The saga continues.

At the Fall USHPA BOD meeting, an ad hoc committee headed up by Steve Kroop, Regional
Director for Region 10 (the southeast), was assigned by the BOD the task of
coming up with a revision to the proposed Competition Sanctioning
Manual. This has all been  a part of the unloved process of revising the USHPA
competition system, and a major U-turn from what was proposed before the Fall
meeting.

The proposed Sanctioning Manual (such a manual doesn't exist separately from
the 2006 Competition Rulebook, which is currently the governing document) is not
only supposed to apply the existing competition system (known now as race to
goal competitions), but also to the newly proposed open distance and aerobatic
competitions.

You can find the proposed 2010 USHPA Sanctioning Manual as part of the agenda
package for the USHPA Spring BOD meeting
here. This isn't a downloadable document (at least as far as I can tell) nor
does it appear to be searchable. You can go through it more quickly if you go to
the Full Screen view.

If you had the downloadable PDF (like the USHPA BOD members do) you would search through the document
("Sanctioning Manual") to find the proposed manual.

From the ad hoc committee's proposal:

Sanction applications are to be submitted via the on-line sanction
application form at ushpa.aero at least 15 days prior to the Fall board of
directors meeting (or October 1st whichever is earlier). The form
must also be printed, signed and mailed to the
USHPA office along with sanction fee so that it is received prior to the BOD
meeting.

Why not change must to
may, so that the whole transaction can take place
on-line like the new USHPA membership renewal system? (The USHPA IT department
(Robin) has to implement this (and I have given her some documents that do
this)).

Definition of Classes:

Sport Class HG: Same as class 1 and must have a king post...

Why restrict Sport Class to king posted gliders? We have run Sport
Class competitions that have included topless and rigid wing gliders. We just
handicap everyone. We just write this into the local rules, which override the
USHPA Competition Rulebook. Why put the Classes definition in the Sanctioning
Manual when it is also in the Rulebook?

Can't we just eliminate this section?

Well, not much of a critique of the proposal Sanctioning Manual, eh?

Steve Kroop provides his explanation of the choices that he made when he created
the new proposed manual in this document
here. He explains there:

At the 2009 Fall meeting an ad hoc committee was formed and tasked
with reviewing the Competition Work Group (CWG) draft sanction manual. To this
end, I enlisted the help, expertise and feedback of several of our most prolific
meet organizers and directors (one of which is an attorney), a few top pilots
and the chairman of the R2G sub-committee.

The primary objective when reviewing the CWG original draft of sanction manual
(hereafter referred to as OV) was to balance the needs of the association with
the burdens being placed on potential meet organizers (and pilots). Unnecessary
bureaucracy and red tape is a significant deterrent to running/attending meets.
Requirements that actually increase the risk exposure of the organizer is meet
organizer repellant. When editing the OV, wherever possible, we tried to
mitigate or eliminate these negative factors.

An action item of the strategic plan is to develop programs to increase the
number of sanctioned competitions. With respect to the sanction process, the
only way I can see to realistically give that goal a chance of happening is to,
wherever reasonably possible, soften, reduce or eliminate the unnecessary
obstacles in our sanctioning process.

The Competition Committee chairman (Mike Haley) has identified 19 (actually 18
since one was repeated) items in the ad hoc committee version (hereafter
referred to as the AHV) that he feels need further discussion and vote. These
items are presented below in their original form (OV) and in their edited form (AHV).
In some cases the items were simply deleted in the AHV and are marked as such.
Following each of these items is the reasoning for the edit/deletions in the
edited version (AHV).

Thanks to Steve Kroop and those who helped him out.