National Team allowing pilots to attend Category 1 hang gliding and paragliding events around the world.

Over the years, Donnita has provided huge support to the US women’s team enabling them to compete in the Women’s world championships in Monte Cucco - Italy, Florida - USA, Tegelberg - Germany and Forbes - Australia. Although now retired from active flight her pioneering involvement, support and inspiration continues and she would be a worthy recipient of the CIVL Hang Gliding Diploma.

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Paragliding Nazi

It was faked out news

Facebook|Jamie Shelden|PG|video

https://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow/videos/10154801242256800/

I wish Urs had checked this out more. I wish I had. Jamie Shelden set me straight.

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Alan Crouse|Jamie Shelden|USHPA

Discuss "The Fall USHPA BOD meeting" at the Oz Report forum   link»

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June 4^th through 10^th

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Midwest Championships 2017|USHPA

Jamie Shelden at the USHPA BOD meeting tells me that only two US USHPA and CIVL sanctioned hang gliding competitions are scheduled for 2017, both in June. I'm assuming the their meet organizers will apply for CIVL sanctioning. This isn't automatic any more. The USHPA office has handled this for the past few years.

October 21, 2016, 1:50:49 pm MST -0600

Dinosaur 2017

Earlier in June than originally planned

Jamie Shelden|Terry Reynolds

Jamie Shelden, the meet organizer taking over from Terry Reynolds, writes:

I’ve submitted the sanction application for Dinosaur 2017 for the week of June 18-24.

The Competition Committee will meet Friday afternoon to approve the applications for competitions. We expect that the Midwest Championship will be held June 4^th through 10^th in Whitewater, Wisconsin not far from Chicago. This gives you time to take in that meet and then drive to Dinosaur.

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Outlander

Jamie Shelden

http://www.hgoutlanders.com/santa-cruz-flats-race-day-1/

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2016 Santa Cruz Flats Race

Day 2 canceled after a while

Belinda Boulter|Bobby Bailey|CIVL|Flytec 6030|Jamie Shelden|John Simon|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2016|weather

This proved to be a very interesting day. Lots of different flight aspects to deal with.

The day started with lots of cu's around and virga in the sky. And I'm talking about shortly after sun rise. The local forecast was for a 20% chance of rain. It is rare to see cu's at all here so this was a bit over board.

We started off on the wrong foot with the wrong task given to the pilots at the pilot meeting. No one caught it. The second turnpoint got renamed to a different turnpoint - LAPALM to PALMA on the task board. Sent us ten kilometers further in nearly the same direction. Zac had it right in his 6030 from the task committee meeting, but he was the only one. We could have used a shorter leg at that point due to cu-nimb development.

We opened launch with rain pouring down to the south but blue to the west. There was a forecast for a southwest wind at 10 mph, so the blue was supposed to come over us and dominate, or so we thought.

I was pulled up thirteenth behind Bobby Bailey and when we got to 1,100' I essentially got knocked off in the abrupt lift next to another pilot trying to work it. I pinned off and tried to recover from going sideways.

The lift was gnarly for the first few thousand feet but calmed down a bit as we climbed to 5,900' at a moderate pace of 195 fpm. Then it started to rain, actually virga as we were in the air, not on the ground. I headed south to get away from it.

The virga came coming time after time as I worked myself away from the cu's and in front of the virga to the south. Up and down and getting wet which made for interesting decisions as I had to run away from lift to get out of the virga. Virga was forming from even teeny tiny clouds.

The first clock at 1:45 passed and apparently no one was in a position to take it. I certainly wasn't at a little over 4000'. A bit later I climbed to a little over 6000' and headed east south east to again get away from the virga. I saw a nice cu in that direction just beyond the 7 kilometer start cylinder and came in under John Simon, Pedro and Jonny.  Found almost 300 fpm there to a little over 6000' just in time to take the second clock at 2:05 PM.

Heading downwind to the northeast toward the first turnpoint at Signal Hill I could see a cloud street with rain behind me right on my course line. I wanted to get away as soon as possible. I wasn't particularly high but there were small cu's ahead. It was about 15 km to the turnpoint and other than a few odd turns I didn't work much lift until I got to just before the hills and the turnpoint. I'd often found lift in this area before as the ground rises and the wind was coming right into the heated rocks of the hills. The turnpoint had a 3 kilometer radius around it so the lift was out in the valley but over rising ground.

