$25.00 – $2,500.00
Donation for the FAI World Championship event (Refundable if the event doesn’t take place)
Please select your donation from the drop-down menu and thank you in advance for helping this event happen!
Description
Donation for the FAI World Championship event (Refundable if the event doesn’t take place)
Our Secretary, Wes Minear posted a request on behalf of IRCHA to help fund the World Championship. The concern with this kind of requests is that we believe if people knew why it was being done, a lot of people would pitch in so here’s an update and a little bit of history.
First one clarification. The Radio Control Helicopter World Championship is not an IRCHA event, it’s in fact an FAI event. IRCHA is just the host of the event. Therefore, the rules of the event are predetermined and in control of the FAI and not in control of IRCHA. That is an important distinction because it matters when you need to understand that IRCHA has to follow both those rules and the rules of the AMA which controls the event Venue (AMA Headquarters).
As some of you recall Auggie went to Germany for the ROTOR Live event. What you may not know is that he setup a meeting and met with the FAI’s F3 RC Helicopter Sub-Committee Chair because we had a concern about the lack of competitors that had been signed up so far.
He told Auggie that he had personally spoken to most national RC-Helicopter organizations and that the problem was that most countries don’t have the funds to cover the expenses to go to the world Championship. Some of them are blaming it on post-pandemic economic problems and need to recover from it. Others simply can’t because manufacturers that used to cover their trip expenses are no longer in a position to cover the expenses because the RC Heli market had shrunk, and they simply don’t have the budget for those expenses.
Some of the FAI and F3N pilots Auggie spoke with told him that their sponsors who usually paid for those trips can’t do it right now.
Now why does the fact that IRCHA has no control over the rules matter? Because IRCHA has no way to make important changes to the way the WC is run unless FAI decides it’s allowed.
What are the consequences of this? Let us give you a few:
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IRCHA, until a week ago without the signing up of an 8th country which just a few days ago, couldn’t hold an event because there were less than 8 countries signed up. The rules don’t allow for the event to take place without this number of countries registered to compete. That means you can’t ask for money from sponsors if you’re not sure if you will have an event or not.
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The rules say that the 10 Judge’s and the 2 Jury member’s airplane tickets from all over the world as well as their car rental, hotels and meals, need to be paid with the money from the Championship Signup fees. Just think about the cost of paying for airplane tickets for Judges from places like Japan or some other Asian countries and the hotel and meals for 12 people for 10 days!. FAI probably has this rule to guarantee fairness in the judging but nevertheless it’s very expensive.
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The Awards, Trophies, etc. also need to be covered with monies from the signups and sponsors.
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In previous World Championships workers were also paid.
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Many other things like port-a-potties, trash collection and all kind of ancillary expenses need to be covered.
Right before the 30th of this last month we had 28 pilots signed. Doing a calculation of the break-even point of the event at bare-bone everything, the event needed 70 pilots total so that their fees would cover the expenses minus the workers who was decided would have to rely on volunteers and this including a significant money contribution from IRCHA.
With these numbers IRCHA’s treasurer and event CD as a representative of the hosting organization, told the FAI and AMA in a meeting on Monday the 1st. of this month that the event could not be done based on the current numbers. The AMA asked FAI to extend the time so that IRCHA, who all of a sudden, had the ability to have 8 countries, had some time to get the sponsors for the event.
Now instead of going the easy way and say no, IRCHA won’t hold the event, what was proposed was to somehow ask the FAI to lower the cost by modifying the rules, that are out of the control of IRCHA, to make the event possible. A couple of days ago, FAI came back and allowed the competition to be done with two rounds per day instead of only one so that is likely to make the event half as long and that has an impact on the costs of lodging, car rental and meals for the 12 people as well as the ancillary expenses like half the days for port-a-potties, trash, etc.
This lowered the additional money needed from about $50K which was impossible to a more manageable $18K-$20K so IRCHA as the host decided to try to be fair to all the people that worked hard throughout the year practicing to compete and try to make the event happen.
There is an additional consequence to this change, since the event will take roughly half the time then the expense for the pilots that couldn’t make it gets significantly reduced so they might now be able to come!
Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with the IRCHA Jamboree. Not only the IRCHA Jamboree is happening but IRCHA is contributing $5K of its own funds to help the WC happen.
Now the part where we as hobbyists, you and I need to be empathic about; There’s a lot of people that has practiced for this competition for a whole year and their dreams to compete will be crushed if it doesn’t happen. Some sponsors have already replied that they will contribute, and we are trying to make sure the event happens so all that work, and sweat doesn’t go to waste.
If the event doesn’t happen your contributions will be refunded but hopefully we can pull this off and help FAI and the pilots who have worked and dreamed to compete an opportunity to shine.
Let’s see if we can make this happen 😊✊
Additional information
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