posted Jan 15th, 2007 - The delegates of all national parachuting associations will travel to Italy this year for the 58th annual meeting of the International Parachuting Commission (IPC). President Patrice Girardin from France will open the meeting in Florence on January 23 and close it on January 28.

The annual IPC meeting includes workshops of several IPC Committees and Working Groups. Each skydiving discipline has its own committee, and the Formation Skydiving Committee consists of four members and four advisors. Fiona McEachern from Australia is the current Chair of the committee, Deputy Chairman is a former member of the DeLand Norgies, Carl-Erik Tuv from Norway. The other two members are Dr. Rainer Hoenle from Germany and Anatoly Zhirov from Russia.

The four advisors are Jérôme David from France, Klaus Wellens from Germany, Marc Hoornweg from the Netherlands and Vana Gulliver from South Africa. The NSL News audience is probably familiar with most of the names since they have been mentioned several times in different news stories.

Fiona McEachern has provided the NSL News several times with valuable information and feedback for topics that were related to rule issues. Carl-Erik Tuv was the Tail for the DeLand Norgies, won two bronze medals at the World Meets in 2001 and 2003 and received a lot of coverage with his team during his active times as a 4-way competitor.

Dr. Rainer "Exi" Hoenle is the founder of the German 4-way competition league, Deutsche Sky Liga (DSL) and competed with the German national 8-way teams at the World Meet in 1987 and 1991. Anatoly Zhirov competed with the Russian 4-way and 8-way teams years ago and has continued to work on international event managament for many years.

Jerome David is the national coach for all Formation Skydiving competition teams in France and currently prepares his new delegation for the World Meet in 2008. The NSL News will soon provide an update from France. Klaus Wellens is one of the most experienced FAI judges in the world and an expert in computerized judging methods, including Omniskore.

Marc Hoornweg was a long-time member of the Dutch national 8-way team and the alternate for the Dutch national 4-way team in 2006, Punky Fish. Vana Gulliver is one of the most experienced FS competitors in South Africa. She competed with the South African national 4-way team in the Open Class at the World Meet 2006 in Germany.

It is quite obvious that the members and advisors of IPC's Formation Skydiving Committee know what they are talking about. They are in charge of the rules and the dive pool for Formation Skydiving competition, which both require updates once in a while.

The committee members make efforts to collect as much feedback as possible from teams and competitors and discuss them before and at the IPC meetings. The World Meets and World Cups serve as the main events for the committee members to speak directly with the teams and competitors.

The World Meet 2006 in Germany included the last open meeting for participants with the committee members before the upcoming IPC meeting in Italy.

The agenda of the IPC meeting is published prior to the meeting on the IPC website. It offers the opportunity for every interested person to provide the committee members with feedback and information. The agenda for the Formation Skydiving committee's upcoming meeting included several interesting topics with potential rule changes to come. The NSL News will follow up with details of the agenda soon.

The annual meeting includes decisions over the current dive pool, as well. It has become normal procedure in the past years that the dive pool remains unchanged for the season that leads up to a World Championship of Formation Skydiving. For example, the IPC meeting in 2006 did not bring any dive pool changes before the World Meet in Germany.

Dive pool changes are usually introduced in the IPC meeting following a world meet. The official agenda for the upcoming meeting includes only a general topic "Dive pool changes", no specifics are mentioned. The last changes of the dive pool were decided upon at the IPC meeting in 2005. Block 5 (Opal - Opal) was re-defined. Bundy - Bundy (Block 12) replaced the controversial Zipper - Star. The Star came back as Random Formation M. The 8-way dive pool experienced a few changes, as well.