RULE MAKING

SSA RULES COMMITTEE MEETING

1999 RECOMMENDATIONS

This column will appear several times a year and is intended to inform those interested in soaring competition about the philosophy, motivations, deliberations and decisions of the SSA rules sub-committee. This first report will deal primarily with the recommended 1999 changes that will be submitted for approval to the February Board of Directors Meeting in Knoxville. Future subjects will explain the sub-committee's posture on flight recorders, the PST/AT issue, gps start configuration, the MAT (modified assigned task), and, hopefully, subjects contributed by readers.

Another step in improving rule-making awareness is the publication of the minutes of the annual fall sub-committee meeting. The complete minutes are available on the SSA web page and will give more background on what the sub-committee did and did not do (and why) with the many subjects on the agenda.

Following is a list of recommended changes for 1999:

Valid nationals must have at least 5 contestants with 40% or more of the winners score.

Photo board is optional. Alternative is a photo of the task sheet.

Allow tail water ballast in no-water contests.

Allow damaged wing tips to be replaced by non-wingleted tips

Add MAT (modified assigned task) to tasks available to FAI classes at regionals. See Sports 10.3.2 (b) (6). To be covered in next column.

Allow CD to limit turnpoints to less than 11.

Change Sports seeding to 90 for regionals and 100 for nationals.

Sports regional medallions only for category 3 and lower.

Give CD descretion on STI for Sports competitions.

Ban bug wipers in Sports.

Require turnpoint numbers on landing card.

Delay mandatory flight recorder phase in until 2000 for 15m and Standard nationals and no sooner than 2001 regionals.

Liberalization of rules concerning gaps in flight recorder logs.

Allow non-altitude recording flight recorders for back up and contests not using a gps start.

Modifications to the gps start.

Karl Striedieck