The National Eligibility List (NEL) is an annual ranking of eligible Balloon Federation of America (BFA) and its Hot Air Competition Division (HACD) members. This ranking converts proportional event results to positional NEL results in order to more accurately compare task results from events of varying sizes. 

The NEL’s primary use is to determine non-automatic qualification into the following year’s National Championships.

Any use of the NEL towards the International Eligibility List (IEL) would be secondary and only after all applicable completed National Championship finishes are exhausted (even if one National Championship).

For an example of how scores are calculated check out this post on the HACD site, https://bfa.net/index.php/nel-example.