I climbed to 6300' and five other pilots came in below. Hit one more thermal on the way out to 6,700' heading south toward Palma (not LAPAM).

Off to my south west there was a large cu-nimb on the west side of Casa Grande. I was on the east side. The top was rising and the shadow was creeping across my course line. The rain was falling hard under the cu-nimb but I didn't see a gust front (marked by dust). I hurried on hoping to stay in the sunshine and hit the little cu's to the east of the cu-nimb.

I kept checking to be sure that there wasn't a gust front. The cu-nimb was huge and the shadow came over my course line. I saw three pilots (Jonny, Kraig and another one) a little higher and going closer to the clouds. I was not happy about the cu-nimb, but the air seemed okay.

Down to 3,700' I climbed back up to 5,400' at the edge of the shade wishing I was far ahead of this position half way down the leg. Seven kilometers from the Palma turnpoint I say Kraig and Jonny just above me turning a bit to the west of me and went under them but didn't get anything. I continued on and two kilometers short of the turnpoint and down to 1000' AGL found 160 fpm in smooth air over shaded ground. I took it to 4,300' with no wind.

It was easy to make the turnpoint. The cu-nimb had disintegrated but a new one had formed to its south and west. I could see a gust front from it but it was till a long ways away. I headed for the turnpoint and then found that I had entered in the wrong next turnpoint MARANO instead of MAGNANO. I knew the MAGNANO turnpoint was to the northeast.

I canceled the task and did a GOTO MAGNANO.

Found 140 fpm north of the turnpoint to 3,800', but the lift was getting scarce over the shaded ground. It was sunny to the north but that was currently out of reach. Heading further north with three other pilots around I wasn't finding much just trying to stay up in near zero sink and drift. Then I got a radio call from Belinda that the task had been cancelled. I immediately landed in a huge hard packed field.

On landing a saw the lightning to the south. Later three separate gust front came through but they weren't over powering. Calm then prevailed as I broke down the glider with Belinda already there.

Jonny had contacted Jamie about canceling the task Jamie said that we are using the CIVL rules yet to be enacted that if a day has multiple start times the task is canceled instead of stopped for weather. Jonny felt that there were plenty of pilots behind them and they would get hit by the cu-nimb at the PALMA turnpoint.

Zac took this shot.

The sport class Geckos from yesterday by Kelly Myrkle.

The after task drinking party two balconies away.

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Zac and Majo get married at the Santa Cruz Flats Race

Just before the sun goes down

Facebook|Jamie Shelden|video

https://www.facebook.com/patrick.pannese/videos/10206843900468295/

https://www.facebook.com/jamie.shelden/posts/10209136121293883

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September 6, 2016, 8:09:08 MST -0600

2016 Pre-Worlds

GPS or pressure altitude?

Akiko Suzuki|Blue Sky|Jamie Shelden|Pre-Worlds 2016|Thomas Weissenberger

Thomas Weissenberger <<thomas.weissenberger01>> writes:

At task four, which I was leading until the last turnpoint, I left for final glide at 2,650 meters MSL. With full VG I kept gliding more upwind to the right while other gliders to my left hit big sink. There was a blue sky ahead of us so there were no clouds that could tell us anything about what would happen next.

On my line I hit good lift and I started to glide faster so as to not go over the altitude limit. I was already close to 2,775 meters MSL (30 meters extra included as briefed at the pilot meeting).

But instead of diving out and away from it, the lift it got stronger, so I pulled the bar in as far as possible for the fastest speed. Then the nose went up vertically and the glider wanted to go into a loop. I put all my weight to the right to make a wingover instead.

When coming out of my acrobatic maneuver I was still in major thermal lift. As soon my nose dive got from vertical to a slightly positive wing position the glider recovered immediately to horizontal. With a massive G-force I was pressed into my harness, the speed bar still at my belly was pushed forward and hit my throat very hard. Eight batten clips broke immediately with a huge crack and four battens, two each side, slid out their batten pockets about 30 cm (Nr. 5 and 6). Two of them were bent.

