The organizer of Japan International Birdman Rally (JIBR) 2021 announced entrants and their flight orders on each category, which is the distance of gliders and the distance of human-powered propeller aircrafts. 23 entrants will fly away in the competition. They are 12 gliders, and 11 distance of HPAs. The number of entrants was reduced to about two thirds from 32 entrants in the previous JIBR 2019. It may be caused by reducing applicant due to COVID-19 or prevention of Infection of COVID-19. Entry lists of each category are shown in following. Some names in the lists are forcibly interpreted by author. Each name of pilot is linked to each short interview video as JIBR official commercial video on YouTube.
The Birdman House Iga (BHI), which the champion team of human-powered aircraft category of Japan International Birdman Rally (JIBR) 2019 has shared an onboard view of a long human-powered flight such as historical DAEDALUS’s and Gossamer Albatross’s flights again. This had been taken by an onboard camera during 60 km flight over triangle course in 2019 summer. This flight is the longest flight in Japan as far as anyone knows as of now. Unfortunately, the longest flight is unofficial record, because JIBR rules do not comply to FAI rules. However, in simple comparison of distance, It is longer flight than Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI; World Air Sports Federation) class I-C distance around a closed circuit record, i.e. 58.66 km with Michelob Light Eagle by the MIT DAEDALUS team. Additionally, this video may be the longest human-powered flight video caught on an onboard camera, superseding the previous 40 km onboard video by BHI. This camera view is also indistinct caused by a distorted mirror image by a heat rejection film applied on the windscreen. Most of voice is small and unclear, so it is difficult to listen that. On the video, BHI added some information, which are GPS log of the flight path, heading angle, temperature, altitude, heart rate, and ground speed. Those information must help our understanding the flight.
For well understanding the flight, a schematic illustration of the flight path is shown above. You should pay attention to that this figure is inexact. However, it should help us to understanding the 60 km flight.
Japan International Birdman Rally (JIBR) 2021 must has been taken place with no spectator on 31 July and 1 August as reported by some posts in SNSs. This no spectator condition had been come true by an announcement in the JIBR official website on 26 July by Yomiuri telecasting corporation, which is the organizer of JIBR. The announcement also informed that, for prevention of COVID-19, minimum staffs worked for the competitions. On the other hand, the announcement have not include its event date and participants have also kept silence about it. However, the organizer was not able to blot out completely the venue due to its huge size. Therefore, although the organizer had not announced the event dates, many passersby who may not know a secret of the event date were able to saw the event and some of them posted what they saw on SNSs. According to those posts, the glider category would have been taken place on the first day and the human-powered airplane category on the second day. Most of those posts are snapshots of the event and do not include information of results of the competition. We should wait broadcasting of TV program in order to know the results of JIBR 2021 as well as usual.
— 鳥人間コンテスト2021【9月2日(木)よる7時OA #ytv】 (@ytvBirdman) August 2, 2021
A post by the official twitter account of Japan International Birdman Rally.
On 2 August, the official twitter account of JIBR announced that a TV show recording was conducted with much understanding and cooperation of participants and other stakeholders, especially neighborhood people living in Hikone city where is host city of JIBR. According to the post, TV program of the JIBR 2021 will be broadcasted on 2 September.
Japanese HPA 
