At 01:25 01 February 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:

BTW: At the moment the entire German 15m-class national team consists
of pilots of my club
I'm pretty content with the situation.

Am I safe to assume that all of these guys have been flying their own
gliders rather than club equipment?

Maybe one cause for that is that we have a very good social life (and
an own club house) - on weekends there's always an afternoon tea,
dinner and lunch, lots of wifes and children around. Many good causes
to land and have a coffee and some self-made cake...
I guess this is what makes many German clubs different from US clubs:
The social life often plays a part that is nearly as important as the
flying.

There are *some* clubs in the US that make the social aspects an
attractive part of the activity. At Blairstown, we do OK - on any decent
day you will find anywhere from four to a dozen folks hanging around the
field after the flying is over, drinking beer and BSing about what great
pilots we all are. Caesar Creek, Texas, Chillhowee, and many others have
very nice facilities. There seems to be some critical number that has to
be reached before this sort of thing can happen. Age also has something
to do with it. Our little group in Somerset has an average age probably
about half of what it is in Blairstown. The younger folks have families,
responsibilities, and even actual social lives beyond the airport, so they
are less inclined to stick around when flying ends.

Jim Beckman