2008- Nov 717-734

Minutes of the Hang Gliding Competitions Panel Meeting held at Tideswell on 15th November 2008 717. PRESENT & APOLOGIES The meeting opened at 10:00 with the following present: Kathleen Rigg (Chair - KR), John Aldridge (Sec - JA), Dave Bluett (DB), Nigel Bray (NRB), Trevor Birkbeck (TB), Bruce Kavanagh (BK), Steve Penfold (SP), Mike Stephens (MS) and Carl Wallbank (CW). Apologies were received from Graham Phipps (GP) and Will Greenwood (WG). 718. MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING & MATTERS ARISING The minutes of the last meeting were approved and there were no matters arising that were not also listed as agenda items. 719. CHAIRMAN'S REPORT KR reminded the panel that we are still World Champions, that the rotation of panel members decided last year had started, welcomed new members to the panel and thanked all panel members for their work. 720. TREASURER’S REPORT & FINANCES a. Current Position. MS presented a draft set of year end figures prepared by Hillary. Finances remain healthy although we had a £4.5K excess of expenditure over income due to the training camp, hosting the Bleriot Cup this year and heavy take-up of individual funding for back to back comps in the summer. HSS estimated that reserves will last 8 years if we continue to overspend our income at the same rate. NRB agreed to investigate getting a better return on our money held on deposit. Action: NRB b. Financial Year. It had been hoped that the adoption in 2006 of a financial year starting 1st October, giving a deadline of 30th September for submitting individual claims would ensure that there is little carry forward of expense items into the next year but there was still a significant number of uncleared cheques. The retrieve driver for the training camp had not been identified and CW offered to chase this up so payment could be made. Action: CW c. Future Funding. JA said that UK Sport funding to the BHPA is at an end but he felt that BHPA support for competitions would remain at current levels unless membership dropped significantly. He reminded everyone that this reflected a real drop in income as we have not received an increase for many years and inflation continues to increase our costs. d. Approval of Accounts. Hillary was thanked for her continuing work on these and the accounts were approved. 721. UK NATIONALS a. Class 1 Ager is the preferred venue with dates Sunday 19th to Saturday 25th July - subject to local and NAC approval. This should be back-to-back or soon after the practice comp for the European Championship which Spain has bid to hold from 4th to 18th July 2010. As CIVL has not yet approved the bid and no dates have been published for the practice event there remains some uncertainty; JA will keep the panel informed about this. For this reason the panel agreed to have Laragne as the fall-back position if things do not work out for Ager but dates should remain the same. We will again run our nationals in tandem with an Open FAI Category 2 meet i.e. all pilots will require FAI licences. WG has offered to be the co-ordinator again. If the venue is confirmed as Ager KR will ask Clive Belbin to be scorer. Action: JA, WG & KR b. Entry Fees. These will remain £90 for the UK Nationals but a discount of £10 will be given to UK pilots with entry paid by 5th May 2008. Qualified UK pilots (i.e. those with AP) entering the nationals for the first time will again be subsidised to the full amount. Under current rules UK pilots with a rating of Pilot will continue to be accepted as guests in the Nationals but will not be eligible for the title. All UK pilots will receive automatic entry to the parallel FAI Cat 2 comp. Entry fees for the FAI Cat 2 will be the same as for 2008 i.e. €130. Action: JA c. Class 5. A Class 5 national championship will be programmed to run alongside the flex wing championship and this will also have FAI Cat 2 status if a minimum of 6 pilots (including any guests) compete. Entry fees as for Class 1. Action: JA & MS 722. BRITISH OPEN SERIES a. Format. This will again be a series of three 5 day competitions and will be arranged for the usual three bank holiday weekends i.e. early May, late May and August. With 15 flying days again in the calendar, as in 2008, there will be no provision for a back-up comp. Scoring remains as 6 tasks to count for the series and scaling down to max of 500 points will continue to be applied; team scoring will be dropped. b. Costs and income. A full breakdown was not available but the series appears to remain self-funding so entry fees will remain as in 2008 i.e. £50 for each meet. Discounts will be £45 for pilots whose fees for the full season are received by 1 March 2009 i.e. those who pay by that date will get all 3 comps for £105. Pilots who do not qualify for that discount but pay for the full season at the 1st meet of the year will pay £130. Action: JA c. BOS 2009 - 1st Meet. This will be the British Open and, subject to club agreement, will run Fri 1st to Tue 5th May and be based on Mid Wales and LMSC sites; KR will ask Mark Stewart to be the local organiser with the HQ in the same place as 2008 and a hog roast arranged for pilots. Action: KR, JA and Mark Stewart d. BOS 2009 - 2nd Meet. This will