Some of you might have read that CIVA has approved a major overhaul of the Aresti Catalog and also included a number of completely new figures. Overall they have greatly improved the organization of the catalog, now figures within a family are grouped and numbered in much the same way as they have been in Family Nine figures, example; in Family Nine all slow rolls are 9.1.x.x, two point rolls are 9.2.x.x, four points are 9.4.x.x. and so on. They have also assigned “official” names to these figure groups within their families, i.e. what we have called “Goldfish” are now “3/4 Loops”, “Figure Nines” are now “P Loops” “Teardrops” are now “Vertical 5/8ths Loops” and there are many more name changes as well.

CIVA has also added many new figures like “Horizontal S’s”, “Reversing Whole Loops”, “Reversing “P” Loops” and “Double Humpty Bump”. These new figures are exciting and offer not only fun in flying them but a new challenge in sequence design.

What you can do now for free is download the new 2012 Aresti Catalog families 1 through 8 (family 9 remains unchanged) from the CIVA website without paying the normal fees the Aresti System charges. Here is a link:

http://www.fai.org/civa-news/35335-civa-approves-major-revisions-to-catalogue

All this is well and good plus the new catalog is a whole lot more organized for us who design sequences….but it’s going to take a great deal of work from our Rules Committee, Sequence Committee, BOD and of course working closely with the AMA so that these changes can be added before the RCP deadline of March 15, 2012 so if passed will go in effect 2013.

Even though these catalog number changes (K values remain the same) and new figures really do not require much in terms of judging criteria change, the problem is that all or most of the graphic illustrations for each of the judging rules along with text within those rules will refer to the wrong catalog numbers. This is going a major undertaking for the Rules Committee and as well to the Sequence Committee as not only will the Red Book change so will all of the Unknown Catalogs.

So what does this all mean for the 2012 season? It’s all being discussed among the BOD, IRC, and the ISC, even though I’m personally excited about these new figures, my best guess at this time is that we will continue to use the 2011 Catalog until we can make everything straight and inline with our rule book. This is the first time a major overhaul of the Aresti Catalog has taken place in decades…so this is new territory for not only us in IMAC but also those in CIVA and the IAC.

Tom Wheeler
IMAC Sequence Committee Chairman