On Thursday, March 27, 2014 6:51:58 PM UTC-6, wrote:
Our experience in central Indiana is similar to Herb's.



Following a 3 day exhibit at an event at the AMA headquarters a couple of years ago, we ended up with 4 people coming to Alexandria to fly a glider.



A FAST flight was given away in a drawing and the winner did not come to the airport for his free flight.



In reverse, it seems that many full scale glider pilots break out their RC models after a day of flying or on no fly days at contests.



What can be done to get the RC folks coming to the gliderports?



We have had similar experiences with full scale airplane pilots at airshows. There seems to be a lot of interest in the glider on display, but little or no traffic is generated to the gliderport for a follow up flight.

Perhaps it's the approach and follow-up. The R12/CA groups offered up to 17 rides to those 135 signing up for the glider flight drawing at AMA Expo in Ontario, CA. Only 77 confirmed their interest in the follow-up e-mail, so the drawing was scaled back to 9 flights. About five sought rides apart from the drawing. One club got 10-12 new members and a few were ready to join at the Expo. The Condor experience was very popular with youth. I've been advised that Southern California Soaring Academy soloed 26 students last year and has a third K-21 on order as a result of the demand.

In past years, Orange County Soaring Association did the flight drawing and collected e-mails. Larry Tuohino would then blast these e-mails with the offer of the glider pilot ground school on six Saturdays for a nominal fee, $25 or $50. Then they would ask if the ground school people would like to take a flight. Each e-mail blast would bring in 4-6 people from the list of collected e-mails. Your demonstrated interest and enthusiasm may just be contagious to others.

A few years back, the Cleveland Soaring Society had to move due to loss of their private strip. In moving, they lost enough marginal members that they were in danger of not having enough funds for annuals and insurance. Starting with 17, the waved the soaring flag, committed to being friendly and engaging to potential members and used the SSA Introductory Membership (3-month, one-time good deal, available with or without the FAST package) and a local intro membership in their chapter to attract potential members. All but two that took this intro membership opportunity transitioned into full members and they ended with season with 35. At the end of the following season, they had grown to 45, which is about the average size of an SSA chapter. They too have been through the challenges of a training accident and loss of their L-13's, but currently have 37 members at the start of the season. I hope they will have information and representation in Toledo also and that those in the booth will collect and distribute contact information on those indicating interest to chapters and commercial operations that can follow-up.

Frank Whiteley