Today's requirement

- Paraglider: (Class 3)
Bronze: 15km, or 1 hour duration, or 500m gain of height
Silver: 30km, and 3 hours duration, and 1000 m gain of height
Gold: 75km, and 5 hours duration, and 2000 m gain of height
Diamond: 125km open course, or 125 km closed course, or 3000 m gain of height (for 3 separate Diamond Badges)

- Hang glider (flexwing - Class 1)
Bronze: 15km, or 1 hour duration, or 500m gain of height
Silver: 50km, and 3 hours duration, and 1000 m gain of height
Gold: 100km, and 5 hours duration, and 2000 m gain of height
Diamond: 150km open course, or 150 km closed course, or 3000 m gain of height (for 3 separate Diamond Badges)

- Hang glider (rigid - Class 2 and 5)
Bronze: 15km, or 1 hour duration, or 500m gain of height
Silver: 60km, and 3 hours duration, and 1000 m gain of height
Gold: 125km, and 5 hours duration, and 2000 m gain of height
Diamond: 200km open course, or 200 km closed course, or 3000 m gain of height (for 3 separate Diamond Badges)

- Foot-launchable sailplane (Class 4)
Bronze: 30km, or 1 hour duration, or 500m gain of height
Silver: 60km, and 3 hours duration, and 1000 m gain of height
Gold: 150km, and 5 hours duration, and 2000 m gain of height
Diamond: 300km open course, or 300 km closed course, or 3000 m gain of height (for 3 separate Diamond Badges)

Approved Instrument

Control and measurement of record flights are made with a serviceable GPS or flight recorder with minimum 2d capabilities used in conjunction with a barograph, or a 3d instrument without a barograph.
For more informations, check Section 7D (Hang gliders and paragliders – Records and badges), chapter 5.4.1
CIVL no longer requires “approved equipment” as every month or so, a new instrument model comes out from manufacturers around the world, and CIVL wishes to remain unbiased as far as choice of manufacturer is concerned.

Why and how we changed the badges requirements

At the CIVL meeting at Panajachel, Guatemala, in 2005, delegates voted to revise the CIVL Badge system effective May 1st of the same year. Why and how did they do this? What are the new requirements?

(this was written in February 2005)

The problem

We have been flying hang gliders for over 30 years, and paragliders for 20 (in round numbers). We have had a badge system in place for many years. There are (some estimates say) about 300,000 hang glider and paraglider pilots in the world today.

And the number of FAI gold badges issued?
- Rigid wings: 0
- Flex wings: 4
- Paragliders: 24
- Sailplanes: 6500 (including 3 diamonds on top of the gold badge).

Clearly, there’s something wrong with our program.

The badge system is supposed to be a graduated standard of performance, but no one is playing the game. It’s obvious that the gold and diamond badge levels don’t encourage any participation from foot-launched pilots. These are the distance requirements:

Bronze badge distance:
- paragliders: 30 km
- hang gliders: 50 km
- sailplanes: 50 km

Gold badge distance:
- paragliders: 100 km
- hang gliders: 300 km
- sailplanes: 300 km

Diamond badge distance
- paragliders: 200 km
- hang gliders: 500 km
- sailplanes: 500 km

When the current badge levels were set up years ago, the specialists at that time got carried away with the increased performance of the early double-surface flexwings compared to single-surface flexwings, and by extrapolating forward, figured that we’d all be flying 25:1 hang gliders by now. Well, it hasn’t happened. Instead, we have hang glider badge levels which are identical to sailplanes with 3 or 4 times the performance. Surely, that isn’t right.

We can admire the perseverance of the four pilots that earned their gold badges in flex wings. If memory serves me correctly, they include Larry Tudor, Helmut Denz, Geoffrey Loyns (anyone remember the 4th?). Congratulations to them.
However, they achieved the badge requirements in a harsh desert location, after years of effort.
The badge system is intended to be achievable by most pilots in most parts of the world. You shouldn’t have to go to Zapata, or Namibia, to get a silver or gold badge. The diamond badge should be harder, of course, but still attainable by a fraction of the pilots after a determined effort.

