Category: News

The 2021 Championships Calendar Following a period to allow delegates to review and comment on the proposed new schedule of events that take into account the need to postpone 2020 championships due to the world-wide Covid-19 virus pandemic, we are now able to publish a revised Calendar of Events that provides all of the new dates for our postponed championships. To accommodate the shift of 2020 events into 2021 the previously approved championships from 2021 and 2022 have also by…

The CIVA Rules Committee and the Glider Aerobatic Committee have now finalised the package of proposals submitted by delegates, and this document is available to read here . Despite the major reduction in competitive flying this year due to international Covid-19 restrictions, no less than twenty-six proposals have been assembled from seven countries. As usual these will be formally reviewed at a joint Rules, Judging and Glider Committee meeting, almost certainly to be a ‘virtual’ affair in August at a…

The CIVA Bureau has now been advised by the Polish WGAC / WAGAC organisers that this event will also be deferred into 2021, the national and international Covid-19 restrictions in place making it effectively impossible to stage this dual-category event as expected. As revised information and the updated calendar for 2021 and the following years becomes available it will be posted on the CIVA News Approved Forward Championship List.

As the effects of this extraordinary virus continue to spread throughout the world and impact all our lives, the CIVA Bureau has issued an advisory statement that you can read on the Approved Forward Championships page. We urge you to develop and adopt the safest health and working practices that you can, and of course look forward to seeing you all again when this crisis has reached a concluding stage. Stay safe, Nick Buckenham

The CIVA bureau is continuing to monitor the news and government advice from around the world, and of course would recommend that you all do the same. A central resource of valuable advice on this subject is being maintained by FAI at https://www.fai.org/news/fai-statement-coronavirus-covid-19-situation and we recommend that you use this as a reliable point of information.

CIVA Regulations Part-1 (power) and Part-2 (glider) are now available in the Document Store here and also on the Documents page of the FAI / CIVA website. As usual Matthieu Roulet and Manfred Echter have been the busy authors, and both documents embody all the updates and changes that were voted through at the Duxford plenary conference last November. If you are a pilot, Team Manager or championship organiser these are the vital documents to guide you through the event…

Following discussions between CIVA bureau members earlier this year, we are pleased to announce that Ringo Massa has been awarded an FAI Air Sport medal for his outstanding development work with the aerobatic sequence design software OpenAero, universally used now to create sequences in every category. Based originally on the OLAN 'One Letter Aerobatic Notation' project launched by Michael Golan many years ago, OpenAero is an open-source application available from OpenAero.net that runs in your browser. This makes it available on…

Ladislav Bezák – World Aerobatic Champion #1 1932 – 2018 News has reached us that Czechoslovakian champion aerobatic pilot Ladislav Bezák sadly passed away in November last year, 2018. Ladislav was the gold medal winner at the very first FAI World Aerobatic Championship which was held at Bratislava in August 1960, narrowly beating his team colleagues Jirí  Bláha and Frantisek Skácelík into the second and third medal winning places respectively. All of them flew Zlin 226 aircraft, in fact pilots…

Alexandre Orlowski beat off a strong challenge from fellow French pilots Louis Vanel and Mikael Brageot to take the European Champion’s title after an excellent unlimited championship at Jindřiuchuv Hradec airfield (LKJH) in the south of the Czech Republic during early September. Inevitably the French Team took the team title by a little over 4 percent, chased by the Russian Team in second and the Hungarian Team in third place. The event was somewhat affected by poor weather, and ultimately the third Free Unknown was…