We launched a Ballast Marathon week!
Wednesday October 29th to Wednesday November 5th.
Over 90% of the pilots surveyed believe XC paragliding indeed has a problem related to ballast. More than 65% stated it is "a major and widespread issue" and more than 25% stated the issue "affects mainly the lightest pilots (below 60 kg)".
It's important to note that we did not yet run a survey that collects feedback as to what the specific issues the community perceives in detail!
The many points raised informally in chat groups range from discomfort, to various forms of cost to worsening the outcome of accidents, to being a cause for accidents. We are gathering accident data to study the issue further but the process will take some time. In addition to the potential consequence for individual pilots, it was often stated that the problem is also linked to fairness, competitiveness and access, in particular affecting the lightest pilots in the sport.
During our initial data collection "What do we want?" and "What went wrong?", ballast was mentioned in several threads across several initiatives and a range of measures to address ballast issue were proposed. Naturally, some of the proposal have conflicting aspects and further discussion is needed.
By order of appearance on our platform we identified:
- Weight Classes
- Size Equalizers
- MRT (Multiple Radius Turnpoint)
PWCA has also acknowledged that "the number of incidents in relation to the ballast is overwhelming, and action must be taken as soon as possible". And the CIVL Bureau has effectively introduced a 4th proposal in announcing a return to weight checks and enforcement of ballast limits by the Sporting Code.
We acknowledge that none of these four proposals are considered complete or else the community would have already adopted one. We organized the Ballast Marathon to give everyone the chance to get a full understanding off each of these proposals: How others see things, what are the root causes of the issues identified, what are they trying to solve with the proposed solution. What is grounded in data, what are their beliefs. By what mechanisms will the desired effect be achieved and how will it be applied in the field.
We organized four conference calls. One per each specific proposed solution. Each one was presented by a strong contender and firm believer of the defended proposal. The format was a 20 min presentation followed by Question and Answers. Each proposal also has a dedicated page in this space.
We will organize votes to survey community support for each proposal independently in a given context but we don't want to compare one against each other just yet.
Example: In which format would you support proposal #1 (Weight Classes)?
- Overall
- In Cat 1 only
- In Cat 2 only
- In PWC
- In CCC
- In Sport Competition
- Not at all
- I don't have an opinion
By the time we would have gathered more accident report and hopefully pilot report.
This will be the moment to try to build some consensus: Is one proposal standing out from the rest? Are proposals popular across formats or only for some? Are any of the supported proposals compatible with each other when used in different formats? Can we tie different solution to meet different scope?
Finally, we will start a working group. 1-2 weeks of brainstorming, drafting and a presentation to the community concluding with a vote on the proposals.
On such a complex and difficult topic, we think this is the best available approach. Even failing would still provide valuable inputs for the institutions in our sport.