So if the hang glider badge levels (at least, at the upper levels) are broken, as evidenced by the fact that no one is playing the game, what would be the right levels to use? Rather than accept the opinion of a few overly optimistic people sitting in a CIVL working group, we asked the pilots themselves what a fair distance would be. In fact, we looked at what over 4000 pilots had to say.

The pilot speak

We did that by studying how far pilots actually fly, not how far some wishful thinkers would like them to fly. For this information, we turn to the On Line Contest (OLC)
In just a few short years, the OLC has become the most successful cross-country contest in the world. This year, pilots from 26 nations are participating. Why the success? Could it be the straightforward rules, the ease of filing a claim, the low cost (6 Euros per pilot, per year)? The fun of competing day by day against pilots from around the world? Being able to see your flight on a colour map? Whatever the reason, it’s increasingly popular. Accordingly, the OLC database is now the world’s best source of detailed information on how far most pilots actually fly.

Sure, world records tell us how far it is possible to fly for the best pilot in the world, but they don’t tell us how far the average pilot can and does fly. The OLC statistics do tell us about average pilots.

We analysed more than 4000 flights by paraglider and hang glider pilots over the past 3 years, and discovered some interesting things. Firstly, most of the flying population is flying paragliders. At least, most of the OLC participants are. Does the fact that close to 75% of the OLC participation is from paragliders mean that 75% of all pilots fly paragliders? Or does it mean that hang glider pilots don’t participate, or don’t fly cross-country as often? We don’t have an answer for that. But we do know that unrealistic badge requirements do not engage and encourage hang glider pilots.

What types of tasks do OLC participant set for themselves? It may be no surprise that paraglider pilots tend to float downwind in the breeze. Half of all PG flights were 3TP flights (3 turnpoints - this includes open distance, doglegs, zigzags, or incomplete out-returns). Rigid wings pilots had the highest percentage of closed-course flights, with 70% of them flying flat or FAI triangles. Hang glider pilots fall somewhere in the middle between these two extremes.

So now we know who’s flying, and what tasks they set themselves. How far do they go? The mean flight length by OLC pilots is under 60 km for paragliders, under 100 km for hang gliders, and under 125 km for rigid wings. Not 300 or 500 km. One anomaly. While the above distances pertain to open-course flights (i.e. those with up to 3 turnpoints), closed-course distance in flat or FAI triangles were slightly higher - probably because the more-skilled pilots attempted those, in some cases for national or international records.

Very few pilots have had flights over 200 km, but most pilots don’t fly that far. So we can’t allow the excellent performance of a few (probably) full-time pilots mislead us as to the performance of the masses.

Now we have a pretty good idea of who’s flying what, in what task, and how far. How do we put that all together and create badge levels that are more responsive to the pilots’ needs?

New levels

Thanks to OLC, we now have a much better understanding of how far pilots fly day-to-day. How should we relate that to badge requirements? Well, we start with the principle that the badges should rise in difficulty from easy to moderate to challenging to difficult. That’s not what we have today, at least for hang gliders (easy - moderate - ridiculous-damn-near-impossible). The idea is, if we can agree in a general way on how hard the badges should be, and how accessible they should be, it will be easier to agree on specific values for the distances and other requirements.

The badge and records committee put forward to the CIVL Bureau, and then to the Plenary, the following set of principles to guide the development of the new badge levels:

“FAI proficiency badges are standards of achievement, which do not require to be renewed” [from S7D]. [new text:] They are intended to provide a graduated scale of difficulty to measure and encourage the development of a pilot’s flying skill, particularly in cross-country flying.”

“The Bronze badge should be achievable by most pilots within the first year of active flying, with the silver following in the next year or two. The gold badge should be achievable for most pilots within the first five years of cross country flying. The diamond badge should be achievable by perhaps half of all pilots within ten years of flying.”

“In any one year, we would expect that for advanced-rated (IPPI 4 or 5) pilots, the bronze badge distance would be flown by 100% of them, the silver badge distance would be flown by around 75%, the gold badge distance would be flown by 40-50%, and the diamond badge distance would be flown by perhaps 10-20%. Results may vary from one nation to another.”

There seemed to be general agreement with these principles. So how do these principles translate to distances?