be run on Yorkshire Dales and North Yorks Sailwings Club sites from Fri 22nd to Tue 26th May with the HQ at the Green Dragon, Hardraw as it has been for the past 2 years. TB will be the local organiser. Action: KR and TB e. BOS 2009 - final. This will be on SE Wales club sites (subject to club agreement) and based at Crickhowell from Fri 28th August to Tue 1st September with BK as local organiser, although DB will book the Market Hall for scoring and accommodation for JA and himself. Action: BK and DB f. Classes. These will be Class 1 and Class 5 at all meets; if there are sufficient Class 5 gliders they will be scored separately and SP will also investigate a simple way to avoid just one or 2 Class 5 gliders distorting the scoring. Action: SP g. Attracting New Pilots. It was felt that the panel needed to do more to attract new pilots to Open Series comps, particularly as the British Clubs (Airwave) Challenge seems to have faded away for hang gliders. The panel does not have the resources to take over and run the BCC as well as current commitments so it was decided to run a “Sport Class” competition alongside the early May B/H British Open. Entry will not be restricted to pilots flying king posted gliders but the level has yet to be decided - although entry qualification will have to be Pilot rating. This comp will need to be integrated as much as possible with the BOS one but the concept is for tasks to be different, simple XC with no turn points or start windows. A single trophy to be provided, retrieves if possible, loan GPS available and an entry fee as low as possible. SP offered to produce a detailed proposal for the panel and it was agreed this would need publicising over the winter months if the initiative is to be successful. Action: SP h. Sites. SP offered to obtain site data and investigate permissions for use of Forest Farm during SE/MW meets. Action: SP 723. INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS a. 2009 Worlds, Laragne, 20 Jun - 4 Jul. JA identified the need to select a team of 4 pilots for immediate entry and a further pilot for the place that the UK is expected to pick up in a round of reallocation of spare places. This pilot will not form part of the team i.e. he will not score for the team nor win a medal, unless a place has been offered in the reallocation round to all nations who entered 4 initially. It is unlikely that the reallocation will proceed to a second round. CW and BK left the meeting at that point; CW was selected and returned to assist with the remaining selections and KR left shortly after. Team selection was the most difficult anyone could remember but eventually selected were: Carl Wallbank (Captain), Grant Crossingham, Robin Hamilton and Gary Wirdnam. Bruce Kavanagh was selected as the 5th pilot with Gordon Rigg and Dave Matthews selected as reserves in that order. Nick Pain is appointed team manager with BK acting for him until he returns from Australia. The team budget is set at £6K. Action: BK b. Pre-Europeans, Ager. This comp is not yet certain and neither dates nor entries available are currently known, however if the Ager bid for the Europeans is accepted the dates should be as close to the 2010 ones (4-18 July) as possible without overlapping the Laragne Worlds. Nick Pain will be asked to be team manager and funding will be the standard European Cat 2 rate of £200 per pilot. JA will inform panel of further details when known. Action: KR & JA c. Bleriot Cup. This will be held in France in 2009 and is the centennial event. Dave Shields will be asked by KR to be our organiser again. Individual funding will apply and team selection will be when dates and individual availability is known. It was noted that the French have indicated this may be the final comp in the Bleriot series as they now question the cost/reward benefits for themselves. Action: KR d. Pilot funding For 2009 foreign competitions. Except where specified separately this will continue to be £200 for European Cat 2 meets and £400 for Cat 2 meets on other continents. Eligibility for funding at all 2009 foreign meets is that pilots must have either paid and attended all 2008 Open Series meets or have flown the 2008 UK nationals. The Competitions Panel may vary these criteria in exceptional circumstances. e. Team Selection. Having abandoned the automatic selection of pilots in the top 30 of the WPRS this year the panel decided to continue with full discretionary selection. Phil Chettleburgh (PC) joined the meeting at this point. 