SAFA Skysailor Magazine

28 SKY SAILOR July | August 2022 Paying tribute to outgoing CIVL representative, Hamish Barker After more than 10 years volunteering as an Australian CIVL representative, Hamish Barker is stepping down and handing over the reigns to one of the country’s best hang gliding pilots, Steve Blenkinsop. Hamish first began volunteering after attending his first CIVL Plenary in February 2011 as a delegate. His keen interest in the mathematics and statistics of paragliding and hang gliding competition scoring systems attracted him to the role, as well as being successful in paragliding competitions. He also co-organised the Bright Open para- gliding competition with Benn Kovco. “Being able to combine my interest in parag- liding competition organising and participation, with actually helping to shape the rules and avoid mistakes which had been made in the past, seemed interesting,” Hamish explained. The stated mission of CIVL is to hold safe, fair and satisfying free-flight sporting com- petitions for pilots of member nations with sporting licences. Hamish said that being involved in import- ant discussions and attempting to find solu- tions that benefit pilots was stimulating and interesting and also gave him the opportunity to make new friends. His role involved helping shape some positive rule changes to benefit all pilots. The responsibility of the CIVL delegate is to be aware of current issues and needs in terms of rule changes proposed or seen as benefiting the sport, to communicate with the NAC at the top level and to have good communication with the active sporting pilots. Hamish started his paragliding training in Bright during the winter of 1991, under Brian Webb and Rosie Fletcher’s instruction, and he logged about 500 hours in the first 10 years, which he said seems not so much compared to what is possible with current gliders. “I kept flying the PG Nationals almost every year until I moved to Switzerland at the end of 1998 and spent six years living and working there as a professional engineer, but spending week- ends and some holidays exploring many parts of the Swiss, Austrian, Slovenian and French Alps with my paraglider or touring skis.” He moved back to Australia in 2006, returned to the Aussie PG comp scene, then departed to New Zealand in 2010. He has continued to enjoy paragliding recreationally and in competition. He decided to step down from the role because he no longer lives in Australia and wanted to pass the baton on to someone more aware of the local sports aviation community and current issues. “Part of the reason I’m not flying much is an intense involvement in astronomy. Making small discoveries with a spectrograph hooked to a telescope on stars that have changed their brightness and spectrum in a timescale of only