posted Jan 29th, 2007 - The NSL News story on January 19, 2007, provided a preview of the International Parachuting Commission's (IPC) annual meeting in Florence, Italy. The article covered the topics on the agenda of the IPC Formation Skydiving Committee, which would be relevant for this year's 4-way and 8-way competitions.

The meeting was concluded last weekend, and Fiona McEachern, Australian Chair of the FS Committee, distributed the results of the meeting instantly. First of all, and probably most importantly for teams and competitors, there will be no changes of the IPC dive pool at all.

The decision of the FS Committee to keep the dive pool unchanged speaks for the status of the current dive pool. Usually, dive pool changes of the past have been due to problems that occurred during the previous competition season. Former Block 12 (Zipper - Star) was one of the last examples for the necessity of cleaning up the dive pool.

The IPC decisions and dive pool changes also trickle down into the rule books of the national skydiving associations. Last week's IPC conclusion of leaving the dive pool untouched means that USPA and NSL will most likely not change anything in this part of the rule book, as well.

However, the NSL News story on January 19 brought up several other topics on the IPC agenda, which would most likely bring changes in other parts of the rule book. IPC's FS Committee followed through by evaluating and updating the mentioned critical sections of the "COMPETITION RULES FOR FORMATION SKYDIVING 2007".

The meet management of future events will have more flexibility in the case of critical weather conditions. The previous set of IPC competition rules allowed the Meet Director only to lower the jump altitude and shorten the working time. The new rules allow the raising of the jump altitude, as well.

The "Run-In" command has not been used any more for years at international and national competitions. It was practically replaced by red and green signal lights in the jump planes. The new IPC language does not include the "Run-In" and "Exit" commands any longer.

The fact that it takes only one round to determine a winner of a Formation Skydiving competition had not made its entry into the IPC rule book so far. The FS Committee added the missing language at the recent meeting, as well.

The position of the team videographers as members of the nations' delegations have been discussed for several years within the IPC FS Committee. It was now time for the committee members to come to a final decision for the upcoming years after a period of evaluation. The videographers will have to be of the same nationality as the other members of the delegation.

The most significant flaw in the previous set of IPC's competition rules was the handling of "selection rounds", "semi-final", "final" and "tie break round". IPC's FS Committee took care of meet situations with critical weather conditions and clarified how the IPC Meet Director will have to apply the new rules.

France was also approved as the host for the World Championship of Formation Skydiving in 2008. The NSL News will follow on both topics.