KNOWNS, FREE KNOWNS, IAC, and CIVA
by Mike Heuer, IAC President
I have appreciated the discussion regarding the new Free Known flight programs CIVA will introduce at the World and European Championships in 2016, both in power and glider, and thank all of you who have provided feedback and opinions. My comments below are rather lengthy but bear with me as the issues are worthy of further discussion.
Just to provide some background, the idea of the “Free Known” has been around a couple of years. I can remember one of our Unlimited Team pilots discussing the concept with me at the Nationals in 2014 and so it was no surprise when a working group was formed at the 2014 CIVA meeting in Poland to explore the idea and come back to CIVA with proposals. In the weeks and months preceding the meeting in October 2015, the working group discussed the proposals and presented them to the plenary meeting in Budapest. The Free Known was adopted by CIVA by unanimous consent with the USA voting in favor. There is a very good article on the Free Known on the CIVA news website:
http://civa-news.com/news/new-free-known-programme-1-explained
While we did exercise the USA vote in favor of the new rules, our support for the concept at the CIVA level has nothing to do with what we may do at IAC competitions and with our own official contest rules. This goes to the purposes of the two organizations and the reasons for which they were formed.
IAC is an organization that was founded to promote “grass roots” aerobatics. That is, to organize local chapters and regional competitions all over the country which are available to all IAC members if they choose to participate. Our other programs are designed to promote safety in aerobatics and to recognize flying skills as well as those who contribute to the sport in other ways. Our Achievement Awards program has helped recognize aerobatic proficiency for over 44 years now and thousands of pilots have qualified. IAC’s monthly magazine, Sport Aerobatics, has played an important role in disseminating information on aerobatics to all of our members twelve times a year. On our website, we have literally thousands of pages of information that are available to anyone as well as member-only areas which are provided as a benefit of your dues. IAC has over 30 chapters and sanctions 40 competitions a year. All of this is accomplished thanks to a dedicated volunteer corps as well as our full-time employee in Oshkosh. We have a lot going on and we are proud of it.
Since 1982, IAC has had a Letter of Agreement with the National Aeronautic Association in Washington which gives us contest sanctioning authority in the USA as well as the responsibility to send teams to world competitions and delegates to meetings of the FAI’s aerobatics commission, CIVA. It also awarded us the job of naming national champions, which is accomplished each year at the U. S. National Aerobatic Championships.
CIVA, on the other hand, is in the business of writing rules, providing officials, and supervising world championship competitions. I have been attending CIVA meetings since 1984 as the USA delegate and for 26 of those years, served as CIVA’s President. It gave me a lot of experience and insight on how aerobatic competition functions at the international level and put me in touch with people from all over the world who share our love of flying and aerobatics. Americans have served on all of the CIVA sub-committees and have contributed a great deal to the advancement of aerobatic competition. The foundation of the judging criteria found in CIVA rules today was provided by Don Taylor, IAC #3, when he served as the USA’s delegate back in the 1970’s. When the judging rules were overhauled in the 1990’s, it was the IAC Official Contest Rules that were the basis. Since 1960, there has always been an American presence at world championships in power.
This sets the stage for the next part of this discussion. As a matter of policy, set by your Board of Directors, there has been considerable synchronization of CIVA rules with IAC rules since 1982. Things like the size of the aerobatic box (1000 meter cube), altitude limits, Unknown figures, and the use of the Aresti Aerobatic Catalogue are areas of alignment. Our rules deviate considerably when it comes to contest administration, weather requirements, and other technical details. These rules are designed to make local contests possible and easier to organize and run. Without going into much detail, it can generally be said that an IAC contest is much different animal than an FAI aerobatic championships as our rules are clearly made for smaller, regional events as well as our Nationals.
