Since 2019, we have two competition systems.
The Dutch, German and Belgian pilots group together and follow the Tricks Party North system (TPN)
They do fly the imposed tricks in the morning and the ballets in the afternoon.
The rest of the world flies as stated the classic system. They don't do the imposed tricks anymore.
A Tricksparty competition goes like this:
- Each year, a board nominates 10 tricks as "Imposed Tricks"
- A pilot has to sign in for a competition by filling out and submit a ballet list.
- The first part of a competition day is always the "Imposed Tricks"
- Then we take a small break :-)
- Then we do the ballets
- Celebration time!
People are reworking the set of rules for a competition. As soon as that is ready, we will put it here :-)
More in detail:
When a new season starts, an International board publishes a list of 10 tricks. These are the imposed tricks for that year.
A competition starts with a judges meeting where they choose the 4 imposed tricks for that competition, depending on the wind conditions.
Then a pilots briefing is held where the imposed tricks are announced and pilots can ask about those. Practical things like where the pilots will go IN and OUT of the competition field are explained and showed.
Then the real thing starts with the imposed tricks.
Each pilot has two minutes to perform these 4 tricks in a set order. He has two attempts per trick, if he wants to.
The judges (3) gives points from 1 (for a failed attempt) up to 10 (the most perfect ever!).
If the pilots wants a second attempt, the judges still give from 1 to 10, but in the result only 80% is is calculated into the final score.
The highest value from both attempts is taking into the final score.
So if a first attempt is worth 6 points and the second attempt 8, then 6.4 points are given for this trick.
When a first attempt is 6 points and the second attempt 7, then 6 is the highest score because 80% from 7 is 5.6
When all the pilots have done the imposed tricks, it's time for the organizer to calculate the results and everyone can enjoy a short break.
After the results are announced, the pilots take turns in performing their ballet. This is done to music they may choose for themselves (re-mixes are allowed).
Individual pilots get 3 minutes, pairs and teams have 4 minutes.
The competitors have signed into the competition with two lists of 9 tricks (well, minimum 6), where each trick can be used twice in a list.
When their turn comes up, they can fly-in to get a 'feel' of the wind conditions. Then they choose if they will fly list A or B.
They are also allowed to change up to two tricks from their list. This is communicated with the Field Director, who in turn communicates all this to the judges.
Then it's showtime! The music starts and the pilot flies his 9 tricks in order, with added tricks, lines, corners, stops and whatever he likes.
Judging is done in two ways: the judges take each of the 9 tricks and give the performance a score in one of four categories: Bad, Average, Good or Excellent.
The final score for each trick depends on what group of difficulty a tricks falls (all the tricks are listed in groups, from "easy" to "hard".
Also a score is given for the Artistic value of the ballet, if it is flown well in sync with the music and pleasing to the eye.
Lastly, the Technical component of the ballet is scored, depending on the technical skill of the pilot, the grade of difficulty of the ballet as a whole.
Then it's up to the organizer to run all those scores through a program to calculate the final result.
The ranking for that competition is announced and the top 3 are gathered on the stage. After that, we do like to take a picture of all the pilots and judges, with a few kites added.
And in the end, everyone had a party! A Tricksparty!
To demonstrate what things can look like, here we have the results of the imposed tricks round from a Dutch competition and the final result of that same competition:
