In the past few days we received this email:
Hello,
According to my information, the paragliding association is the guarantor of PG WEB. I have been a part of this system for 3 years and I follow very carefully the happenings around this website, which I consider very useful. I am all the more sorry that I am leaving this system (perhaps temporarily):
"I have decided to end my participation in the ČPP. The reason is the fact that flights that violate the AIP of the Czech Republic (mainly TMA crossing) are entered into the competition with the FULL KNOWLEDGE AND CONSENT OF THE PGWEB TEAM. First of all, it is against the regulations, and last but not least, it creates an uneven playing field for the "honest". I am personally very sorry because I find this project very useful.”
This is a copy of the message sent to the PGWEB team and I would appreciate your consideration. Ultimately it will be a case against a case, but these things happen despite mandatory training. Unfortunately, these are pilots who know very well what they are doing.
Unfortunately, I cannot give you more detailed information about the cases, because everything is part of private correspondence. However, I am very surprised that the pilots publicly appear on the essentially official website of the paragliding association without an adequate response...
After discussion at the PG Association's board and sports commission, we decided to publish the following statement:
Dear Pilot,
we are very sorry that you have decided to leave the ranks of competitors in the Czech Paragliding Cup. Unfortunately, your e-mail is so vague that we don't have anything to catch at this point and how to seek redress. So I would like to state at least the facts that are obvious.
The PG Association is not a guarantor of PGWEBU and it is not "essentially the official website of the PG Association". The official website of our union has an address www.svazpg.cz . PGWEB is a commercial website that runs the World XContest international year-round competition server on its website. SvazPG is the announcer of the Czech Paragliding Cup and has been part of this system for several years. The PGWEB team is therefore the organizer of this competition and is responsible for its correct course according to competition rules. SvazPG is not responsible for any content placed on the PGWEB server, nor can it respond to non-specific allegations.
Therefore, if there are to be any consequences from this case, it is essential that you state specific cases where the pilot gained an unauthorized sporting advantage or a case where the organizer of the competition either knowingly or unknowingly violated the rules of the competition. A clear and correct procedure in such cases is described in paragraph 5. Complaints and protests of the ČPP rules.
I have very carefully read the discussion on the PGweb forum, which started around the space violation case, and I am afraid that in the discussion in many cases the question of the sporting cleanliness of the flight was mixed with the question of violating aviation regulations and laws. We now want to make it clear that these are two topics that must be dealt with separately.
1. Violation of aviation regulations and laws
The Union PG does not approve of the violation of aviation regulations and laws during any PG flights, whether they are registered with the ČPP or not, and calls on pilots to comply with them in the interest of their safety and that of other air traffic participants.
The LAA Paragliding Association is a pilot association and as such has no mandate to investigate violations of aviation regulations and laws. Therefore, the organizer of the ČPP and SvazPG will not check compliance with aviation regulations and the Aviation Act in order to report guilty pilots to the state administration for their violation.
2. Control of sports cleanliness of flights
According to paragraph 2.1. according to the ČPP rules and according to the applicable legislation, the pilot is responsible for the correctness of each flight. The Sports Commission of the PG Association notes that, according to the rules of the ČPP, violation of restricted areas is an unauthorized gain of a sporting advantage over other competitors, as well as other violations of aviation regulations and the Aviation Act. Restricted areas in the Czech Republic are unfortunately very variable in time and space (various activated areas, NOTAMs, airports with navigation warning). In addition, it is possible to obtain a flight permit to various of them without much difficulty. I will not make excuses for the fact that we do not have the appropriate software developed for automatic checking or the lack of admins to check all flights registered in the ČPP, even if both are true. The reality is that if we cannot flawlessly evaluate all violations of aviation regulations for all flights in the ČPP in the spirit as the rules speak about them, we must rely on the principle of presumption of innocence on the pilot's claim about the sporting purity of his flight. The procedure proposed by you on the PGweb forum, where the tracklog will be automatically checked for violations of flight areas and flights with violations will not be accepted into the ČPP, is the exact opposite approach, an extensive presumption of guilt, moreover, it is still imperfectly applied, because it only affects the areas defined in the AIP CR and does not take into account at all taking into account other restrictions that occur in our airspace. I believe that the implementation of this proposal would only disgust honest pilots, forced to confirm their honesty and lead to the early disintegration of this competition.
For the reasons stated above, the PG Association did not oblige the organizer to check all flights registered in the ČPP. We rely on the pilots to play fair and on the possibility of public control of the tracklog by other competition participants.
In order to remind pilots of their obligations, we are introducing a check button in the flight registration form with the text: "I declare that this flight was performed in compliance with the aviation regulations and laws of the relevant country over which the flight took place." The flight will only be able to be sent after checking this checkbox. If it becomes clear that the tracklog has not violated any controlled or prohibited area defined in the AIP CR, the above check button may not be displayed.
3. Manipulation with tracklog
The tracklog taken by the pilot may not be modified in any way after uploading to the ČPP server or replaced with another taken during the same flight. The pilot can only replace or repair a damaged tracklog in justified cases and only if it has been approved in advance by the organizer. In the case of organizer flights, such a procedure must be approved by the sports commission of the PG Association.
4. Validity of the tracklog
Flights with an invalid tracklog will appear in the daily score on the ČPP server with a point value of 0 points. Pilots who upload a valid tracklog (with a valid G-record) to the ČPP server, which was not created during a paragliding flight, will be dealt with by the sports committee.
I don't know if this answer of ours satisfied you, but I want to assure you that we try to work in favor of paragliding and our decisions are based on this principle. Any kind of extremism in the understanding of our sport, whether it's a flouting of regulations or their strict enforcement, will do no one any good. We don't live in an ideal world and people will make mistakes. While ten years ago, when I started paragliding, there were many paragliders among us who had no idea about the division of airspace, today the situation is significantly different and pilots are really solving this issue. This state was not achieved by repression, but by enlightenment. This is the basis for improvement and LAA places more emphasis on it than anyone else in Czech sports aviation.
For the Paragliding Association
Michal Brabenec