Inside the CIVL Plenary, Lausanne, Switzerland, 20 February 2010
Cross Country magazine will be reporting from inside the CIVL Plenary on 20 and 21 February. This page will be updated throughout the day. Refresh your browser to keep up to date.
6 pm
The session has closed. Restart tomorrow at 9 am.
5.15 pm
The meeting has moved on to bids for future competitions. Prospective host countries have up to 20 minutes to promote their site and organisation to CIVL. Macedonia has just completed its bid for the European Paragliding Accuracy Championships 2012 and Turkey is currently presenting its bid for the European Hang Gliding Championships in 2012.
France will later bid for the European Paragliding Championships 2012 to be held in St Andre.
4.45 pm
Dennis Pagen is one of the oldest hands in the sport – he’s been flying since the early 1970s, and has written, broadcast and lectured on hang gliding around the world. He is also the chairman of the CIVL hang gliding subcommittee. We caught up with him at lunchtime, where he talked about the discussions going on in the hang gliding comp world here in Lausanne. Points of note include discussions about allowing prototype hang gliders in Cat 1 comps, or not, supporting open distance comps – increasingly popular, he said – and a proposal to allow points for altitude in the case of a stopped task. And of course sprogs. (Apologies for one or two abrupt edits – we dropped a transition.)
4.15pm
The plenary has agreed that EN966 helmets will be compulsory at FAI CAT 1 events – that’s just the Worlds, the Europeans and the other continental championships too. CAT 2 events will be encouraged to do the same, but EN966 helmets will not be mandatory equipment. A working group has been set up to compare other EN standards which are appropriate for our sports.
3.30pm
Despite successfully negotiating their way through some very tricky subjects the plenary are stuck on helmet certification. Some want compulsory EN966 helmets which is the EN standard for air sports, others want snowboarding, skiing and other helmets too. Remember this will only affect you in FAI events, back home you can still wear your old tin pot. Another working group is brewing on the horizon. We’ll give you the heads up when the plenary moves on…
3pm
The Software working group has recommended that pilots in the next European Championships all wear live tracking devices. At the last World championships the Italian team sparked controversy when it was revealed that they were using the devices. Other teams worried that the team leader could relay information, particularly a pilot’s position in the task relative to others, which could be advantageous.
They are also recommending a new stopped task rule that will take into account a pilots altitude at the time the task is stopped. Given recent evidence that GPS altitude is unreliable as a means of measuring altitude – see XC Mag 123 – this may be a contentious point, although the working group are adamant that they are accurate enough. The HG sub committee’s report has been approved by vote. Implementation of it will be decided by vote later on.
Dennis Pagen, who chaired the HG sub committee, speaks at length about the proposed stop task rule in a video interview that we are uploading right now…
2pm: Part two of the interview with Calvo Burns, who is the chairman of the paragliding subcommittee here at CIVL. He discusses helmets and the EN966 rule, and harnesses.
12.50pm: Part one of the interview with Chris ‘Calvo’ Burns on carbon in paragliding competitions, and comp gliders. Part two will follow shortly.
12.35: Apologies, UK’s Chris ‘Calvo’ Burns just told us that a further vote will take place this afternoon before HG prototypes are banned from CAT 1 comps. Like we said, its a complicated process going on here.
12.30: We just got a copy of the minutes of the PG sub committee’s meeting of the last two days. Returning to the Swiss proposal and the subject of ‘redefining the paraglider’ the minutes read.
“The SC felt almost unanimously that creating a new Class of paraglider at this time was not the route they would recommend and moved on to discuss the need for changing the definition. The meeting was divided on the need to qualify the definition. There was a lot of discussion as to why the definition needed qualifying, such as performance gap, safety, a line needed to be drawn so that future developments would not include more and more inflexible components. Some members of the SC felt it was important to give a clear direction to future development. The proposer indicated that he would also be happy with a modification to his proposal to a 10cm bending radius.
The discussion was suspended by a majority vote in order to discuss the Improving Paraglider Safety in Category 1 Competitions On resumption of this topic the Swiss proposal was withdrawn by the proposer and the discussion closed.”
