http://www.fai.org/hang_gliding/meetings/plenary/2009

Talk about nut balls? What are these guys smoking?

Scott Torkelsen: Cloud flying?
Fernando Amaral: Setting altitude limits in accordance with predicted cloudbase. Issue of absolute measurement of altitude.
Dennis Pagen: Difficult to assess if pilots in cloud.
Heather Mull: Penalties too severe to apply, so it gets ignored and unreported. A sliding scale would make it more acceptable for pilots to report cloud flying.
Scott Torkelsen/Fernando Amaral: But this sends wrong messages – it is against the FAI rules and air laws if flying by VFR.
Martin Scheel: In reality, it would also severely restrict task setting, especially in the Alps.
Heather Mull: Only sure way is to have video camera on every glider.
Koos de Keijzer: One pilot ran out of space on form when reporting cloud flying. Give zero and pilots will stop doing it.
Dennis Pagen/Chris (Calvo) Burns: But difficult to prove. It will be protested and thrown out if cannot be proved categorically.
Didier Mathurin: Must work out how to prove it, before can talk
Goran – PWC: zero penalty not strong enough. Should exclude the pilot. Then they will stop cloud flying. Cameras on every pilot not practical/feasible. Have to rely on witnesses – motivate them!
John Aldridge: Comes back to proof. Penalty is less relevant. Irrespective of Section 7. Cloud flying is illegal.
Martin Scheel: Reality is that pilots will sometimes be sucked into cloud. For top pilots, zero penalty is huge, similarly, not such a big penalty for lower ranking pilots (and he might be lucky if he gets away with it).
Rasmus Rohlff: surely if pilot is very near the cloud he is already breaking the rules?
Scott Torkelsen: How can we move forward? We have to get pilots to start thinking differently.

It pains me to think that most of these people are so clueless. We (David Glover and I) solved this problem a long time ago and implemented the solution successfully. This solution was implemented again at the 2007 Worlds.

I wonder how many of these guys have run a competition where a pilot was actually successfully penalized for cloud flying (and not penalized for breaking some poorly understood/measured altitude barrier).

“All results should have the CIVL ID number for each pilot recorded. The following formats are acceptable for input to the WPRS: FSDB file from FS, the full RACE database, an Excel format (.xls or .csv) file with the results in the following order: Name (First name followed by family name), Nation (IOC abbreviated codes), Total (score), FAI_licence (number), CIVL_Pilot_ID.

PDF files are not acceptable.” Reason: these are the only formats that can be input to the WPRS database without manual reformatting by the CIVL Competition Coordinator.

Isn't it obvious that PDF sucks when you want to transfer data? Haven't I been harping on this for years? I can output the required csv or xls format from my program in SeeYou. I just have to input the pilot's CIVL_ID and FAI Sporting License number at registration (easy to do).