Competition News

On the final day of the 2026 Disentis Open we experienced two technical problems:

1. The correct approach to Elevated Goal was not indicated properly to all pilots, leading to some of them underflying goal or even not reaching it.
2. The ranking used for the prize giving ceremony was incorrect.

This is to show the results of the analysis of those two topics, and what measures will be taken to avoid them in the future.

1. Elevated Goal
Instruments and apps used to navigate during paragliding races fall in two broad categories:

1. Those that have a built-in model of the terrain altitude, and can therefore give altitude above ground (AGL) besides the altitude above mean sea level (AMSL)
2. Those that do not have such a model, and can only give AMSL

In addition, since Elevated Goal was only introduced with the May 2026 update of Section 7F of the FAI Sporting Code, not all instruments and apps support Elevated Goal yet. If they do, they can receive all the required information from the task file (thanks to Jérôme Kägi, this was introduced in the XCTask file format a few months ago). If they don't, a task file with an Elevated Goal (instead of the classic "ESS then goal") could be refused by some. And even if it is accepted, pilots will need to be active themselves to make sure their app or instrument guides them to goal at the required altitude.

To cover this all automatically, we would need to publish the task in several different ways. This increases the risk of mistakes, because each pilot would have to know exactly which QR code or task code to use for which instrument or app. So in an attempt to make things easy for pilots, we published only a single file, which did not use the Elevated Goal feature (and would therefore be understood by all instruments and apps), but which gave the goal waypoint 300 m above the actual altitude of the goal field.

This worked fine for all the apps and instruments of the second category, the ones only using AMSL. It also worked for some that do use AGL (e.g. SeeYou Navigator). It did not work well with the official version of XCTrack: XCTrack always guides you such that you reach classic goal cylinders at ground level, regardless of what the goal waypoint's altitude is. As a result, those who aimed for an arrival altitude of 0 m, as indicated by XCTrack's "Altitude over goal" indicator (thinking that was 300 m above goal), arrived at the goal cylinder at roughly waypoint altitude. Marco Vergari and I had discovered this before the Disentis Open, and I should have made this particular point much much clearer when we discussed the task and Elevated Goal. In the end most of you reached goal quite high anyway, the two pilots who were affected (Raphael Oerer and Stefan Bahn) accepted the outcome.

Consequences
As had been suggested by a few of you, from now on, when we set a task with Elevated Goal, we will publish the task as such: Goal waypoint altitude is the actual altitude, and the task file contains the information that this is an Elevated Goal task, along with the used elevation. If necessary, it will be up to you to adjust the task on your instruments to make sure that you arrive at the correct altitude. As an example, here is the last task of the Disentis Open, given with Elevated Goal: https://tools.xcontest.org/xctsk/load?taskCode=e1d8cda1073edcca - the code is "nepo". Try this out, especially with instruments and apps without Elevated Goal support, to see if it is accepted (and then maybe requires adjustment) or if you need to plan to enter such tasks manually. This all will go away as more and more apps and instruments are updated to include Elevated Goal.

Support for Elevated Goal
To my knowledge, as of now, the following support Elevated Goal:

• SkyTrackPro: Full support for Elevated Goal
• XCTrack:
  • the official version accepts Elevated Goal tasks, but you have to manually ensure that you arrive high enough: If the landing is in flat terrain, you can use "Altitude over goal" and aim for the 300 m elevation. If the goal is on a slope, it's better to use "Next TP Height", configure its "Shown value" as "AMSL", and remember your target altitude (goal altitude plus 300 m elevation).
  • XCTrack has full support for Elevated Goal since June 2nd in their beta versions, but they have not yet made an official release that includes it (https://xctrack.org/Change_Log.html).
• SeeYou Navigator: Accepts the task information, but ignores the Elevated Goal information. You can set the "Finish altitude" in AMSL (goal altitude plus 300 m elevation), which results in what we want.

2. Final ranking mixup
After the prize giving, we discovered that the results used for the four podiums had been created without FTV. Once FTV was applied, the podium changed in two of the four categories. What had happened?

• When Katherina set up the comptition in our scoring software, she applied the usual template for Swiss competitions, with all the categories predefined. I forgot to mention to her that unlike in our weekend competitions - which we run without discards - this one would use FTV with 25%.
• After Katherina published the competition results for task 2, pilots remarked that no FTV was used. Katherina was unavailable, so I made the change in the competition settings, published the results, and saved the file.
• Katherina had the competition file still open on her computer, without my changes, and continued working on that for task 3. So when she created the results after 3 tasks, they were without FTV again.
• I noticed that a few minutes before the prize giving, and rushed to correct it again. I thought I deleted the result files without FTV, but must have picked the new ones with FTV.
• To copy the podium pilots' names to my notebook, I opened the latest files, without looking at the actual numbers - but these were the ones without FTV from before.
• Only after the prize giving, when Fred Monnet asked for some details, did I notice that those latest files did not include discards.
• When I recreated them with FTV, we saw changes in two categories:
  • In the Junior category, Nic Jacomet and Thierry Stoll switch first and second place
  • In the Overall category, Davide Licini moves to second, third is Simon Steiner, and Bruno Liard goes to fourth place

Consequences:

• Internally at Volirium, we will now start each session by closing FS if it is still open, and loading the latest version of the competition file.
• Competition results will always be verified by at least one, ideally two additional people before the prize giving. (We want to maintain the element of surprise and therefore prefer not to publish them to everybody up front.)
• Volirium will cover the registration fee for Bruno's and Thierry's next participation in the Disentis Open.
• Volirium will not charge the organizer for the scoring of task 3 of the Disentis Open.