I could continue gliding but with pain in my throat. My speed bar pressure felt very loose so I checked my wings each side to see the damage. With four battens pushed back you cannot imagine how the glide performance decreased still with full VG! My numbers for reaching goal went down and after crossing the lake low I had to thermal again together with Yuiji Suzuki to make it.

In goal Tony Armstrong and both sons of Nene told me that they have seen my loop just flying behind me. Also Jamie Shelden took pictures of my trailing edge battens after I had landed.

Well, I just could download my backup GPS (Sensbox by Flytec) of task 4 which is telling me that I had a maximum GPS altitude of 2,906 meters or 2,752 meters barometric altitude QNH (23 meters below airspace) calibrated on take off at takeoff altitude. This would mean that I was not over the limit of 2,775 m QNH at all!

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:tomtom01/1.9.2016/14:24

Of course, my back-up was downloaded but the scoring program just showed the GPS altitude of 2,906 meters and not the 2,752 meter QNH (below the limit of 2,775 meters) but I did not realize that at that moment This would also mean that the main mistake was done by the score keeper by not getting the QNH numbers from my instrument Also the FS scoring program was installed just before the comp and the scorer did not have any experience with it.

The same evening I wrote a complaint about what had happened before the scoring as a pilot's report. The main statement was that I have tried all I could to prevent getting higher than 2,775 meters MSL without any chance to avoid that as detailed above. Furthermore the loop pushed me and my glider into a dangerous maneuver in turbulent air. I just could get out safely without any serious injuries. My voice is slowly coming back now and I have started to be able to swallow food and water again.

They also did not ask me if I am ok or if I would need medical treatment, friends and flying mates did though. Only what matters to them was airspace and the numbers shown by the program. Not any health or safety issues! Looks like one tumble was not enough...

I asked that they should check QNH altitudes of my back-up instrument, which was downloaded, but they did not. They just gave me zero points for the day. But at briefings it was said that always the lower numbers in favor of the pilot would be considered. This was not done in my case as I understand it now.

Same thing happened to Pedro Garcia at task 3 but the other way around by taking the back-up altitudes and not the right data out of his Digifly instrument. They just do whatever they feel like. This is a misuse of power going against pilots who paid a  250 € entry

They did the same thing at the Brasilia Open the week before with Olav Opsanger from Norway on task 4 by taking GPS altitudes instead QNH. At this competition only the 1^st task QNH altitudes were considered after certain protests when all of a sudden all penalized pilots got their points back with me as the day winner. Then for the following tasks they changed it again - during the same comp - back to GPS altitudes by saying at briefings: 'GPS altitudes must be taken by FAI rules' - seriously. But for task 1 they took QNH altitudes.

Anyway, I arrived on 7^th place on the fourth task, happily save and sound, with plenty of leading bonus points, which would have given me about over 940 points. This would have made a huge difference on the final results of these Pre-World Championships if they would have been run correctly.

I looked at Thomas' track log. The GPS altitude (not the pressure altitude) showed him very slightly above the 9000' level for a few seconds before he hit the turbulence. He then lost about 500 feet in eight seconds.

Discuss "2016 Pre-Worlds" at the Oz Report forum   link»

August 30, 2016, 8:20:09 pm MST -0600

2016 Pre-Worlds

Results

Akiko Suzuki|Davide Guiducci|Facebook|Filippo Oppici|Jamie Shelden|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Marco Laurenzi|Moyes Litespeed RX|photo|Pre-Worlds 2016|Primoz Gricar|Thomas Weissenberger|Tullio Gervasoni

https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=1740

Tulio at goal here. The big picture (surrounding).

There was a 9,000' ceiling. I would not appreciate having to stay below a given height. I see the point of keeping folks out of clouds. Pedro won yesterday and exceeded the height limit today to get a zero.

Wings on Tour story

The best day by far compared to the last 10 days of flying here! Big air with 5-7 meters/second up, beautiful cloud streets, less wind and a cloudbase not much higher than our 2,700 meter ceiling - thank god!

Primoz won the day with our Austrian fellow Christian 5^th, Tom Weissenberger around 7^th place. Nene tumbled but stays unhurt which is most important! Next days are looking promising as well with a dying cold front passing tonight bringing some humid air masses, like today.

