The rules

A number of circumstances arose in this championships which require rules clarification or adjustment at the next CIMA meeting.

1. The team championship seems to be causing an unnecessary amount of trouble between teams and generally does not "reinforce friendship between Nations". It should be abolished.
   
   
2. When is a part of an aircraft not a part, but the whole? What are "original specifications" (as compared to "the same as the pilot started the championship with")? Several pilots had engine problems. One was able (after legal advice) to change his entire fan-pack for another with a different engine. This is generally considered not to be appropriate but does appear to be allowed within the current rules. S10 4.19.4 and 4.19.5 "Damage to a competing aircraft" need attention.
   
   
3. The "five minute rule". This was not included in the local regulations. Even so, the situation in task 7, where the Director was unequivocally asked by the pilot whether he could land and make repairs is not covered. If the Director in that situation had said "no, you cannot land and take off again if you are over the 5 minutes", then the pilot would not have landed (he probably knew he was over time, the Director, at that moment did not).
   
   It is not for the Director to say whether to continue in this situation would have been dangerous or not as safety must be paramount above any doubt. Instead, therefore, it must be just that a pilot is allowed to land and restart a task if he has been in the air so long as a restart is made expeditiously (eg within 5 minutes), there is no advantage to be gained (other than pure safety) and (depending on circumstances) some sort of suitable penalty is applied. In this case time already in the air was not counted towards the Pilot score which was an appropriate penalty.
   
   
4. The task catalogue is desperately missing tasks which can be scored on distance rather than number of turnpoints. Eg task 8, pure navigation or task 9, Navigation, precision and speed can both (and sometimes more interestingly) be scored on distance made between the given turnpoints rather than a simple number of turnpoints achieved.
   
   
5. Noise: The Director really wanted to try one of the new "test" noise tasks but the weather and marshal transportation situation prevented it. (Has to be done in a quiet place). None the less, this must be pursued in future championships.
   
   Requiring more urgent attention is the noise output of some machines which are more like flying sirens than PPG's. There exists the potential for a championship to be shut down by the local government authority because of these extraordinarily noisy aircraft. Pilots must be able to fly all daylight hours, this championship would have had only one or two tasks had there been a site limitation of say 08:00 - 19:00.
   
   It must, therefore, be within the power of an organising NAC to prevent a pilot flying purely on the grounds of noise. A specific limit or definition needs to be agreed.
   
   
6. The International Jury: Much as the Director is loth to admit it, representative juries do not work. There is a significant language barrier and most members were simply ignorant of the rules. It is essential however that there is not an exact return to the old system where some Jury members (and there are only three) were widely seen as incompetent. Perhaps there should be some sort of training course / qualification.

The Director in "PPG HQ" at the end of the competition.....