Each year, after the CIVA meeting is held, it is the responsibility of the IAC Rules Committee to report its recommendations on what should be adopted from the latest round of changes at the world level. Many of these changes are routine and small. However, this year was a different story as CIVA adopted a huge change to the format of world competitions which would require a lot of work to adopt in our rules. Aside from the technical aspects of implementing these changes in IAC rules, there was the issue of member comment. We publish the proposed rules changes every year so members can see what we are considering and they can offer their comments. Those member comments, for this last IAC Board meeting, amounted to 23 pages of very detailed and articulate remarks for the Board to study prior to the meeting. While a relatively small number of members sent us e-mails, those who wrote did an excellent job of providing feedback and input to the Board.
Because of the short time between the CIVA meeting (held on 24-25 October) and the IAC Board meeting (held on 4-5 November), there was no chance to offer the members any time to comment and provide the required feedback that we encourage in the interests of openness, transparency, and being responsive to our members. Therefore, none of these changes could go forward in 2016.
However, aside from this, there were larger issues. As some of you have stated in your own posts, what is our purpose, what are our objectives, and do we need to be in lock-step with what CIVA is doing? Shouldn’t we have, as our priority, the best interests of our members at all times and not the small number who participate in world competition? These are good questions.
The fact that we want our team pilots to be well-prepared for their entry into world competition has been a given for a long time. The argument has been made that these pilots should fly the same sequences to the same set of rules when they are flying here in the USA as they will at the world level. However, we also should note that these are the best pilots America can offer, they are astonishingly talented, skilled, and experienced, and will train to whatever may be required under the guidance of the best coaches they can find.
We also noted, in our research, that many team pilots do not avail themselves of the opportunity to fly local IAC contests. In Advanced, many more team pilots do so – but in Unlimited, some pilots do not fly regional competitions at all. So the argument does not hold up. There is no right or wrong here as each team pilot has limited time, resources, and may prefer to spend that time and money on concentrated training. Some of our best pilots in the past, like Leo Loudenslager, seven-time National Champion and 1980 World Champion, never flew a local IAC contest. Each pilot must decide what is best for them.
We have a lot of pilots out there who have no aspirations to fly in world championships and only desire to enjoy this wonderful sport within their own personal constraints. Our organization of nearly 4,000 members has about 450 competition pilots and so there are a lot of people out there, including those who volunteer at these events, who deserve our full attention.
Therefore, the IAC Board of Directors, when it met in Oshkosh on November 4th and 5th, decided not to adopt the new CIVA flight programs in 2016 and took the further step of providing direction to the IAC Rules Committee to not adopt any such rules indefinitely. IAC will stick with its well-proven, traditional flight programs well into the future. Of course, the door is never shut on any proposals which might improve competition, increase participation, make our contests more fun and enjoyable, as well as introduce new people to this wonderful sport. It is our policy that following CIVA with this latest set of changes would not do so.
Thus, we find ourselves at a crossroads. IAC and the USA will now go its own way. We will develop our own Known sequences from here on out – for all categories – and I also expect some “dialing down” of the difficulty level of some of our categories. I have already received wonderful feedback from Pitts pilots who really like the new Advanced and Unlimited Knowns. It is our policy that those legacy airplanes – indeed, the ones which built our sport -- not be chased away from competition by ever-increasing difficulty. That is a recipe for organizational suicide.
That said, I think the new CIVA flight programs will work well at world championships. Those competitions are flown by many pilots who are, for all intents and purposes, professionals. While some of our pilots fly airshows to support their competition activities, we do not have any professional competition pilots here. I become a bit incredulous, though, when I hear CIVA delegates say that competition is too easy or boring. Perhaps it might be that way when that pilot scores 10 on every figure, yet it was an argument made over many years by those countries which dominate world competition.
While I have talked mostly about the Free Known, there was also the issue of eliminating the Free Program and the introduction of additional Free Unknowns. Free Programs have been around for decades and we saw no reason to delete them. Free Unknowns are generally not workable at local, weekend contests with limited time and personnel.
I am excited about the possibilities. In the past year or so, we have been trying hard to build a “New IAC”. We are growing again and we are putting an enormous effort into improving our services to you, the member. IAC will go its own way, as we believe it necessary to survive and grow. We have an excellent leadership team in place dedicated to our original purposes and objectives and we will do our best to provide you the very best IAC we can.
