President's Letter to Delegates and Committee Chairmen 2005-1

February 16th, 2005

Dear Friends

FAI Centenary 2005

The Northern hemisphere period for submission of flights for the IGC contribution to the FAI Centenary now occurs at the same time as a major military exercise – “Clean Hunter 2005” - in central Europe. This exercise is likely to interfere with VFR flights over a wide area. As a result we have decided to alter the dates for the Northern hemisphere period to July 9th to July 24th. Please advise your national organisations about this change of dates.

IGC Plenary Meeting

A reminder that the agenda, papers and reports are available on the IGC website at

http://www.fai.org/gliding/meetings/

Delegates

I am aware that some NAC’s may not be able to send a Delegate to the meeting. However, I would encourage those who cannot attend to participate by appointing a proxy to carry their votes. The FAI By-Laws provide for a proxy to be given to one of the other delegates (except to the Commission President). Each Delegate may only hold one proxy. All proxies must be given in writing and be signed by the President or Secretary General of the FAI Member concerned.

Keynote Speakers

Klaus Ohlmann and
Reiner Rose Rose have confirmed that they will join Wolfgang Weinreich as keynote speakers at the Meeting.

Wolfgang’s topic is “IGC’s Top Task: How To Protect The Future Of Our Sport”
And will focus on four main topics:

  • The sport, its rules and its attractiveness.
  • The gliding community. A shrinking and aging family?
  • The burden of regulations, administration and cost explosion.
  • Airspace: Will we be limited to a number of reservoirs like game reserves for endangered species?

Klaus will speak on World Records and Reiner on the OLC on Saturday afternoon.

Garmin Presentation

The agenda includes a presentation from Garmin on the potential for Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Flight Recorders for verifying badge flights. Unfortunately the representative from Garmin is now unable to attend the meeting but we are making alternative arrangements to ensure the presentation is still available.

IGC Strategy

It has been a tradition for the IGC Plenum to focus on the Sporting Code and competitions. Despite attempts to divert the debate, it always turns back to the same subjects. But this is only a very limited part of our responsibility. In principle the IGC should deal with: Competitions, Records, glider design, airspace, licenses, and not at least have a strategic view on gliding as a sport now and in the future.

Luckily OSTIV is dealing with all scientific and technical matters of world-wide gliding including training and safety. EGU takes care of regulations regarding licensing,
operations, certification, airworthiness, airspace in Europe. But who looks at the future of gliding? Who takes a serious look at the way we want gliding to be in the future? Who defines our gliding vision, the IGC strategies? Who imagines how gliding will fit in tomorrow’s society?

At the last Bureau meeting we discussed Strategic Goals and it was not difficult to dream up some goals: be the biggest air sports commission in FAI; have all members at the IGC meeting; and, increase the number of participants in competitions. That is all very nice, but how do we get there? What is it we have to change in our behavior to achieve the goal?

During the past year we asked for comments on the "burning issues" that Delegates identified as problems. That list is (in no order of priority):

  • Medicals
  • The cost of gliding
  • Access to airspace
  • Government bureaucracy
  • Lack of marketing of gliding
  • Age of glider fleets (and the cost of replacements)
  • Membership numbers
  • Management skills of our club committees
  • Renewing gliding activities in adverse economic situations
  • The impact on the sport from protection of the environment

This list shows that competitions and the sporting code are not high priority items for NAC’s. The Bureau believes that we need to establish a clear IGC Strategy with a long-term Plan. This should encompass:

  • How do we envisage gliding as an air sport in the future
  • What do we do to assure that we have a place in society, and avoid being swallowed by other sports or forgotten
  • What is it we have to do to assure we can continue to recruit new members, and retain existing members

We have some time set aside to discuss “IGC Strategy” at the Plenary meeting. We have an existing Strategic Plan that we acknowledge requires updating. To do this we need input from you, the Delegates. We need to make the best use of the time we do have available in Lausanne.

Please come along prepared to comment on the things we need to make gliding a healthy and growing sport and be prepared to offer some ideas as to how we should achieve this aim.

opment of the Microlift Glider

Piero Morelli has written a paper entitled “Development of the Microlift Glider” and includes an annex on “A Brief History of FAI Glider Classes”. This paper is available on the website at http://www.fai.org/gliding/documents/microlift.pdf I recommend it for reading.

IGC Bureau

It gives me great pleasure to close this Newsletter with a note of thanks to the members of the Bureau who have all devoted generously of their time and personal energies to help look after and manage our sport for us all.

Take care and safe flying

Bob Henderson

President, IGC