The SC discussed improving the safety standards of paragliders in Cat 1 competitions and felt unanimously that there had to be a change to the current situation. The discussion covered a range of options including certified-only gliders (En D), homologated open class gliders, gliders homologated to a subset of specifications (aspect ratio and minimum line lengths, glider weight) and the idea of self certification by manufacturers. In addition ideas discussed included a separate serial class Cat 1 event or multi class Cat 1 events. But these were rejected by most members of the SC. The SC was generally in favour of not continuing to allow pilots to fly prototypes that had only load test documentation. The SC favoured the creation of a WG that would work with manufacturers to produce safer Open Class Paragliders
Going further into the minutes, the following motions were made by the group;
That from 2012 Category 1 competitions should be restricted to paragliders certified to EN D or lower.
Proposed Finland Second USA Vote: 5 in favour, 12 against , 1 abstention Motion failed
The following statement and motion was recommended to the Plenary by the Sub Committee:
“CIVL is fully aware that the introduction of new materials and new technology into paraglider design does not necessarily constitute a compromise in safety. On the contrary, we have seen many instances in which such innovations have actually made our sport safer. With this in mind, it is not this Commission’s wish to limit the development of such innovation. At the same time, however, with reference to FAI Category 1 events, it is this Commission’s responsibility to ensure that all participating paragliders actually adhere to or exhibit a demonstrable level of safety. With this in mind we present the following proposal:
To address the issue of prototype and open class paragliders being eligible to fly in Cat 1 events.
1.a
In order for an otherwise non-certified paraglider to be allowed to take part in Category 1 events, as an initial interim solution, we propose introducing a form of ‘self-certification’ in which manufacturers will be required to publish documentation and a video of the paraglider wherein its various flight characteristics have been demonstrated as a result of a series of manoeuvers.
To this end, establish a working group that will determine what would have to be documented and displayed as well as the parameters under which it would be produced.
1.b
As a long term solution, we propose the eventual introduction of a new standard (eventually EN), wherein, only paragliders meeting the requirements delineated within this standard would be allowed to take part in Category 1 events. To this end, establish a working group that would study this issue and determine the requirements such a paraglider would have to fulfill as well as the feasibility and means by which such a new standard could be introduced.
2.
The working group will also study the possibility of introduction of limitations such as aspect ratio, weight of the paragliders, minimum line length or other options.
12.15: Dennis Pagen (US) has summed up the joint HG and PG sub committee’s proposals. They include:
Banning of prototypes in CAT 1 HG comps
Widening the type of tasks
The use of tracking devices
Amendments to the penalty system in comps
It’s a long process but it looks like the vote has been to accept the proposal and notably to ban protoypes from CAT 1 HG comps, something that will undoubtedly affect manufacturers hoping to test their developments in these events. We’ll catch up with Dennis Pagen once this session ends and confirm this.
12.01pm
The vote has gone in favour of approving the PG Sub committee’s proposal. Only the UK’s John Aldridge and Germany’s Klaus Tanzler
voted against it.
12.00 noon
PG Sub committee chairman Chris ‘Calvo” Burns points out that CIVL will be deciding what passes and fails the certification for comp wings, not the manufacturers or a testing body. How this will be done has not been revealed. The UK remains fast in its views saying it believes this is the wrong direction for the sport. Voting on the Swiss proposal will take place very soon.
11.45 am
The plenary are discussing the PG sub committee’s recommendation for manufactures’ to self certify comp wings in CAT 1 events.
UK has stated it will not vote in favour of any type of self certification. Germany says it will give it a year but if there isn’t a marked improvement in safety it will push for serial class. The USA’s Dennis Pagen thinks any form of certification is better than nothing.
11.30am: We have just interviewed Chris ‘Calvo’ Burns, the chairman of the CIVL paragliding subcommittee. He explained the PMA proposal has indeed been rejected, and that carbon technology will be allowed in competition – providing the gliders meet certain standards. The video of the interview is being uploaded and should be online here in half an hour. He also discusses helmets, harnesses, and the whole issue of safety in general.
10.30am: Lausanne is very calm this morning. The CIVL Plenary is underway, with welcome speeches done and dusted, and the voting starting. Delegates break for coffee in a few minutes, and we’ll try and get an overview of the main issues from some of the people involved. After that we’ll be blogging live as voting continues throughout the day.
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