Fellow Competition Pilots and Event Organizers

The bidding process is now open for the Canadian Paragliding and Hang Gliding Nationals 2018. If you want to organize a Nationals competition, you can send in your bid before February 15th 2018 to competition@hpac.ca.

All bids should include information such as:

  • Event location and dates
  • Organizing team or person
  • Staff such as meet director, safety director etc if assigned
  • Entry fee
  • Website for registration or other means of registration.
  • Maximum pilots registration
  • Type of launch and race format
  • Local info such as hotel, camping etc.

Competition rules need to match the Canadian Competition rule book.

Also FAI sanctioning should be pursued (Cat. II)

At the completion of the bidding process, the competition committee will send recommendations to the BoD of HPAC for awarding event venues.

Eric Olivier
HPAC Competition Committee Chair

An Update to the Status of the HPAC/ACVL Websites

Many members have raised questions regarding the status of our new websites (HPAC and ACVL) and the Membership Management System connected with them, due to a lack of information or misinformation.

This newsletter is dedicated entirely to this topic and we hope members will take a few moments to inform themselves with the facts on this important topic.

What does the “Website” Project consist of?

  • Two front-end websites sites (the ones you see when you go to hpac.ca or acvl.ca) and
  • A membership management system (MMS) back-end, which is a server-hosted web application that manages our complex membership data. At first glance, it might seem there is not much information to record for each member (contact info, pilot ratings, expiry date) when in fact the database contains a complete transaction history for each member recording each “event” in the member’s history with HPAC. Many thousands of records link with each other to render everything in your pilot profile: all of your ratings, which instructor granted each rating (including date, your exam marks, airtime and flight numbers), your complete membership history, instructor records (instructional history, ratings issued, certification and recertification history) and more; the MMS also ensures compliance with our Standard Operating Procedures as they relate to ratings, membership currency, instructor ratings and currency etc.

As a member, you see the website front end, but only a little of the MMS back end (your pilot profile, current member list, membership renewal, and some membership statistics). Only the Administrator and an authorized Board member have full access to all details in the membership records. The treasurer, authorized committee chairs and instructors have special access to only the information they need to perform their functions.

Here is how the development of the overall project breaks down.

Technical Details

  • Website Content Management System (CMS): WordPress
  • MMS Application Platform: Ruby on Rails
  • Database Platform: SQL
  • Electronic Payment Integration: PayPal
    As with the current website, this is the fully integrated electronic payment system for new memberships and renewals
  • Electronic Signature Integration: DocuSign
    This includes fully integrated electronic waivers in the new member and renewal process, and also includes secure storage and retrieval of signed waivers, should they be needed in the future

New Features

  • Online Waivers
  • Online Submission of Pilot Ratings
  • Fewer Manual Processes for Reduced Office Costs
  • Online Recording of Instructor Courses
  • Support for Mobile Devices

A bit of history

After an unfortunate start by the then-Board back in 2009, with a failed delivery of a replacement for the current websites and data management systems, which led to legal action by the then-Board, and the relationship with that developer was permanently severed in 2012. The Board then made the decision to start over:

Under the leadership of Dom Juretic as President, the then Board of Directors initiated an Organizational Renewal of the entire Association, its governance, all of its programs, and its communications. In particular this included updating the Bylaws to be in compliance with the new federal not-for-profit corporation act, reviewing and updating all SOP’s, creation of a Council of Senior Instructors, reviewing and updating pilot ratings, insurance updates, and development of a new e-newsletter; in short, a review of everything that HPAC did. The final piece would be the websites and member management system, since both were dependent on all of the other material.

For the websites, the options were

  • to go with full-time highly qualified professional developers who would be able to deliver over a number of months at a cost of somewhere between $50,000 to $75,000, given the complexity of our member data management system requirements.
  • To go with highly qualified professional developers working in the industry full-time, who would work on our project part-time, and deliver for a total of $24,000 over a much longer period of time. Also all content for the WordPress sites would have to be produced in-house by HPAC.

The Board of the day determined to go with Option 2.

Here is what was found at the beginning of the project:

The current front-end websites would have to be entirely reorganized and mostly rewritten from scratch, given the organizational changes that had taken place, (e.g. overhauled Standard Operating Procedures governing the Association), the changing needs of pilots to retrieve information (e.g. access by mobile devices), new constituencies who seek out the website (e.g. landowners), pruning outdated information from the current website, and reorganizing information to optimize for quick access.