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:tomtom01/30.8.2016/15:39

https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-43/

Task 3:

Cumulative:

Jamie Shelden is reporting here: http://www.hgoutlanders.com/pre-worlds-day-3/ and http://www.hgoutlanders.com/pilot-number-17-is-pushing/

August 28, 2016, 5:42:24 pm MST -0600

Outlanders

Jamie will be blogging there on the pre-Worlds

Jamie Shelden

http://www.hgoutlanders.com/

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August 28, 2016, 8:29:57 MST -0600

2016 Pre-Worlds

Mitch there as steward

Jamie Shelden|Pre-Worlds 2016

http://www.brasilia2017.com.br/brasilia-sedia-pre-mundial-de-voo-livre/

Mitch writes:

They aren't using Airtribune, but rather choose to use the Brazilian CVLB site for reporting results and the Flymaster website for live tracking. Jamie just brought the trackers when she arrived Friday, so we are working quickly to get all setup for use. There are no American pilots here.

Results at Brazilian free flight Confederation: https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-43/

Live tracking at Flymaster: https://lt.flymaster.net/bs.php?grp=1740

These links will be added to the main web site: www.brasilia2017.com. There was previously no link to the Flymaster live tracking, so it appeared that there was no live tracking.

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Klaudia Bulgako tied for first on the seventh task

competition|European PG Championships 2016|Jamie Shelden|PG

2016 European Paragliding Championships

https://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.mk/2016/08/claudia.html

https://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.mk/2016/08/groundhog-day.html

Groundhog Day - That's how I'm feeling at the moment. After more than two weeks in Krushevo for the European Hang Gliding Championships, I had a quick week being a tourist in Scotland before returning here for the European Paragliding Championships. This is a new one for me - my first PG competition. I'm finding myself fascinated by the differences and inspired by the things we share.

https://airtribune.com/europg2016/results

August 15, 2016, 11:24:12 CST -0500

FAI/CIVL and meet organizers

The meet organizers run the competitions and are the only ones responsible for their web pages

CIVL|Facebook|Jamie Shelden|PG

https://www.facebook.com/jamie.shelden/posts/10208898142904572?comment_id=10208899423256580&notif_t=feed_comment_reply&notif_id=1471268754681826

Jamie Shelden writes in response to this: https://www.facebook.com/Flykirst/posts/10153704407302190:

I am not Facebook friends with the person who posted this or most that have commented, so I am not able to comment directly and can only post this reply here on my page.

I am a female pilot and representative of the FAI as the CIVL Secretary and I am here in Krushevo serving as a juror at the European Championship. I felt it was time to officially respond to this post on behalf of the CIVL. While this competition is FAI sanctioned, neither the FAI or the CIVL “run” competitions. Private parties, via their country’s NAC (national airports organizations) are responsible for all aspects of “running” an event such as this. Neither the FAI or the CIVL “allowed” this photo to be posted on Facebook. It is the responsibility of the CIVL to ensure that Category 1 events (world championships and continental championships) are “safe, fair and satisfying”. It is NOT the responsibility of the CIVL, nor do we feel it is appropriate to engage in the censorship of any media reports or photographs posted by private parties or competition organizers.

The person who posted this remark as well as many commenters seem to believe that the FAI or CIVL is responsible for discrimination in the sport and they seem to suggest that we are not making great efforts to encourage and promote women in hang gliding and paragliding. This belief is misguided. We are in fact making constant efforts to promote and encourage women in air sports. Last February CIVL created a "Women's Dynamics" working group with a dedicated page on the CIVL site. We also implemented specific rules that allowed for more women to participate in this very event. On a rest day here last week we held a special meeting specifically to discuss women in competition and what the CIVL can do to help promote more participation. We endeavor to make tangible contributions to the promotion of women in our sports and this characterization of the CIVL as an organization that is not “setting the bar” to your standard is unjustified and unfair.

