Did you know that you can press a button on your Flight Recorder and it will log the fact that you pressed it? The feature is called "Pilot Event Marker," and it has been around since the very beginning of Flight Recorders (we put it in mostly to test the recorders as they were being developed).
The International Gliding Commission (IGC) is responsible for all the rules governing World Records, Badges, and international competitions. They meet every year in March to deliberate on the rules, and they publish them in a document called the Sporting Code, Section 3. IGC is just one of the Air Sports Commissions of FAI, the one responsible for the sport of gliding. Section 3 of the Sporting Code is the section that pertains to gliding.
In 1998, IGC decided that the Pilot Event Marker was "essential" for competitions and decided to make it mandatory for manufacturers of Flight Recorders to include this feature. Competition rules were modified to allow the organizers of competitions to require the use of the Event Marker.
To those of us who objected to the requirement on the basis that we should be measuring flying skills, not button-pushing skills, the reply from the IGC rule-writers was, "Don't worry about it, its use in competitions is optional."
It turned out that the Event Marker was never used. Organizers of competitions governed by IGC rules never opted to use it. At its 2007 meeting, the IGC Executive (the "Bureau") decided that the Event Marker "is not needed anymore, and can go out."
Next month, the IGC Plenary will vote on a proposal to get rid of the requirement for manufacturers to provide Event Markers in Flight Recorders. If it passes, one of the reasons flight recorders are expensive will be removed, with an effective date of October 1, 2010. The event marker will be gone - seventeen years after we made the mistake of inventing it.
If you have a suggestion for improving the rules that might benefit your grandchildren, let me know, and I'll get the ball rolling right away.
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