National Judge Polling Process Altered

Lisa Wegener reports pre-registration will now be required to compete at the U.S. National Aerobatic Championships to be held in Denison, TX September 3-8, 2001.  In addition, only those pilots who have pre-registered for the event will be polled on their choice for national judge selection.

According to Wegener, the IAC Board adopted changes to the IAC's Policy and Procedures Manual at a teleconference call on December 29, 2000 to require "all pilots wishing to compete to pre-register 3 months in advance of the competition. Refunds will be given up to 30 days prior to the start of the contest. Emergency exceptions to this rule will be considered on an individual basis.”  Pre-registration will not only allow IAC staff to send out advanced publicity and pilot feature stories to the appropriate media, but will also aid in polling pilots on national judge selection for the event.

Currently the IAC is required to poll all domestic competition pilots in the appropriate category (those who flew at least one competition in the prior year) regardless if they are going to fly at the Championship event or not.  According to Wegener, this amounts to polling 700-800 pilots rather than just the approximate 100 pilots who actually compete at the Championship event.  The policy will now state that "at championship and team selection events, judges for each category will be invited to participate based on ranking by poll of all pre-registered competition pilots. Each ballot will contain a complete list of all current IAC National Judges. Each pilot will select a minimum of six (6) judges. Invitations will be issued to judges based on order of ranking by the pilots. Judges who accept this assignment are required to abstain from critiquing any competitor that they would also be judging at the championship for a period of thirty (30) days prior to the event.”