Table of Contents - SEN 2135

1. Bissonette Memorial
2. CIAM Report
3. Looking for Pim

CIAM PLENARY MEETING
Report by Ian Kaynes
re-printed from Free Flight News

The CIAM Plenary meeting was held in Lausanne on April 8
and 9, preceded by a Bureau meeting on April 7.

This year there was no Free Flight Technical meeting. Of the
Technical meetings that were held, it was notable that Gerhard
Wobbeking chaired his last Education meeting and Srdjan
Pelagic his last Space modelling meeting, after 20 years in
Srdjan’s case. Per Findahl had been identified as an appropriate
replacement to chair Education and, as the only nominee for
the position, Per has now succeeded Gerd.

A major theme of the meeting was drones, both from the effect
of legislation inspired by them on regular aeromodelling and
also to accommodate sporting activity with drones. For the
latter purpose a new subcommittee has been established and a
World Cup is being run this year.

Of the items on the agenda with some impact of free flight the
Plenary decisions were as follows.

Canada had proposed a new schedule for submission and
distribution of proposals. After some adverse comments,
Canada withdrew the proposal..

USA had made two proposals about changing status of rules
from provisional to official and for eligibility for
championships, with F1Q mentioned in the reasons.. After
considerable adverse comments on these, the USA still wanted
a vote. The first was defeated 37 against , none in favour (I
wonder why didn’t a USA vote appear in favour?) and the
second by 30 against, 2 in favour.

Poland had proposed raising the maximum age for juniors from
18 to 21, because some classes do not have enough juniors and
because classes are difficult – all this justified by mentioning
control line, scale and radio classes which only have juniors
involved in championships as one extra to the regular 3-man
team. No mention of the classes which have independent junior
championships and are general healthier, like FF, space
modelling and the radio HLG F3K. The Plenary vote was
remarkably close – the proposal was defeated by 18 votes
against with 17 votes in favour. The Control Line
subcommittee had proposed raising the age limit to 25 just for
control line. This was amended in their technical meeting to
21, like the Polish proposal. Although this applied just to
control line, it was defeated more heavily than the other one –
with 21 against and 15 in favour. The logic of that vote rather
escapes me, perhaps there were some people who objected
more to the idea of having different age limits in different
classes than they cared what the age limit was.

Belgium proposed that F1C starting poles should be at least
50m away from rubber or glider poles. This was accepted
unanimously.

Germany made two proposals about the rules on interruption of
the contest. The first changes the responsibility for interruption
from the jury to the contest director. This was accepted
unanimously by Plenary. The other part proposed removing the
part discussing return of entry fees and also the rule that results
will be based on the scores of the finished rounds. This last
removal was disliked by several people, leaving the scoring
undefined, and it was withdrawn.

A proposal from the Netherlands was passed to change F1C
rules on fuel to allow either castor oil or synthetic oil as chosen
by the competitor. At championships the competitor will
specify which lubricant he wants for the official fuel.

A proposal from Germany to revert the F1Q mass for energy
calculation from 500g to 550g was opposed by a majority of
the FF Subcommittee and Germany withdrew the proposal

A number of proposals from the Free Flight Subcommittee
were accepted unanimously by Plenary:

a) Identification marking by championships organisers
– it was clarified that the organisers should only
mark the model in one place – on the edge of the FAI
sticker, and not make marks on each component of
the model. This does not remove the requirement that
they check that each part of the model has the
required identification code.

[CHANGE-CLARIFICATION]b) Rewording the attempt definition for a part of the
model becoming detached. The new wording for
gliders is “It is apparent to the timekeepers that a
part of the model becomes detached during the
launch by the helper, while the model is being towed,
or during the official flight time” and for other
models “It is apparent to the timekeepers that a part
of the model becomes detached during the launch or
during the official flight time”.

c) To change the rule on extended maximum in open
internationals for F1A to be the same as F1B and
F1C, allowing the a maximum of up to five minutes.

[CHANGE-CLARIFICATION]d) To add a new clarification item to the end of the
group flyoff rule 3.1.8.f “Competitors proceeding
from group flyoffs to the later flyoffs will be
classified only by times achieved in the later flyoffs
after the group stages. The times in group stages do
not count in their classification.”

e) World Cup points for places to be multiplied by 10
(500 for a win, 400 second place, etc) and to award
one bonus point for every competitor a person has
beaten.

[Editor's comment - for example a person who won an event and beat 49 people would get 500 + 49 points.  The balance of the allocation of the points is basically unchanged but greater granularity is given because the existing rule allocated the bonus in steps of 10 or 5 people beaten.

f) The number of competitors in an event for World
Cup points calculations will be the number of
competitors completing a flight in the first round of
the competition

[CHANGE-CLARIFICATION]g) A revised FF organisers guide
A new CIAM General Rules volume was accepted as a
replacement for the existing Volume ABR. There are few
actual changes but a complete re-organisation of the numbering
and location of items. Some specialised Free Flight only rules
will not be in the new General Rules but transferred to the free
flight volume F1. Like all the rule changes this will become
effective in January 2017. An FFSC proposal to renumber the
technical volumes with class designation instead of the current
meaningless 3. Number before each paragraph met with
complaints in Bureau and was referred to the Bureau.

Championships
The venues for the 2018 events were selected at this Plenary
meeting

The Junior World Championships F1ABP will be held in
Bulgaria since they won a vote with 26 supporters against 1
1votes for Romania. The event will be at Pazardzhik. The dates
in the bid had been for late July but that clashed with the Euro
Champs in Hungary. After discussion, Bulgaria have agreed
that the dates will be August 5 to 11.

The Indoor World Championships will be at West Baden,
USA, from March 18 to 23. The bid from USA had been
submitted the required 45 days before the meeting, but there
was also a late bid from Romania. The President seemed
reluctant to positively rule out the late bid in cases like this
with one in time and one late, but in each case the Plenary gave
a unanimous acceptance of the correctly timed bid.

The European Championships F1ABC will be at Szentes,
Hungary. There had also been bids from Romania and from
Bulgaria but Bulgaria withdrew after winning the Junior World
Champs. Hungary got 26 votes against 12 for Romania. The
dates will be July 23 to 30.

The F1E European Championships will be held at Martin in
Slovakia, the only bid for this event.

Awards
The CIAM scholarship, which gives €2000 towards
educational expenses, had four applications, all free-flighters:
Christian Winker (GER), Michail Lomov (RUS), Taron
Malkhasyan (USA), and Konrad Zurowski (POL). The bids
were assessed by a selection panel and this awarded the
scholarship to the Polish F1E flyer Konrad Zurowski..

Their were two nominations for Alphonse Penaud Diploma and
Slovakian Ivan Treger won the vote.

The Frank Ehling Diploma had nominations from John Jacomb
(UK) and the National Association of Rocketry of USA. The
USA association narrowly beat John to the award.

At the Plenary meeting World Cup medals and diploma are
presented to this any competitors present. For free flight Per
Findahl collected F1A second and I got the F1Q second.
 



Looking for Pim



...................
Roger Morrell