Looking firstly where the pain is the greatest: the hang-glider gold and silver badges. With agreement that a reasonable distance for a gold badge would be one that 40-50% of advanced pilots could attain in any year, we know that a distance of 75 km was flown by 60% of OLC pilots, a distance of 100 km was flown by about 45%, and a distance of 125 km was flown by only 35% or so. So, a gold badge distance of 100 km would meet our criteria. The old badge distance of 300 km was flown by only a couple of pilots.

For paragliders, a distance of 60 km was flown by 50% of the pilots, 75 km was flown by 37.5%, and 100 km (the old badge requirement) was flown by about 22.5%. So, a gold badge distance of 75 km would meet our criteria.

For rigid wings, a distance of 100 km was flown by 50%, 125 km was flown by 45%, and 150 km was flown by a little over 30%. The old badge distance of 300 km was flown by only a few pilots (around 5). So, a gold badge distance of 125 km would meet our criteria.

Extending our analysis to the other badge levels, we arrive at these distances, presented to the Plenary meeting in Panajachel and approved unanimously:

- Paraglider: (Class 3)
Bronze: 15; Silver: 30; Gold:75 km; Diamond:125

- Hang glider (flexwing - Class 1)
Bronze: 15; Silver: 50; Gold:100 km; Diamond:150

- Hang glider (rigid - Class 2 and 5)
Bronze: 15; Silver: 60; Gold:125 km; Diamond:200

- Foot-launchable sailplane (Class 4)
Bronze: 30; Silver: 60; Gold:150 km; Diamond:300

In each case, it is up to the pilot to choose the desired task for this distance, since in some countries it is not possible to fly open distance a long way in a straight line. In such places, out-return, triangle, or zigzag may be more feasible. We leave it up to the pilot to decide, at least for the gold and diamond badge. For bronze and silver, the distance must be measured in a straight line.

The distance requirements thus change for all classes at silver level and above (see the new Section 7D, effective as of May 1st this year, for complete details). But in addition there are changes to the duration and altitude gain requirements. In the past, the duration requirement for lower badge levels was far longer than it would take a pilot to fly the required distance. So, now the duration requirement will be 1 hour for bronze, 3 hours for silver, and 5 hours for gold.

As for altitude gain, the previous rules for paraglider pilots were reasonable and graduated, so they have been extended to flexwings and rigid wings: 500m for bronze, 1000m for silver, 2000m for gold and 3000m for diamond. It is recognized that 2000m or 3000m altitude gain may not be possible in all countries. This should spur some free-flight tourism to warmer climes!

Lastly, while the old badge system was a finite system, the newly approved system is open-ended. For above the diamond badge, there will be CIVL Distance Diplomas, in steps of 100 km. This steals a page from the Gliding Commission's book, since they have diplomas for 750 km , 1000 km, 1500 km and 2000 km.

The Sporting Code

The new badge levels should spur a burst of new flights qualifying for CIVL badges. But we will have achieved nothing if we retain the bureaucracy of old that discourages participation.

The Badges and Records Subcommittee, under the leadership of CIVL V-P Scott Torkelsen from Denmark, undertook the review of the badge system, but also reviewed all of S7D itself, with a view to streamlining and simplifying GPS usage. In this task, a number of people were involved: Oyvind Ellefsen from Norway, Ágúst Gudmundsson from Iceland, Martin Henry from Canada and Steward Midwinter from Canada. (Hmm, all Nordic countries, what a coincidence!). Martin was awarded two FAI world records late last year in the rigid wing category, and as a result of his records chase he has gained intimate knowledge of some of the contradictions and confusions still remaining in S7D, as regards GPS usage.

The Subcommittee proposed major changes that were approved by the Plenary.
The rules in Section 7D were updated.

Here are the highlights…

You can use any 3D GPS (i.e. one that records altitude in the tracklog) for your badge flights, or a 2D GPS accompanied by a barograph, or even an IGC flight recorder. For badge flights, you will not need an official observer. Instead, you will be able to use your OLC entries as flight verification (or those of another national on-line contest if applicable in your country). OLC will be adding some features to their software to enable determination of a pilot’s best distance, duration and altitude gain, which will facilitate participating federations being able to award badges at year end.

