SEN 3329
- All quiet in the western front?
- Rules and Champs
All quiet in the western front?
From: Aram Schlosberg
Roger,
SEN has been silent lately. Are there no rule changes or contest reports?
And are you in LA or far away in New Zealand?
Best,
Aram
The reply
No action reported
I am currently in NZ but that does not make any difference to me reporting on the action. But if none is reported, I guess I could make some up ? SEN does rely on our readers.
roger
Rules and Champs
The recent CIAM meeting did not make much progress on the rules front. Basically, there was an impasse on most of the rules. The only ones passed were one that was more or less a clarification of wording and the one permitting additional requirement if they are a legal requirement in the hosting nation. That latter one could be a real need but also it has certain amount of controversy and interpretation around it. Most countries have a BVLOS regulation. (beyond visual line of sight) . But the actual interpretation, especially for FF, is a little vague in practice. We do not deliberately fly our models BVLOS, and we have rules like the max wind speed, restricting the max, altitude D/T , etc. to give the event organizers some tools in this area. There is a suggestion that the model should be equipped with a radio D/T and the Official timekeeper should have control of the button and press it when he loses sight of the model. There are a number of issues around this and they been discussed at length in some of the modelling press. Does this mean the sportsman, the organizer or timekeeper is legal responsible/liable ? for doing this properly? It is very subjective. Different people have level of vision, there could be several people involved so is it OK if just one can still see the model or when the first loses sight must the model be D/T’d, etc. In some countries this can be interpreted differently by different people etc. … In reading reports of the CIAM meeting and some important events in the press there has been discussion around the difficulty in getting quality host countries for some major events. Getting quality timekeepers is an issue. This potentially could be solved by the use on onboard automated timing devices, but this is subject to an impasse and some pseudo legal experts cite BLVOS in some form or another. All of this confusion is very disruptive for our hobby, probably contributing to the lack of action.
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Roger Morrell