wrote in message
oups.com...
KC -- why are the fees so much higher? Do they have an expense to cover
that we don't?

~tuno

Not sure 2NO. From what I can gather so far they have opted to pay a single
person to organize and set up most of their contests. The pilots I spoke
with did not have knowledge of any budget or expense sheets for any prior
contests being published.

It would be nice to not have to worry about organizing all of our contests
and if the money were available certainly would be worth paying someone to
travel the US each year to do that. On the other hand it would appear at
least theoretically to be more expensive that relying upon local volunteer
help at each site. As best as I can gather the pilots and USHGA have opted
to do the former. It just seems to me that some pilots are in hang gliding
vs. sailplanes (at least part of the reasons) due to limited funds and that
these types of entry fees are certainly keeping the numbers of contestants
down.

I don't wish to imply that someone is embezzling funds.....the organizers
may in fact be making minimum wage and the cash may be spent on many other
things (e.g. trophies, meals, housing tow pilots, insurance, etc). It is a
bunch of money though......I'm told that there are around 60 contestants per
contest so that's $45,000 USD per contest in entry fees.

My interest is that I've got a close friend that competes. They don't think
that the fees are high but I'm not sure that many of them know what we pay
in our sport. I'm probably just worrying too much about someone elses
business as usual.

Casey