We respect the right of all individuals to express their opinion on this matter or their distaste for this photo. However, it is unfair of any person commenting here to suggest that the CIVL is in any way responsible for this photo or for promoting the “objectification of women.” Moreover, expecting that the CIVL should censor this photo is also unwarranted. It is, fortunately, not the job of CIVL to make judgments as to what is or is not an acceptable depiction of the events at this or any other competition.

I write: We encourage all participants and helpers to cover up to keep the hot Texas sun off their skin. Here is a picture of our driver, Audray Luck, but not during the meet:

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August 10, 2016, 9:19:08 pm CST -0500

2016 Santa Cruz Flats Race

Pay up now or lose your place

Jamie Shelden|Santa Cruz Flats Race 2016

Jamie Shelden <<j.shelden>> writes:

Anyone planning on attending the Santa Cruz Flats Race should go to AirTribune and register by Friday. Technically, registration closes tomorrow, but I will give everyone a few days grace. We need to finalize the number of tugs and other resources, so we must have a final count by Friday.

Also, if you haven’t paid your registration fees yet, that must be taken care of by Friday. Without payment of the registration fees, you will put on the waiting list and will only be able to participate if there are cancellations.

I think there are likely at least 25 that actually do plan on coming - quite a few have already paid and we’re just awaiting their paperwork. But, even so, smallest ever.

https://airtribune.com/santacruzflatsrace2016/pilots

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July 25, 2016, 8:10:08 MST -0600

2016 European Championships

After five tasks

Alessandro "Alex" Ploner|European Championships 2016|Facebook|Jamie Shelden|photo|video

Rest day. The competition goes through Friday with awards on Saturday.

https://www.facebook.com/107783410722/videos/10153608250890723/

Photo by Jamie Shelden.

Apparently the launch was successful.

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June 13, 2016, 7:29:12 MST -0600

United Breaks Guitars

And hang gliders

Jamie Shelden|video

Jamie recommended using United Airlines to bring gliders back and forth from the UK to Florida.

Carsten Friedrichs <<carsten.friedrichs>> writes:

But be careful because United Breaks Guitars: https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo Maybe also hang gliders?

Yup.

http://ozreport.com/15.086#2

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June 9, 2016, 7:53:31 MST -0600

Flying from Britain

Virgin Atlantic no longer takes hang gliders

Jamie Shelden|Rich Lovelace

Rich Lovelace writes:

The last airline out of UK to carry gliders is no longer going to!

http://www2.virgin-atlantic.com/us/en/travel-information/baggage/sports-equipment.html

For bookings made on/after 01 June 2016 standard dimensions of 190cm x 75cm x 65cm (75" x 30" x 26") and 23kg will apply regardless of the equipment type. In addition, we can no longer carry the following:

- Canoes and kayaks

- Hang gliders

- Windsurfing equipment

Jamie Shelden writes:

You're all forgetting about United. They have flights from Manchester and London and they happily take gliders for $200. Their sports baggage policy is even written in such a way that you can take all of your hang gliding equipment (harness, spare parts, glider, etc.) in up to 4 different bags! The only potential problem is they won't accept a glider on a 737 or A320/A319. So, you have to make sure your connection isn't on one of those aircraft. From Manchester, that means that you would be routed through Frankfurt, which is a little bit of a pain, but still totally doable.

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May 29, 2016, 9:17:09 pm EST -0400

Reflections on the week after the Quest Air Open

Dealing with the depression

Jamie Shelden|Quest Air|Tullio Gervasoni

Jamie Shelden|John Simon|Quest Air|Tullio Gervasoni

Jamie Shelden|Jeffrey "Jeff" Lawrence Bohl|John Simon|Quest Air|Tullio Gervasoni

The Quest Air Open Part 2 ended on Saturday with the death of Jeff Bohl. Everything stopped and people's feelings fell to the bottom. There was nothing we could do to make up for what happened and no one did very well dealing with their feelings.

On Sunday, the winds blew strong so no one flew. No one really wanted to fly.

On Monday, Tullio Gervasoni was still here and with light winds and nice cu's we flew around the Green Swamp. We were sorry that the Brits weren't around, but over at Jamie's on the east coast, so that they could have gone with us. We couldn't convince John Simon and Matt Christensen to fly with us.

