REPORT ON 1996 FAI FREE FLIGHT WORLD CUP

by Ian Kaynes Chairman, CIAM FF Subcommittee January 1997

The 1996 Free Flight World Cup has again had good participation, support and prestige. There were more competitions in the 1996 World Cup than in 1995 with the total number of participants slightly smaller. This partly reflects the more scattered location of competitions and also that some competitions have very bad weather.

There were some close results. In F1A Victor Stamov (Ukraine) and Antony Koerbin (New Zealand) both scored 115 points over three competitions, with Victor winning the tie on the basis of his points from a fourth competition. There were also equal points at the top of F1B, with Alex Andrjukov (Ukraine) and Bror Eimar (Sweden) both having scored 150 points and in fact both had won 5 competitions each. Alex once again took the title by virtue of his second place in the sixth competition considered, out of his notable total of points scored in TEN competitions in 1996. Eugeny Verbitsky won F1C to complete a clean sweep for the Ukraine. F1C second place was again taken by Gerard Aringer, the same position and score that he achieved last year! Rudolf Musil (Czech Republic) was the clear F1E winner with 130 points.

ORGANISATION

The organisation of the World Cup ran smoothly apart from the usual slightly late receipt of results from some competition organisers and two more significant delays. The results of the Central Asia Cup (Uzbekistan, August) were received by the World Cup coordinator at the end of December, the organisers reporting that they had sent them to the FAI Office in September. The Oberkotzau F1E results (Germany, October 12) was not received until December. One competition, the Argentina National Chrampionships was postponed from its scheduled date in April because of bad weather; the weather was again poor but the competition was flown on the new date in June. This year the fastest results reached the UK by Email within 4 days of the event, including Victoria Championships in Australia and the Nordic Cup. Mailed results arriving in 6 days included Holiday on Ice, Scania Cup, Sezimovo Usti, Eifel Pokal; the Koturu Cup was only two days later than this, from the opposite side of the world in New Zealand. The results from the World Air Games trial event in Turkey were received by an indirect fax+mail route and were almost illegibile when finally received.

During the year results and news have been issued to organisers in the form of 4 issues of a World Cup newsletter. Results have also been made available on the internet. As competition results are received and entered into the results system a new web page is generated and e-mailed to the FAI to update the FF World Cup page of the aeromodelling section of the FAI web site.

PROTESTS

There was one protest in 1996. This concerned the circumstances and results of a F1B flyoff in the Omarama Cup in New Zealand. A protest had been submitted to the FAI Jury at the event but the competitor had not been informed of the result of the protest at that time and subsequently submitted a World Cup protest. A World Cup jury was formed and considered the protest and also the circumstances of such a protest. It rejected the protest, but moreover it was considered inappropriate for a World Cup jury to be involved in reconsidering a matter which had already been placed before an FAI jury at a competition. The correct role of a World Cup jury should be considering protests relating only to the organisation and scoring of the World Cup rather than governing the indiviual competitions. The correct route of appeals against a jury decision are defined in the General Section of the Sporting Code. Consequently the competitor’s protest fee was returned but unfortunately this was then too late for following the established appeal procedure. The jurisdiction of World Cup juries was discussed at the December Bureau meeting and lead to a proposal for clarification.

MEDALS AND DIPLOMA

Diploma are now available and were presented first at the 1996 Plenary meeting. The production of medals has still not taken place but must be complete in time for presentation at the 1997 Plenary meeting.

1996 STATISTICS

Number of competitors per country, only those scoring points in 2 or more events:

F1A

F1B

F1C

F1E

ALL

UKR 13

UKR 11

UKR 6

SVK 11

UKR 30

GER 11

RUS 10

USA 4

AUT 6

GER 22

HUN 9

GBR 7

GER 3

CZE 5

RUS 21

FIN 8

USA 6

HUN 3

ROM 5

SVK 18

NED 8

GER 5

RUS 3

GER 3

AUT 16

RUS 8

AUS 4

AUT 2

ITA 1

GBR 14

FRA 6

NED 4

GBR 2

 

HUN 14

SVK 6

SWE 4

AUS 1

 

USA 13

SWE 6

AUT 3

DEN 1

 

NED 12

AUT 5

ARG 2

ITA 1

 

SWE 10

GBR 5

DEN 2

   

FIN 9

AUS 3

FRA 2

   

AUS 8

USA 3

HUN 2

   

FRA 8

DEN 2

ITA 2

   

ROM 6

NZL 2

NOR 2

   

CZE 5

CAN 1

FIN 1

   

DEN 5

ESP 1

ISR 1

   

ITA 4

ISR 1

NZL 1

   

NOR 3

KAZ 1

POL 1

   

NZL 3

NOR 1

POR 1

   

ARG 2

POL 1

SVK 1

   

ISR 2

ROM 1

UZB 1

   

POL 2

SLO 1

     

UZB 2

UZB 1

     

CAN 1

       

ESP 1

       

KAZ 1

       

POR 1

       

SLO 1

 

F1A

F1B

F1C

F1E

Number of competitions

30

29

28

7

Total number of entries

1137

633

211

218

Number of competitors scoring points:

       

in 1 event

200

99

56

23

in 2 events

57

38

19

15

in 3 events

27

19

4

8

in 4 events

12

8

3

6

in 5 events

6

4

0

2

in 6 events

1

1

0

0

in 7 events

1

2

0

0

in 8 events

0

0

0

0

in 9 events

0

0

0

0

in 10 events

0

1

0

0

Total number of competitors scoring World Cup points

304

172

82

54

Total number of participants in all four classes: 2199

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