Judging Issues Bulletins

Hello,

As Chair of the IAC Judges Program I periodically receive info from our population of aerobatic Judge volunteers about challenges and issues involving grading competition flights. So as to share problems, solutions, and interpretations of rules, I send periodic bulletins by e-mail to all of the IAC National Judges.

I am posting copies of the bulletins here so that our Regional Judges and other IAC members can be aware of the issues that are discussed.

The first of the bulletins appears below.

Wes



4/27/2015

As we move into the contest season, one suggestion that I have received is that as Chair of the Judges Program it would be to all of our advantage for me to act as a listener and publisher of Judging issues that are observed at contests. If the Judge community is aware of figure criteria or rules that are being misinterpreted in the heat of judging competitors flying past at 200mph we can work to get ourselves and our peers more up to speed on the problem issues.

This note is prompted by anecdotal reports of problems with awarding HZ's vs 0.0's. Since HZ's were brought into IAC not long ago, we have to be careful of old habits. A couple of seasons ago, saying "that's a zero" got the job done. Today we have to tell the recorder "HZ!". Or say "zero point zero". In 2015 our recorder likely won't know which score to write down if the Judge simply says "Zero".

If you serve as a Chief Judge, in your briefing of the Grading Judges I hope that you will take a moment to mention the difference between HZ and 0.0. Please encourage your Grading Judges to say the appropriate and precise words to their Recorder.

As the competition season progresses, please shoot me an e-mail if you see difficulties with awarding scores on the Judges Line. Recognizing problems and sharing our experience will help us all do a better job.

Thanks!

Judging Issues Bulletin - 5/25/2015

As we start to come up to competition speed after the slow winter, a couple more issues have been identified that you should all be aware of.

First, we seem to have a sort of hole in our contest record keeping. The good news is that we have some individuals who are upgrading to National Judge! Thank you Chuck Cohen, Jim Bourke, Ross Schoneboom, and Craig Gifford! The problem is that candidate National Judges need to serve as Assistant to the Chief Judge for 10 flights and we are not getting that info into the IAC database. It appears that the forms that go to the contest Scorer do not have a box for recording the Assistants to the Chief. There is discussion about adding lines for this on the Chief Judge Penalty Form. For now please write in the bottom margin of the Chief Judge Penalty Form something like "Assistants: " and the names. Hopefully the contest Scorer will see the note and enter the names into JasPer. Right now I have to send e-mails to Contest Chief Judges and ask them to dig into their memories to confirm this info. Getting it into the computer will really help our friends who are motivated to move up to National Judge.

Second, a topic has come up that I have little experience with but it is important that we get right. For each contest weekend, Unknown Programs are sent out. We all get the same Unknowns. These flight programs are written to be mentally challenging but are limited in their technical difficulty by the rules that require that they be composed only of figures in Appendix 3 of the rule book. Every once in a while an Unknown flight program slips out that is illegal or has a risk of GLOC in it, but that is very unusual. The topic of this part of today's bulletin is how an Unknown is modified on contest day. I have never done this so I went to the rule book.

The rule book seems to say that a competitor or a Judge must use the Protest process. A protest form must be filled out and the appropriate $$ submitted with the form. I assume that Registrar accepts the form and the $$ at most contests, and then passes the form off to the Chair of the Contest Jury, or a contest official who will deliver it to the Chair. Rule book section 1.4.2 (c) says that the Contest Jury meets to deliberate on the safety of Unknown Programs. There is agreement in IAC that the term safety is applied to situations such as GLOC and flight programs that can not be flown within the vertical limits of the box. That said, competitor comfort is not a safety issue. Example - Advanced competitors are expected to be able to push to level flight from vertical down lines. We do not enjoy that but it comes with the territory. Not unsafe, just uncomfortable. There is agreement in IAC that removing pushes from an Advanced Unknown is poor practice. IAC expects the competitors to use their tactical skills to supplement their stick-and-rudder skills to post the best score they can given a difficult challenge. After all, its a competition.

Getting back to the process, the rule book tells us that if a Contest Jury processes a protest, the record of that Protest must go to IAC after the contest. I do not see that our cool JasPer and web software handles this so I suggest that the Protest Form be scanned into a PDF file and e-mailed to Trish at IAC HQ.

There is more about protests and Contest Juries in the rule book. As I mentioned above, I and you do not do this very often but since we are a sport governed by rules, and this topic moves us into territory that we do not visit often, please do not be bashful about slowing down, digging into the book, and making sure that your contest handles the issue the same as the other contests out there do.

Hope that you are all flying well,

6/4/2015

This bulletin will talk about a couple of topics that have come up in the last few contests.

First, you may know that a couple of our Regional Judges have stepped up to be a National Judge. Thanks and congratulations go to Jim Bourke and Dave Watson. Dave has been active in recruiting and mentoring Judge Candidates and Jim has served as Chief Judge at the recent Coalinga Western Showdown.

