Call for Bids for Qualifying GP Races in 2008/2009

The IGC Bureau has confirmed the timetable for the next round of the FAI World Sailplane GP events. The next round will start with Qualifying GPs from January 2008 to May 2009, with the final in the last half of 2009. This will ensure that the 3rd FAI World Sailplane GP Final does not conflict with the 2009 World Air Games, being held in June 2009.

Interested Countries are invited to lodge bids for the Qualifying GP races. The following protocols apply:

• There will be a maximum of 9 Qualifying GPs races in this round.

The following protocols will apply to the 3rd World Sailplane GP Final:

• There will be a maximum of 20 pilots in the Final.
  

The latest version of Annex B (REQUIREMENTS FOR EQUIPMENT USED FOR THE VALIDATION OF FLIGHT PERFORMANCES) to Section 3 of the FAI Sporting Code has been published. It is valid from 1 October 2007 and includes amendments 1 to 4. Follow this link to go directly to Annex B.

Dear Delegates

Our mid-year Bureau meeting is being held in Paris at the end of this week. Next week is the Air Sports Commission President’s meeting and the FAI General Conference in Rhodes, Greece.

Unfortunately I am not going to be able to attend these meetings because I have a course I need to complete at Air New Zealand starting on the 8th of October. Great timing I know!

Our 1st Vice-President, Eric Mozer, will therefore be chairing the Bureau meeting and attending the Air Sports Commission President’s meeting and the General Conference on my behalf. I know that Eric will do a great job and I’m sure that he will find the General Conference interesting.

The International Gliding Commission held its annual meeting in Lausanne at the end of February 2007. Key points from this meeting were:

• A presentation from our colleagues at the Santiago Gliding Club in Chile. For those of you who had the privilege to visit this club at the General Conference last year you will appreciate the lessons that we could all learn from their initiatives and enthusiasm in protecting and developing the club and airfield.
• We spent some time discussing the future strategies for our sport and looking at how we, as the governing sports body, can assist at club level to improve the image of gliding and the attractiveness of the sport.
• We discussed, at length, the FAI ATMOS project after a presentation by Mr. Alvaro de Orleans Borbon.
• We surveyed our Delegates about the value of the Plenary meeting and the summarised results were:
  • We discuss the right subjects and spend the right amount of time on technical matters.
  • We try to fit too much into the available time, but the overall length of the meeting (2 days) is reasonable.
  • One meeting a year is sufficient.
  • The Olympic Museum is an excellent venue but Lausanne, as a location, has limited support.
  • Our meeting structure and our communication with our Delegates is good.
• The Plenum was pleased to confer the following awards:
  • The Lilienthal Medal to Mr Alan Patching, Australia.
  • Pirat Gehriger Diplomas to Professor Loek Boermans, The Netherlands, and, jointly, to Mr Brian Spreckley and Mr Keith Nicholson of the UK.
  • The Pelagia Majewski Medal to Mrs Ghislaine Facon, France.
• Significant decisions taken by the IGC Plenum included:
  • A resolution to endorse the work of the OSTIV in sailplane safety.
  • A major overhaul of the Sporting Code section 3 for 2008.
  • A resolution to hold World Gliding Championships outside of Europe on a regular basis.
  • Abandoning restrictions on the number of records that can be claimed on a single flight.
  • The adoption of a new Sporting Code Annex D to formally manage the IGC ranking list.
  • The formation of a committee to study the emerging range of light-weight and lower performance gliders and how they will fit into our championship structure and world records.

Click here to download John Roake's report on worldwide gliding membership in 2006 (PDF document).