On Tuesday with east winds John Simon and Matt Christensen flew north to Baron and back while Wallaby pilots flew to Quest and back. The winds picked up later in the afternoon with a first instance this year of an eastern sea breeze. The landings were interesting given the strong winds and accompanying turbulence.

On Wednesday through Friday there were east winds but not as strong as on Tuesday. The skies were filled with great looking cu's and if I had any one to fly with I would have been up in the air. Especially on Friday when there was a north component. It would have been a great day to fly to the west coast at Venice. I just don't appreciate flying alone. One of the reasons I love competition.

The forecast for Saturday and Sunday was for light winds. I wasn't quite ready to go early on Saturday as Michael Williams hadn't shown up early, but he did finally get his glider set up. But he decided not to fly and wait for Sunday. Saturday was another brilliant day where a flight around the Green Swamp would have been easily possible. Lots of cu's, light winds, no over development.

Sunday I set the glider up before 8 AM. Michael's was already setup and Soraya was getting setup also. She is buying a house in Groveland on Anderson street. Launch time was set for 12:30. The XCSkies forecast was not great for 5 PM showing spots of no lift, but other spots of good lift.

I was first to launch at 12:20 (I was anxious to get going) going toward the south in no wind conditions. Three quarters of the way down the runway I got the rope. My bridle lay over my base tube and the barrel release was below the base tube. I pulled on it and the rope came off immediately. I have done this before when there is no tension other than from the weight of the rope itself and the barrel release works immediately. No need for a push/pull type barrel release.

I turned around 180 degrees and landed going to the north with a smooth and easy landing. I was quickly back at the launch without any help.

Turns out Jim Prahl, the tug pilot, encountered a stinging or biting insect up his shorts and he accidently hit the release.

He quickly got me back into the air and I felt a bit of lift at the southeast corner of the field and then a bit more just to the northeast of launch. I pinned off at 1,100' to see if I could get up in the light lift and no wind conditions.

It was slow getting up at a bit less than 100 fpm and I worked it up to 3,000' when it turned on and I quickly climbed to over 4,000'.

Jim had hauled Soraya way to the northwest as I drifted slowly back to the southeast. There were plenty of cu's to the west so I headed at cloud base toward the Green Swamp. There were clouds to the south that went east west across the Green Swamp and clouds to the northwest that went east west across the northern edge of the Green Swamp. There was a significant blue hole to the west and north from the western edge of Osborn field.

Soraya was high and turning out in the blue hole so I headed toward her, but that turned out to be a false indicator. I turned south to head for the nearest cu's as did Soraya. Heading to the southwest and continually losing I came over the last field before the Green Swamp and on the eastern edge found a thermal at 400'. Soraya was about to land.

I took it up 1,000' but then it went away and I didn't find it again. I landed in that same field.

After we landed I looked to the west and noticed that there was a set of cu-nimbs on the western side of the Green Swamp and we could see the lightning. Michael had seen it also and stayed around Quest.

Turned out being on the ground was a good thing.

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May 2, 2016, 7:46:42 EST -0400

Please, stop using the GAP201X nomenclature in FS

Formulas

CIVL|Jamie Shelden|Joerg Ewald|PG

I wrote to Joerge Ewald, who is in charge of FS:

There was GAP 98, GAP 2000, GAP 2002, and Oz GAP. Those were actually formulas.

The use of the GAP nomenclature (in FS)  actually should be FS 2015, FS 2016 instead of GAP 2015, GAP 2016. IMHO.

A new version of FS that adds additional features (or fixes bugs) to FS, but doesn’t actually change the underlying formulas.

BTW, no way make paragliding and hang gliding scoring the same.

Joerg Ewald <<joerg.ewald>> responding:

Thank you for our input. In your opinion, when is a formula an “actual formula”, and when not? In my opinion, as soon as the official formula specification changes, then the formula should be clearly distinguishable from any previous version. And because this was the case for the past few years – every year the CIVL plenary decided for changes in the calculation – we introduced new GAP versions.

