Ian Cant wrote:
We seem to agree that the declaration is made when
a task is selected, not when it is defined. [This
is not quite consistent with Marc's opinion that a
paper declaration may prevail if it is written and
signed after the auto-declared electronic task was
loaded into the FR. But who says rules have to be
consistent ?]

I examined some IGC files from a Volkslogger I had a few years back, and
indeed, the date/time of declaration appears to be either that at which
the unit was turned on or at takeoff (it's hard to tell which, exactly).
If true, this is incorrect behavior with the respect to the
requirements laid out in the IGC technical specifications, and will be
looked into further. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. We will
also look into the Colibri declaration behavior.

Separately, Marc asserts that the OO must be aware
of the paper declaration, since he signed it. What
if it was signed in advance by a different OO from
the one who supervises the FR download ?

I think it is clear that the intent of the Sporting Code is that there
be only one OO for a given flight performance. Of course you can game
the system by having multiple OOs who are unaware of each other, but
that falls in the general category of cheating.

My own opinion, for what it's worth but what I'll fly
by, is that if a FR is aboard and has auto-declared
a task, that was my last and only declaration for that
flight.

This would be true, but it would not happen if your flight recorder was
behaving as specified by the IGC. The 302 I use now, and the GPS-NAV I
had in the past, do not auto-declare tasks (however, the GPS-NAV does
have another known problem with declarations). If there are flight
recorders which are auto-declaring tasks, they need to be fixed...

Marc