Here are the details…

1. The preferred instrument for all flight verification is the 3D GPS. By 3D, we mean one that records altitude in the tracklog. All of the Garmin eTrex series meet this requirement (though the basic yellow one and Summit model are to be avoided), as do some of the Magellan and MLR models, to name a few. Recommended models would include eTrex Vista, Gecko 301, and GPS76S, as these three models include glide-angle software that’s helpful in badges, records and comps. CIVL won’t publish a list of approved instruments, as that list changes monthly. But you can be confident that any recent model will do what you want. If in doubt, test your GPS with the software listed further below. Or, consult the recommended list on the CompeGPS website, or here.
    
2. You can still use one of the older 2D GPS models, like the Garmin 12, *if* you also use a vario with a barograph in it. Naturally, this will complicate your badge claim process somewhat. You can also use an IGC Flight Recorder if you have one, but this type of expensive instrument is not required in our sport. Lastly, cameras are out. They will not be required or accepted for flight verification. Never thought you’d see the day, did you ?
    
3. The old requirement to have your flight instrument calibrated in a pressure chamber has been dropped. Clearly, it makes no sense to calibrate a GPS in such a way when its altitude information comes from satellites, not pressure readings.
    
4. For badge claims, you will not require an official observer. In many countries, this requirement created a huge barrier because there were few OOs. Instead, you can use your flight claim on OLC for verification (more on this below). For records, of course, an official observer is still required.
    
5. For badge flights, no pre-flight declaration is required. For record flights, you still need to make a declaration. You can do this in your GPS by making a route, and having your OO witness that. Or, you can fill out the paper declaration form and have the OO sign that. If you use an IGC flight recorder, the declaration can be made right in the instrument. For records, part of the pre-flight procedure will include the OO verifying that your tracklog has been cleared prior to takeoff.
    
6. In all badge and record flights, you will use cylindrical turnpoint “observation zones”, rather than pie-shaped sectors, to prove you completed the task. These OZs (the same name as the OZ report is just a coincidence!) always have a radius of 400m for badges and records; in competitions, they may be larger. If you have an IGC flight recorder, you may still use a pie-shaped sector, but why would you want to ?
    
7. For badges, after your flight you should turn off the recording feature of your GPS, then turn off the GPS. This will avoid extraneous datapoints being recorded when you turn it on later. You then upload your tracklog to a PC (there are Windows, MacOS and Linux applications available) and save it as a secure .igc file. In Windows, use of a simple freeware app like MaxPunkte or GPS Dump is recommended. The former will record your personal information and the .igc tracklog into a .olc file, so that filing the claim is simplified. If you participate in the OLC, you then go on-line and file your claim. If you have a .olc file, this step is very easy - upload one file, and press the “Claim flight” button. A good PowerPoint presentation of every step of the flight claim process may be found here.
    
8. Under the guidance of Rudl Berger, this year OLC will be adding a software feature to record a pilot’s best distance, altitude gain and duration. This means that at year’s end, all a federation has to do to issue badges is to look on the OLC site and see for each of its pilots who has meet what badge requirements. Organizers of other on-line contests may want to take note and do something similar.
    
9. Naturally, in order to meet the altitude gain element of the badge claim, or claim a national or world record, you will need to use a 3D GPS or barograph. If you are using a 3D GPS, it’s up to you to ensure that you are locked on to enough satellites to get a good altitude fix. It’s also up to you, if you use a GPS model with both satellite and barometric altitude readings, to ensure that you understand and account for any difference between these two at the moment of topping out in your thermal. This will be especially important if you are trying for the diamond badge, with its difficult 3000m altitude gain requirement.
    
10. Section 7D also spells out the type of task that may be used for the distance requirement of the badges. For bronze and silver, you must use straight-line open distance. For gold, diamond and diplomas above those, you may use any type of task including open distance, out-return, zigzag, flat triangle, FAI triangle or polygon (with 3 turnpoints). Note that if you fly a closed course, the distance credited is the shortest distance it was possible to fly, e.g. for an out-return distance, it would be distance between the turnpoints - 2 x 400m TP radius.