by Ian Kaynes Chairman, CIAM FF Subcommittee March 1988

The World Cup concept for producing a league based on the results of open international competitions was introduced by the CIAM Free Flight Subcommittee in a proposal to the April 1987 CIAM Plenary meeting. This proposal was accepted so that FM World Cups may now be run for any aeromodelling discipline.

In advance of this CIAM approval the Free Flight Subcommittee instigated an unofficial World Cup for 1987. The objectives included gaining experience of the concept, possibly to answer any questions raised during the Plenary meeting discussions, and to allow an early introduction of the idea. This document presents the results of this 1987 Free Flight World Cup, together with statistics and comments on the event.

One of the main reasons for the World Cup was to encourage participation in international competitions by giving a continuing competitive drive throughout the year. This has been most successful and a number of competition organisers have reported that their events have had higher entries and greater interest as result of inclusion in the World Cup. This has been particularly true for events later in the year, partly as a result of the increased appreciation of the World Cup as the year has progressed and partly, of course, from people well placed to win the Cup and wanting to gain more points.

One of the comments made at the Plenary meeting had been that there was a danger of the World Cup becoming effectively a European-only event. The distribution of the nationalities of participants and the fact that the F1C winner is from USA demonstrate that this has not been the case in 1987. It should be noted that the amount of intercontinental travel was influenced by people attending the World Championships in France and staying to compete in open internationals in Europe.

Now to consider some negative aspects. It has become apparent that a large proportion of open internationals on the Sporting Calendar do not actually follow the FAI Sporting Code. Some of the discrepancies include non-standard maximums for some flights or scheduling more than seven flights, while other problems indicate that a proper FM Jury is not appointed for the event. These matters have been considered by the Free Flight Subcommittee and have led to proposals to the 1988 Plenary meeting. This is a problem which applies generally and the World Cup has just had the effect of highlighting the deficiencies.

The other major problem has been the long delay by some organisers in submitting their results to the World Cup organisation. This has prevented up-to-date results compilations being available for the following competitions and detracts from interest in the latest positions. Strong pressure must be applied to the organisers of events selected for the 1988 World Cup to improve the situation. It had been planned to finance the running costs of the World Cup via subscriptions to a results service. However, this has only been taken by a few people and has done little effect to offset the cost of distributing results to the organisers of participating competitions and the aeromodelling press.

This summary is concluded by saluting the 1987 World Cup winners:

F1A: Stefan Rumpp, W Germany

F1B: Dieter Paff, W Germany

F1C: Randy Archer, USA

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