One requirement for a candidate National Judge is to serve as an Assistant to a Chief Judge for 10 competitor flights. It turns out that this is harder to get documented that you might think. The JasPer software has only one entry spot for each Chief or Grading Judge's Assistant Judge, but many contests that I fly use two Assistants to the Chief Judge! Which means that one of those CJ Assistants does not get credit for the work that they do. And when the Chair of the Judges Program goes looking in the web system’s database to verify that a Candidate National Judge has satisfied the Chief assist requirement, many times the needed info is not there. So the info has to be verified by e-mail, often asking our Chief Judge volunteers to reach into the fuzzy recesses of their memories to try to remember events from last season.

At the moment, the Form A’s and Chief Judge Penalty Forms go from the Judges Line to the contest Scorer for data entry, and all of the Assistants to the Grading Judges are identified, but not the Assistant(s) to the Chief Judge. It would be helpful, when you serve as a Chief Judge, and especially in the case where you have a candidate National Judge assisting you, to write on the bottom of the Chief Judge Penalty Form “Assistant Judge:” and the name. And of course, please brief the Scorer to look for that note. Thanks!

The next topic is Protests! The good news is that there aren’t many. Personally, I have only been on a couple of Contest Juries that reviewed and adjudicated protests. Since protests are infrequent, each time I had to look up section 3.16 Protests in the rule book for the procedure. And as of this month, I now know that once a contest is completed, the Protest Form is a contest record that gets scanned into a PDF file and e-mailed to IAC (Trish). And part of what I just learned is that the record winds up in the files of the Chair of the Judges Program (me).

The Protest Form is not in the rule book. You will find it in the Contest Director Packet on the IAC web site.

The rule book is not specific on the characteristics of a protest claim that that a Contest Jury should vote in favor of. I would like to offer some guidance that I hope you agree with. I hope that you will advise anyone at a contest considering filing a protest to think about the perspective below before proceeding.

First, the protest should describe facts that the Contest Jury can verify. I attended a contest where the Boundary Judge stations were 164’ inside the box markers rather than outside. A competitor looked down at the box and filed a protest that presented this fact. The Contest Jury had an easy time verifying that fact.

I will suggest that perceptions are not facts. I hope that we can agree that the contest records, the Form A, B, C, Chief Judge Penalty Form, the airport AWOS/ASOS history, fuel receipts, etc., qualify as factual records. I will suggest that a competitor protest form description that describes perceptions, saying “I thought…” and “…Judge said was not sure…” is well on its way to being rejected.

There are protests that attempt to find grey areas. A competitor has protested having a figure scored as a zero because he had an incorrect fuel tank selected, the engine stopped during the figure and he landed. The fuel selector error was identified and the flight re-flown. The protest attempted to represent that the figure in which the engine stopped should have been scored during the re-fly based on the engine stoppage not meeting the criteria that “a technical fault was under the control of the competitor”. Yes? No?

A competitor protested receiving zeros for the first few figures based on not yet having entered the box (rule book section 7.3.1 (g)). The competitor represented that upon later speaking with the individual who had served as Boundary Judge, that individual stated that he/she “weren’t confident” that the competitor flew the figures completely outside the box. The competitor represented that they were owed the benefit of the doubt because that competitor believed that he/she was partly in the box. The Jury rejected this protest.

A Contest Jury is tasked with being fair to the submitter of a protest, but also producing a result that is fair to all of the competitors and contest volunteers. The Contest Jury result is a majority vote. Unanimity not required. On the Protest Form, the Contest Jury Decision block is provided to record the result of the Contest Jury deliberation. I suggest that the vote should be recorded, but there is no requirement that the vote cast by each Contest Jury Member be recorded.

Serving on a Contest Jury is not always an easy job but an important one if all of us who attend contests are to believe that we fly under the same rules and procedures. Thankyou to all of the volunteers who agree to serve in this important role.

I will close with the encouragement to you all to send me an e-mail if you see something at a contest that everyone can learn from, or if you have a different view of one of the issues I mention. We all want to do a good job and have a common understanding of the rules that we attempt to apply as our friends whiz by at 200mph.

Thanks!

Wes
Chair, IAC judges Program

Special Bulletin!

This note is to identify a problem with Free Programs prepared using the OpenAero software, where a Floating Point is used. For IAC contests, the rule book specifies in 6.2 that the initials "(FP)" must appear on the Form A where a Floating Point is applied to a figure K. OpenAero does not do this today.

An unfortunate friend asked me to check his Free Program and I observed this issue. Not a big one but the Free Program is technically non-conforming to the rules. He can hand write the correct notation and since the rest of the program looks OK, the forms can be signed and dated.

OpenAero users should make sure that their Free Programs have this detail correct, especially those flying the Green Mountain Aerobatic Contest this weekend.

Best of luck,

Wes
Member - IAC Rules Committee