Of course not all the changes were as substantial as the jump from GAP 2000 to 2002, but since then the specification has evolved quite a bit. Up to 2013 this was not always obvious, because nobody bothered much about writing it down, but since then we have an almost-complete specification, where this progress can clearly be followed. The latest edition (soon to be replaced by the 2016 edition) is here:

http://www.fai.org/component/phocadownload/category/?download=9812:2015-civl-gap-v10

This is about the formula itself. By the way, I have proposed a few times already to change the name, from GAP to CIVL, or something that includes CIVL, but so far the Bureau did not want to do that.

Now for the implementation, be it in FS or any other program, I agree, these should be completely independent from the formula. Whether one implements GAP2014 in 2015 or 2016 does not matter, it’s still GAP2014, CIVL’s official scoring formula for 2014.

With FS, to reduce our support effort, we want to make it very easy for everybody to always use the most current version. Because we have no auto-update capability right now, we do this by naming FS according to the release year. This way it’s obvious if somebody uses an old version. The FS version of a year (e.g. FS2015) generally includes the GAP edition of that year (GAP2015), but this is not a must. If, for example, there are no changes in GAP in 2017, then FS2017 will still include GAP2016.

I hope this makes it a little easier to understand.

And there was never the intention to make scoring for hang gliding and paragliding the same. We have a number of differences, some of which come from different needs, others – my impression – simply because the hang gliding and the paragliding people don’t talk enough with each other.

Jamie approached me in Lausanne, asking why some of those differences exist, and whether the changes we had introduced in paragliding over the years could be adopted to hang gliding *if they made sense*. So I listed all the differences, for her and other people from the HG scene to make an informed decision. From what I was told, the decision was to leave everything as is.

This is of course fine, although at least in the case of distance points, I think the decision was based more on the myth that has surrounded this non-linear calculation (“it’s safe, it makes people land in groups”) than on actual facts. Our evaluation shows that the points work exactly in the opposite direction, the single pilot overflying a whole group of pilots to land in the next field gains more in this system than with linear distance points. But because everybody believes this to not be the case, everybody acts accordingly and people do land in groups.

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April 28, 2016, 8:49:43 EST -0400

Registration open for Santa Cruz Flats Race

Jamie opens it today

Jamie Shelden

https://airtribune.com/santacruzflatsrace2016/registration

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USHPA RRG insurance

Jamie clarifies a certain situation for us

Jamie Shelden|Quest Air|Risk Retention Group|USHPA

Jamie Shelden at the USHPA BOD meeting writes:

I have an answer now. Here is the question again: Must a USHPA certified instructor who teaches at a site where the landowner doesn't require insurance be affiliated with/certified by PASA? The answer is no, but with an important caveat. If a USHPA certified instructor is not PASA certified/covered and is sued and the USHPA is named in the suit (because the USHPA certified the instructor and is highly likely to be named), the RRG is obligated to and will pursue indemnity (for defending itself against the suit and for any judgment) against the instructor and the school.

USHPA certified Instructors (USHPA instructor members) that teach at places like Lookout, Quest Air, Wallaby, and the Florida Ridge are not required to belong to a PASA certified school because these sites are not USHPA insured sites.

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Biwingual Team Challenge

Hoping for good weather

Ollie Gregory <<olliettt1955>> writes:

Hope it's warm and sunny where you are! The Tennessee Tree Toppers are moving along with preparation for the Biwingual Team Challenge set for April 17-23. Spring brings phenomenal soaring to the Sequatchie valley. The cool nights and warm afternoons generate the kind of thermals that dreams are made of, and make camping a joy as well! We have 40 pilots registered with about a third paragliding pilots so far. We cap at 60. We have four nice launches now, two on each side of the valley! We can handle a crowd and welcome free flyers before, after, and during lulls in the competition action! TTT is thankful for all the great support from our sponsors and the legends in the sport who have made TC the premier educational event for learning and mentoring XC flying. Special thanks to Mikey Barber and Denis Pagen for years of support! We want to give back! This is going to be an extra special Team Challenge! If you are getting good at thermal soaring and want to connect the dots to go some where, this TC is for you! If you want to get ready for some of the sport class or open class competitions and would like to learn how to put it all together, this meet is for you! If you are a grizzly soar dog with thousands of miles of XC experience and want to pass this treasure of knowledge on, we need you! Bring it!

