At the IPC Plenary meeting end of last month there were some changes to the Canopy Piloting rules at the International level. The USPA will likely adopt most of those rule changes to keep our competition format in line with the International rules. The decisions of what to adopt, and what not to adopt will occur at the USPA board meeting at the end of March in Daytona Beach. We will also adopt some of those rules here at the FLCPA. Many of those rules pertaining to line values in accuracy and judging standardization were used at meet 1 last weekend. There are a few new rules that are a little heavier that I’ll discuss below for each event.

Distance: Pro competitors must now drag at, or before the front side of the first water gate. It is no longer mandatory to drag through the first gate. Amatuer class distance rules will not change. Amateur competitors must eclipse the 10 ft entry gate and the 5 ft. gate at 50 meters.

Speed: We will continue to use the same courses and scoring methods for speed.

Zone Accuracy: There are changes in both classes with regard to what the ZA tapes are worth and how judges will score landings vs. first point of contact. Point values and zones in the PRO class will remain the same. Amatuers ZA dragging and zero zone rules are changing. Amatuers must now drag the water to accumulate water points. We will also adopt the change of the dead man zone to now be the “nuetral” zone. This means that as an amatuer you no longer need to lift over the bank and zero zone. This should better prepare our amatuers for USPA nationals where dragging is necessary. This is the change that the IPC is making to ZA and I think it will fit nicely into our Amatuer class here at the FLCPA. We will keep our PRO rules a bit more challenging. As our PRO pilots have reached a level of proficiency that has not been achieved by all, having more challenging scoring should provide a better training platform for our PRO competitors who will be gunning for US team selection at the US Nationals in May.

The IPC also implemented a concept of “default score”. This will award 3 points to a competitor who scores the entry gate in any event, but fails to negotiate the course to a scoring run. This new rule supports that a competitor who scores the entry gate should be awarded more than a competitor who misses the entry gate, or misses the course entirely. I think this is a great rule for our Amatuer classs as it awards those newer competitors who score the entry but haven’t quite reached the level of proficiency to sucessfully negotiate the full course. As such, we will implement this scoring in our Amatuer class, but will not in the PRO class.

These rule changes will be effective at meet #2 in March at Z-Hills. Here’s a link to the FAI page where the new rules will be published once they’ve got the copy finalized. http://www.fai.org/fai-documents