The hang gliding committee has been working reasonably well throughout the year via Basecamp, with a lot of input from active competition pilots from Norway, Germany, Russia, the UK, Belgium, France and the US.

Unfortunately, some of these pilot/committee members weren’t able to attend the Plenary this year.  But, with the help of Basecamp, all were still able to participate in the discussions about important issues.  

During the committee meeting this year we had a short discussion about the successful Category 1 events held last year and the upcoming Category 1 events scheduled for 2018.  Although there were some challenges in connection with the worlds held in Brasilia last August, they were a success and pilots came away feeling it was a safe, fair and satisfying event.  

On the agenda for the committee meeting were several proposals from various NAC’s, the Bureau and the HG committee chair, all for relatively uncontroversial matters.  Most notably, we have agreed to decrease the mandatory delay in live tracking at Category 1 events to leave it somewhat flexible for organizers and team leaders to decide on at the start of the event.  The maximum delay will now be set at 10 minutes, but team leaders can decide for less if they would like.  Also of concern to many pilots at the worlds in Brasilia was the decreased safety associated with having so many pilots in Category 1 events.  Pilots were passionate about increasing safety by decreasing the maximum number of pilots allowed.  It was agreed by the committee and the Plenary to limit the maximum number to any Category 1 event to 125.  This rule will not apply to bids that have already approved (the European championships in Macedonia next summer and the worlds in Italy in 2019).  Finally, probably of interest to many national team pilots is a new rule to require Category 1 organizers to provide leading-edge stickers of high contrast colour to increase the visibility of new gliders with darker coloured leading edges.  Alternatively, pilots can use their own high-contrast coloured nose cones if they prefer not to use leading-edge stickers, or if they already have sponsor leading edge stickers and don’t want to obstruct those.  

Overall, we’re happy to have so much participation of active pilots as that makes everyone feel the CIVL is connected to the competition scene and in touch with the concerns of competition pilots.