724. NXCL This appeared to attract significantly lower interest in 2008; this may be partly due to poor weather, particularly at weekends but some felt that the need to send a cheque for entry is also discouraging pilots. The organisers have already identified this as a problem and are seeking a sponsor to provide an additional £250 so entry can be free. It was agreed that WG, on behalf of the panel, should also seek a sponsor for this but that the Comps Panel would provide the funding in addition to the similar sum already provided for website hosting if neither WG nor the organisers are successful. It has still not proved possible to find a simple way of providing BOS flights to the NXCL organiser in a usable format; JA will contact the CIVL software team to see if there is a simple way that GPSDump or FS can be tweaked to do this. Action: WG & JA 725. CLASS 5 MATTERS There is still insufficient interest in separate meets for this class and it was decided that we will continue to piggyback Class 5 onto existing BOS and Nationals meets. Action: MS 726. CIVL MATTERS JA had circulated notes from the recent CIVL Bureau meeting and answered questions on aspects of this. BK expressed concern that the CIVL rules still don’t provide a satisfactory method of verifying pilot altitude to control airspace infringements and cloud flying. The current rule just requires a “3D GPS”. While most 3D GPSs record GPS altitude, Garmin GPSs with pressure sensors instead record pressure altitude which can be adjusted by the pilot before or during the task and could be significantly different to GPS altitude even if set correctly. He suggests the only way to achieve accurate and consistent altitude data is either by mandating use of instruments with barometric altitude recording that’s not adjustable in flight or mandating use of instruments that record and display GPS altitude. It was also noted that the FAI are under pressure from the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) to increase testing in air sports and that there is no indication that additional funding will be found for this. JA was requested to circulate proposed Section 7A rule changes to the panel. Action: JA 727. BHPA MATTERS None of our 2008 trophy winners will be at the NEC for the re-presenting of national trophies which occurs after the BHPA AGM. There were no nominations for RAeC awards this year. This year’s longest flight does not exceed the 2007 distance so the President’s Trophy will be awarded for services to hang gliding, recommendations should be circulated by email. 728. RULE CHANGES JA proposed introducing a rule for all comps that it is each pilot’s responsibility to produce 3D track log or barogram evidence if infringement of airspace or other task limits is considered possible. This is in line with current Section 7A rules and was approved providing it is made clear that the penalty for failing to produce the evidence will be to stop the track log at the point of entry or suspected infringement. He also proposed adopting the Section 7A rules for early starts for the Nationals; this was agreed. Gary Wirdnam had proposed adopting the Section 7A rule for publishing maximum windspeed for tasks but this was not adopted as it was felt to be difficult to implement effectively and better left to the SC. The use of a formal task committee voted on by the pilots at the start of the competition was discussed but this was discounted on grounds of the time delays that it’s likely to introduce in task setting. Due to time constraints a number of other rule proposals will be dealt with by email. Action: JA 729. PILOT DEVELOPMENT Using the Dutch Nationals as a training camp for our less experienced pilots was generally regarded as a success but no feedback from either trainers or pilots was available. If dates of other nationals such as Dutch or French are suitable this will be considered again for 2009. BK suggested that rainy day seminars and other help to new pilots be provided during the Open Series. This has been considered before but BK will attempt to revitalise the project. He asked for suggestions for suitable subjects to be covered; instruments, tactics, tuning, task planning and communications are already listed as being of potential benefit. Local organisers for BOS meets are requested to investigate lecture rooms or other suitable venues at the meets they are responsible for. Action: BK, All 730. T-SHIRTS The popularity of the 2008 t-shirts was remarked upon. There is no need to increase the current budget. TB will approach Richard Lovelace about designs for 2009. Action: TB & HSS 731. TROPHIES & PRIZES a. Trophies. The stainless steel type has been very successful but it was felt that a change of type is desirable. SP offered to obtain information on etched glass trophies for TB. Budget remains unchanged. Action: SP & TB b. Day Prizes. It was felt that chasing up day prizes for individual BOS meets was not really working but that there was certainly still value in having sponsored goods available at the Nationals and the BOS final – though only pilots actually present would get anything. WG will remain the main co-ordinator on this. Action: WG c. Percy Moss Trophy. KR reported that Ex BHGA Chairman Percy Moss was concerned that his trophy was not in current use and had suggested using it for something else. Unfortunately the cup itself is heavily engraved with the Ladies categories for which it had previously been awarded. TB offered to explain the problem to Percy. Action: TB 732. SPONSORSHIP No report was available but WG's work on this in 2008 was appreciated and it was hoped he would continue efforts to find sponsors for next season. Action: WG 733. COMPOSITION & ROTATION OF PANEL MEMBERS a. Composition. KR remains in the chair, MS as vice-chairman, JA as secretary. Panel members are sufficient for tasks but a suitable person for PR work was also needed. SP was appointed to be responsible for scoring and Sport