National Free Flight Society

SEN 2318

  1. WC Social media etc suggestions
  2. It’s the Bulletins that count

WC Social media etc suggestions
From: Ross Jahnke

The Hungarian hosts seem to think that support people and spectators are
potential vandals, stumblebums, and health hazards.  The post in Facebook,
with its dire tone and heavy use of capital letters, is a public relations
blunder, that sets a bad tone just prior to this great event.

A few suggestions for the organizers to repair their public image over the
next few weeks:

1. Trust the people who are coming to this event to follow the rules,
behave well, and to be safe. These are very accomplished free flight
competitors and skilled support persons, so treat them as such.

2. *Don’t* use social media for communications that are only pertinent to
competitors and others who will attend the event. E-mail the Team Managers
and registered competitors with this kind of information.

3. *Do *use social media to post round by round results, videos, and photos
of the event. The last two WC were followed very closely on the model
aviation groups in Facebook. You may not allow spectators on the field, but
you will have over 2,000 spectators on Facebook and other online platforms.
MASA Mongolia did a great job in 2015.

4. If spectators show up for a picnic, help them lay out their blanket a
safe distance from the flight line and let them enjoy out great sport. The
benefit will almost certainly outweigh the risk.

Ross

It’s the Bulletins that matter
From : the Editor

There is a detailed guideline on how to run a World Free Flight Champs.  One of the key objects is to make sure that the event in run in a fair manner and that a sporting result is obtained.  For example this is why we fly from pole in rounds and change poles every round.  It make sure that no one team has an advantage by flying from a ‘better’ launch point throughout the event.

Another requirement is that all official information is published in a series of “Bulletin”. These are put on a web site so that all may access.  For Hungary it is here http://www.faif1abc.com/  Sometimes these need updating because of changing circumstances. We saw for example in a recent SEN that the Australian Team manager wrote to the organizer to get clarification about field access.  The organizer replied to the Australians but also updated the web site so that information is available to all teams.  The information on the web site was marked up so you could see what was changed.  From  my point of what was missing was the date of the change so you could check back later to see if anything else had been modified.

Like it or not the World Cup event that precedes the World Champs is a very important event. From the organizer’s side it can be used as part of timer training and a check out of operational procedures. From the sportsman it is part of the preparation for the World Champs as it is checking out the site under competition conditions. Also for those after world cup points it is the World Cup event with the most participants and hence the most bonus points.  But it is a separate event and event updates have to be published separately but carefully coordinated with the Champs.

There was a suggestion on FB that the organizer have a FB page to provide updates. This is not such a good idea as it could cause confusion if the information on FB differed from the official Bulletins on the web site or was not updates so quickly.  Also on FB other “non-official” people could make comments that would create further confusion and to what was the rea McCoyl, fake news or alternate facts ?.  The  Hungarian organizer correctly posted on FB a link to the official web site as the source of official information.

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…………..
Roger Morrell