38.847773848549,-104.84527260661,USHPA headquarters, Colorado
Springs, CO, USA

Mike Haley has asked the USHPA BOD a number of questions about the
USHPA Competition Program. I'm going to look at those questions and make a few
comments about them.

You can find the documents
here, if you are a USHPA members (and frankly, who else would care?). The
USHPA has been clever enough (Steve Roti, I assume) to figure out how to keep
you non USHPA members from accessing their documents behind the membership only
wall. I guess that they didn't like it when I linked to documents directly that
didn't require that you be a member to view them.  (Hi Cat, Mouse here.)

One proposal is to count the top 100 WPRS ranked pilots as equal in their value
to the top ten US pilots (and so on). This originally was proposed by paraglider
pilot Greg Babush, but seems to be quite a popular position, and has been
adopted by the Competition Workgroup. I have previously included it in my
proposals. Another is to reduce the number of foreign competitions that count
from two to one (a proposal which I oppose).

Mike Haley (USHPA Competition Chairman) writes that this would:

Help increase US meet validity, overall, to the extent that higher
ranked foreign nationals choose to attend US comps. US comps have been facing
chronic low validity. Boosting validity encourages more foreign pilots to attend
US comps. Exposure to better foreign pilots helps advance the skills of US
pilots. Helps raise US pilots WPRS rankings so they can obtain one of the
limited number of slots available in international events.

These are highly questionable statements at least as how they
relate to hang gliding. Paragliding? Who knows?.

Foreign pilots do indeed increase US hang gliding competition validity now and
would under the proposed changes. But US hang gliding competitions do not have
chronic low validity. In fact many of them have high validity in part due to
foreign pilot attendance. A review of the validity of the meets as shown
here
proves this point.

Any changes in NTSS validity have no effect on foreign pilots. The quality of
meets determine the value of them to their WPRS ranking. If we can attract many
high quality foreign and US pilots (by making the meets interesting and at the
appropriate times) then the meets will have high value to them.

Could make attending foreign competitions even more valuable than
they are further encouraging US pilots not to attend US meets.

Not likely to be true for US hang glider pilots. I don't know
about paraglider pilots. Foreign competition (as in going overseas) is already
restricted by the rule that only two foreign competitions over a two year period
count for your NTSS ranking. Of the twenty meets that counted for the 2010 US
National team, only one was a foreign meet. US meets are by far the predominate
determinate of the US National Hang Gliding team.

At those international events a pilot can see a significant boost
to their US rank.

The evidence actually shows this not to be true for hang glider
pilots.

Therefore, the better US pilot may get displaced from the world
team by a lesser one who had more time and money to attend the international
event(s) (i.e. The result could be that the best pilots were not picked for the
US team.)

Again, just look at the evidence above. It proves that this is not
the case. Perhaps it is true for paraglider pilots.

In order to be competitive in their world team team aspirations,
all US pilots effectively have to attend foreign meets.

This is getting to be weird. I have already proven that this is in
fact not the case for hang glider pilots. Why does Mike keep repeating this?

Permitting more foreign competitions reduce the number of direct,
head-to-head comparisons between US pilots and could sub-optimize national
team selection.

Please show even one case where this was true!

Permitting more foreign meets, therefore, increases the total
burden on all US pilots aspiring to the world team.

The proposal is not about permitting any more foreign meets, but
further restricting the number that already count. And, as I have already shown
it does not in any way increase the total burden on the US hang glider pilots.

It can be argued that the US team is best selected by having US
pilots fly against other US pilots. Not every pilot can afford to attend every
meet.

Lots of positions could be argued, but it helps to have a position
that actually has some evidence to back it up. You've got to wonder why Mike
didn't do his homework and gather some evidence first. Of course, not every
pilot can attend every meet, and this is true of US meets also. That is why we
only require four meets over two years, among the hundreds of possible meets
that one could attend.

Attending international competitions where pilot quality may be
higher good way for an individual pilot to advance their personal flying skills.
All foreign competitions require pilot resources of time and money. Permitting
two comps enables US pilots unable to attend very many comps to have the comps
that they attend do double duty, improving their flying as well as providing
another usable US score. This is particularly relevant to those more constrained
by time than by money.

The US number one ranked hang glider pilot is Glen Volk. He has
not attended a foreign competition in a number of years. He is constrained by
time, not by money. All his ranking points come from US competitions
(obviously).  Why does Mike not look at the evidence before he makes these
kinds of statements?