The current back-end membership management system was tightly integrated with the front-end websites, and incorporated website content management functionality. Furthermore, the back-end had been expanded, patched and tweaked over many years and unfortunately no documentation was available that described the database structure or associations between the various tables in the database.

The existing database served us very well for many years; however, the database structure was in need of an update to:

  1. separate the website CMS from the MMS
  2. move to current and supported technologies and
  3. simplify the new MMS as much as possible.

As a result, the entire database had to be reverse-engineered by the developers, and an application created to migrate the data from the old structure to the new one, and significant testing done to ensure no pilot data would be lost – a hugely complex and time-consuming process.

Where are we now?

This has been a 5 year Organizational Renewal project for, long yes, but not unusually long, given the experience of several of our sister organizations in other countries. Many also have paid much much more for the level of web site that HPAC/ACVL will have.

Although a contract was created in May of 2016, the new Developers were not able to start until fall of 2016 to work on the new websites, after all content for the WordPress sites had be newly written by HPAC, and decisions made about the required functionalities for the back end. The developers have therefore been working (part time) for just over 1 year.

The front end WordPress sites are 98% complete, in both English and French, the Association has taken delivery of them and they are on our servers. Pictures are still being changed, small bits of content are still being added, and the links to the MMS application (your member card, join/renew, membership statistics, pilot list), will be added when the MMS is complete and online.

The MMS application is 75% complete and is also on our servers and the source code is in our possession. Development and testing are ongoing and we are working towards deployment as quickly as possible.

Both developers are highly experienced professionals working full-time in the industry: One is a senior developer for an international marketing system in Vancouver and the other a senior developer at one of the largest international e-commerce platforms, working out of Toronto.

 The Priority

The highest priority is to get the whole system up and functioning. We will then be able to add additional content to the WordPress sites and expand the functionality in the MMS as needed going forward. Since we are using open platforms for all development, we will have the flexibility to use the same or different developers for future work, depending on our cost/schedule needs.

HAVE A LOOK and please give us feedback at admin@hpac.ca; it is your Association and these are your sites:

Until the MMS is online, the new websites are available at beta.hpac.ca and beta.acvl.ca.

Thank you.

Margit Nance, Executive Director, HPAC
Nick Jones, Vice President, HPAC and Website Project Board of Directors Liaison

Stewart’s Story

Stewart on his rst hang glider high ight, at King Mountain, Québec near Ottawa, Ontario, 30 December 1974 Photo: Barry Meabry

Dear fellow free flyers,

Some of you may have already seen the following article in Cross Country Magazine 178, but “Stewart’s Story” is not to be missed by those who aren’t subscribers to “XC Mag”. We have received permission to repost this article for the HPAC community. It highlights one of Canada’s most recognized and involved pilots, Stewart Midwinter. Stewart is currently HPAC’s records keeper and FAI/CIVL delegate and is often called upon for his meteorological knowledge for events nationally and internationally. He has taken part in and extensively contributed to the sport since the early beginnings though and his passion for it tangibly soars on to this day. Please read the enclosed article and reflect, get awestruck or simply take in, Stewart’s Story!

Read the rest of Stewart’s Story

New Canadian Records Set in 2017

Hang Gliding: Doug Keller 321.6 KM (Distance to a Goal)

Record presented by Bruce Busby, HPAC President, and Stewart Midwinter, HPAC Records Chair
Record presented by Bruce Busby, HPAC President, and Stewart Midwinter, HPAC Records Chair

Paragliding: Alex Raymont 340.65 (Free Distance – up to 3 Turnpoints) and 334.8 KM (Open Distance)

Timely Ratings Submissions

Request to Instructors and pilots: Once ratings have been earned by pilots, they should be submitted and recorded within one month of completion by the pilot. Instructors, please submit your students’ ratings promptly, and pilots, if you do not see your ratings credited to your file on the HPAC/ACVL website, please contact your instructor to ask that they be submitted.

Jasper Park 2-year Trial a Success

The Board of Directors at its 2017 Annual Meeting met with senior officials of Jasper National Park to review the 2015-2017 trial period of our sport in Jasper National Park, the first National Park in Canada to allow it. Jasper Park Visitor Experience personnel Pam Clark and Amber Stewart, as well as Todd Noble, General Manager of Jasper SkyTram, attended. While Jasper Park is producing a formal assessment of the trial period, flying can continue as per the published guidelines (http://www.hpac.ca/pub/?pid=389). Pilots are asked to strictly adhere to the guidelines and post all flights on Leonardo, so that Jasper can be a strong argument for gaining access to other National Parks in the system.