OK! This is how TC rolls. We'll meet, greet and register all afternoon Saturday April 16^th at our Henson Gap Pavilion. We will build teams Saturday night and Sunday morning. Our mentoring format pairs skilled A pilot mentors with B and C pilot team mates. A typical team would have two A pilots a B and a C pilot. Each team chooses a task committee member and a safety committee member. The scoring program normalizes every team, no matter the make up, to be able to achieve a maximum score of 1,000 points. The C's are weighted more heavily than the B's. The A pilots are significantly handicapped, though they have a big job to do, and longer, more challenging tasks.

Tasks are designed to offer a good chance for the various level of pilot to make their XC goals. Typically, the C's XC goal is fairly close. The B Pilot goal is often twice that distance or maybe an out and back. The A goal may be two times the distance of the B goal, or require a valley crossing. To win, a team must get their C's and B's to their goals. A Pilots help their team win by flying wing man until their peeps have their goals. A's are typically in the air for hours to do this and then go on to complete their longer tasks! This has been a great format! When task legs overlap, there are thermal markers everywhere!

A typical day offers many opportunities to learn from the best! We have breakfast and weather work up together under the pavilion. The work up is projected for all to see. This offers those interested in the weather a chance to peer over a weather guru's shoulder, ask questions, then fly the day! Knowledgeable locals will make suggestions to the task committee of various routes. This will all be projected on Google Earth so pilots new to our beautiful Sequatchie Valley can be well oriented! Once tasks are chosen by the task committee and ratified by the safety committee, we move to get ready for flying. After the flying day is done we have debriefing and seminars from leaders in the sport of free flight during and after our onsite evening meal. Then repeat all week!

Our beautiful Henson Gap site affords great camping right by launch. We will have healthy affordable food on site all week. Wills Wing, Lookout Mountain Flight Park, Flytec and more are contributing bling that A pilots will distribute to their peeps during the evening debriefs.

Ya can't miss this! The meet runs from Sunday April 17^th through Saturday April 23^rd. We have a crazy fun karaoke party Friday night so think of a fun Freeflight parody song and win something! The meet wraps up with an awards celebration party after flying is done Saturday. The hand thrown pottery trophies are awesome! The Blues Devils will be playing for us!

Now the coolest part! The TTT is accepting donation to the RRG in lieu of registration as long as those donations are greater than or equal to $175 and happen between January 9^th and March 1^st! This is our best way to help free flight! For those donating to the RRG, Participation in the Tennessee Tree Toppers Team Challenge only requires a TTT membership! Come fly in our great teaching meet and help the sport of Freeflight remain secure into the future! TTT Membership for a year is only $100.

And the other super cool bits! Steve Pearson is bringing Wills Wing Demo Days to Team Challenge! Zac Majors is coming to teach and lead a team! Steve is teaching and leading a team too! It will give me great honor to fly with these hang gliding superstars, but it'll be more fun when my team beats em!!! Don't miss it!

To register visit https://tttmember.org/team-challenge/

For detailed instructions on completing the registration process visit https://tttmember.org/registration-help/.

To explore more about the Treetopper's Team Challenge check out this blog post by Jamie Shelden: http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/2012/10/tennessee-tree-toppers-team-challenge.html.

and this video by Cory Barnwell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_xkg7esWkE.

To read about the exceptional conditions we can get in spring, check out this article from the TTT newsletter: http://videos.tennesseetreetoppers.org/TTT News Magazine Spring Issue April 2011FINALproof.pdf#page=5.

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2016 Green Swamp Sport Klassic

The registration fee increases next Friday

Davis Straub|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2016|Jamie Shelden|Larry Bunner

Davis Straub|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2016|Greg Dinauer|Jamie Shelden|Larry Bunner

Davis Straub|Green Swamp Sport Klassic 2016|Greg Dinauer|Jamie Shelden|Larry Bunner

http://ozreport.com/2016GreenSwampSportKlassic.php

We have three mentors for the competition. Davis Straub, Larry Bunner, and Greg Dinauer.

Sign up soon and get all your paper work in and fees paid to keep your registration costs down. Aerotow fees are only $300, less than Jamie's Santa Cruz Flats Race, for example. Quite a bit less than the aerotow fees in Big Spring. It makes sense to fly competitions at flight parks.

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