On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 8:06:02 AM UTC-7, AS wrote:
On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax
That is a great summary - put a smile on my face; particularly #4 under combatting the decline! ;-)
But on a more serious side: Hobbs - we have a problem!
The first point to combat the decline is understanding the reason why soaring is in decline.
One approach - at least for the US - could be this:
There is a section in the SSA magazine called 'Milestones', where every month, clubs and commercial operations proudly present their members who soloed or obtained advanced ratings, etc.
Someone at the SSA could go back five, seven or even ten years and try to track down these individuals to see if they are still active, i.e. look at the SSA membership roster.
If they still are -- case closed.
If not -- try to find out why:
- Death (not too far fetched, looking at some of the pictures)?
- Too expensive?
- Lost interest - if so, why?
- Wife was opposed to it?
- Family happened?
- Bought a house? (Much easier and more comfortable to live in one of those than in a glider of equal value!)
- Soloed as youth member and moved out of the area for college/job etc. and couldn't find another club nearby?
- Other?

Uli
'AS'
Uli,

The AOPA study on student pilots failing to complete of several years ago was telling, mostly lack of instructor/student bonding. Clearly everyone started training with a goal. I did look at recipients of soaring flight scholarships and found that easily 80% were still in aviation, many in soaring, and some had ATPs. I tried to get access to other soaring scholarship recipients (non-SSA) and got a few which were included in the results, but this needs to be revisited with other groups giving soaring opportunities. Bob Wander spoke at an SSA Convention Focus on Clubs Track a few years ago and emphasized the need for instructor/student bonding and the need, if not bonding properly, to help the student find an instructor they could bond with. I guess this speaks to the need under the FAA system of a student working with a single instructor, rather than a rotating pool, to make progress and to succeed. I felt a bit different in the UK where all gliding instructors received centralized training and used a national syllabus, that progress wasn't dependent on flying with the same instructor regularly. However, my observation and impression of US training is that it seems to work best if the student regularly trains with the same CFI-G, which doesn't work with rotating instructor du jour scheduling. Perhaps someone disagrees. I'm not an instructor. What seems to work is what I call the 'dance ticket method', that is, an instructor arranges time, glider, and student, and then make best use of a two-hour training window. This seems to keep the student on track and is the same scheduling method my wife did as a driving instructor for 22 years. Do the same and arrange for a tow pilot if not a scheduled flying day to do finishing work when nearing the check ride. Does this fit with the way a club operates or has 'always done things'? Maybe, maybe not. The instructor then knows he has a student or two or three on any given day. Works best if the instructor is getting compensated and taking the time to 'push' the student. Leaving it up to the student to 'show up' is surely less effective. Need to show interest in the student and their progress.

A few years ago, the FAA quit expiring student pilot licenses. A recent pull of the FAA Ratings database (does not include those who've opted for privacy) includes the following student pilots:
83,191 with expired medicals 2012-2021.
16,804 with no medical dates nor expiries.
6,389 who have medical dates between 022012-082016 but no expiry dates.

There's no filter to know how many were glider students. But I would hate to think 16,804 reflects that. Maybe many are student drone pilot pilots that haven't completed their certification yet so are still listed as student pilots and there are 96,155 remote pilots in the FAA registry.

Anyone want to explore further?

Frank Whiteley