Discussions in Jasper centered around the ongoing need for recording of flights on Leonardo and landing proximities to roads, regarding concern for driver distraction, and other issues. The Board of Directors identified immediate priority parks located in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, as well as the remaining Mountain Parks of Banff, Yoho and Kootenay.

New Instructor Certification and Recertification Program in Development

The Board reviewed the wide variations in quality of instructor certification across the country. A proposal came forward from a Senior Instructor for raising the base-line quality of instructor certification in Canada and it was approved in principle by the Board of Directors. Some components of the new program will include the creation of new instructor categories, an expanded and more intensive initial instructor certification course, formal sanctioning by HPAC/ACVL of instructor courses. A draft of the new program will be ready by end 2017, will be developed in consultation with CSI, and will then go to the Board of Directors for implementation in the 2018 season.

The initial development team includes Jacques Blanchet, Eric Olivier (who is also the liaison with the Board), Claudio Mota and Max Fanderl.

Canadian PG Record Smashed May 20 in Alberta

From Stewart Midwinter, HPAC/ACVL Records Chair

I have received a claim for a new open distance record in paragliding, 334 km by Alex Raymont. 

From a surface tow just after 11 am near the town of Camrose, southeast of Edmonton Alberta, Alex flew 8 hours almost straight south towards the US border, landing after 7 PM in the evening.  His flight of 334.5 kilometres smashes the old record of 227 km by more than 100 km!  (That record was also set by Alex two years ago during the same record encampment week).

The tracklog can be found at: xcontest.org or paraglidingforum.com

Female Canadian record-holder Nicole McLearn was towing for the group at the time, with plans to go after her own record in the remaining days. For more details of Alex’ flight go to: http://www.nicolemclearn.com/2017/05/miles-in-may-camrose-may-20.html

Peter Spear got away an hour later around noon, but also had a very good day, making a 7 hour, 307 km dogleg flight and landing not far from Alex. Tracklog: xcontest.org

A group of paraglider and hang glider pilots are all gathered together in Alberta this week for the “Miles in May” record encampment, taking advantage of the yearly dry weather window between the end of winter and the beginning of the rainy month of June.  As we draw near the summer solstice, pilots on the northern prairies can take advantage of nearly 16 hours of daylight, as the sun does not set until 9:30 PM.

The picture above is a view of the sky south of Calgary (about 100 km west of the flight line), taken by pilot Glenn White around noon on the same day. Landing fields everywhere, and retrieve roads spaced every 1 mile apart as far as the eye can see.

The PG record is now a mere 60 k short of the Canadian HG record of 395 k held by Ross Hunter.

Ratings Extravaganza

Pilots across the country, who are unrated or student (Beginner) rated, are now upgrading their ratings to a minimum P2 or H2 rating in large numbers. In 2016, fully 15% of our pilot members were unrated. A number of those were on track to complete their ratings in 2017. Others were experienced pilots who have been flying since before there were ratings and others had started their training but never completed it. The new requirements recommended by the Council of Senior Instructors and endorsed by the Board of Directors in 2016 are now in effect with unrated and Beginner pilots being required to get an instructor’s signature on their application in order to be able to renew their membership and to make a plan to upgrade.

Similar to other branches of aviation, the objective is to be able to demonstrate that HG and PG pilots in Canada are trained pilots. This is important risk management for the landowners of our sites and for our insurer as well as a signal to Transport Canada and the general public about the serious and professional conduct and self-governance of our sport. Thank you to pilots and instructors for their cooperation in the collective upgrading of our membership to rated status.

New Board Member for BC: Nicole McLearn

The Board of Directors welcomed the new Director for BC to the table. Nicole McLearn is a pilot well known as a frequent member on Canada’s Team to international competitions, past chair of the Competition Committee, and a long history of service to the West Coast Soaring Club and the Grouse Mountain Flying Team, to name just two. The Board thanked outgoing BC Director Scott Watwood for his service.

Competitions, XC and Minimum Ratings

Currently there does not exist a minimum rating requirement for participating in any HPAC/ACVL sanctioned competitions that are by definition cross-country task events nor to claim Canadian Records through the XContest.

At its annual meeting, the Board of Directors considered a proposal from a Senior Instructor that the requirements for flying XC in HPAC/ACVL sanctioned competitions or to claim records in the XContest, be brought in line with the minimum P3 and H3 rating requirements for flying XC in SOP 410 Pilot Ratings .

The Board approved the proposal, which will not kick in until the 2018 competition season, to allow pilots planning on participating in 2018 sanctioned competitions to upgrade to a minimum P3 or H3.