Class. b. Rotation. It was agreed that no more than two members need to stand down each year to ensure new ideas without losing continuity. WG has indicated that he will stand down at the end of the season and another will also have to. The system of seeking volunteer replacements during the season and having an election at the last comp had worked well. 734. AOB a. Safety Committee. As Steve Green is unlikely to be available for all meets in 2009 a new person is required to head the committee. Current members are Dave Matthews, Craig Dolwin, Mike Armstrong, Trevor Birkbeck, Gary Wirdnam and Richard Lovelace. KR will approach Craig Dolwin about taking over as head of SC. JA will include question on entry form to find out who the pilots would like to see on the SC and ask pilots to state if they would be prepared to be on the SC. The concept is to have someone head the SC for the season and for members to be chosen, or perhaps elected, from a pool of suitable pilots at each meet. Action: KR & JA b. Website. PC asked if the panel felt the new website was meeting their needs and this was confirmed. He said that regular daily input was needed from those at meets; this will be attempted but is often hampered by lack of internet access at the comp HQ. The possibility of replacing the pilots’ mailing list with a forum was discussed but views were varied and this will not be proceeded with at present. c. Communications. It was noted that the problem of blank emails being circulated by the mailing list appears to have gone away. The comps panel will revert to using their mailing list as long as it works satisfactorily. The meeting closed at 19:15 hours with thanks to Kathleen for hosting us again. uknxcl formats Andrew Hurst (guest) 1231345272|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover Regarding the gps format question (724. NXCL), has anyone tried gpsbabel ? It reads and writes a vast array of different formats, although it won't securely stamp the .IGCs, being open source. I use it a lot, and contributed a fix (for .cup format) to the project. uknxcl formats Phil Chett 1231511283|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover As i understand it Its the info that is spewed out from the results programme that causes the problem. As well as a lack of some vital info, there is a issue with co-ords as UKNXCL works with OS, and the scoring prog (designed for world wide use) works with lat long. UK NXCL - Coordinates UK-NXCL 1233666828|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover See latest rules on website last edited on 1233890522|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by UK-NXCL + show more uknxcl formats Andrew Hurst (guest) 1236622487|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover For anyone who may follow this: The 2009 UKNXCL handbook, available at the UKNXCL collectivex site (http://nxcl.collectivex.com/), says that waypoints are now accepted in either OSGB, or WGS84 decimal degrees formats. The IGC file you may submit to the website is for drawing on Google maps/earth only, not scoring, so I wouldn't expect that the .IGC security stamp is required (i.e. gpsbabel might be ok). However, if you want to store some irrefutable evidence to support your competition entry, then a securely stamped .IGC from gpsdump will do the job. If .IGC can be supported, then I think it's likely that the common .GPX format could be supported by the website too. By the way the online Calameo viewer thing is pretty good :) More ~ uknxcl formats UK-NXCL 1236687719|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover To date, using the igc format to exchange gps flight track data seems to be the standard. The gpx format may well become the standard to replace it. If, or when, it does we could look to make use of it. However, whatever happens, we will settle on using one single format only. In the meantime the format we'll continue to use will be the .igc format. You are right, we do not make use of any security information contained in any .igc file. The UK NXCL competition has always relied on the integrity of its competitors, and this will continue to be the case. It remains the responsibility of competitors to police their own competition. Should any decide to cheat they'll simply be named, shamed, barred and historical results expunged! If, Andrew, you have examples of your GPS flight tracks in GPX format do please forward them so I can have a look. To date, no one has sent one in and no one else has queried whether of not they can/could be used. uknxcl formats Andrew Hurst (guest) 1236696177|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover The GPX format is XML, with lat and long in WGS84 decimal degrees. Very easy to read and handle, and edit! <trkpt lat="53.320394084" lon="-1.729641510"> <ele>387.548584</ele> <time>2009-03-05T13:31:06Z</time> </trkpt> For that reason I don't think gpx would ever take over from IGC: the comps need a secure format for scoring, which only IGC can provide, and there's no reason to use a different format when everybody's used to gpsdump etc. which produce IGC. My using gpsbabel and gpx files is very unusual. The reason is gpsdump requires the garmin driver, whereas gpsbabel doesn't.