I think XC is deeply embedded in the club culture at London Gliding Club (UK) with most of the active instructors also being active XC pilots, and new pilots positively encouraged to move on towards XC via Silver after solo and bronze. I just checked and found that 57 members have posted XC flights on the BGA ladder so far this year (a UK specific online ladder used by most club members in preference to OLC). Undoubtedly there are a few more members than this who fly XC, and I would guess that about 25% of our 270 club members do so.

We run one or two 9 day XC courses a year, comprising lectures, 2 seat opportunities, lead and follow and other similar activities. Our CFI does daily weather briefs, and XC task setting and weather briefing on suitable XC days. The club has a Duo - sadly under-utilised much of the time, perhaps mainly because most of the instructors with suitable experience and ability to train XC prefer to fly their own gliders. However, there are several privately owned high performance 2 seaters in which the owners regularly offer XC flights to the less experienced, and an instructor is rostered to instruct XC in the Duo on one day a week. During our local annual competition instructors take less experienced members XC in the Duo and a K21.

All this makes one wonder why 75% of members don't fly XC. One significant factor is the age profile of the membership. Some older members have given up XC, and many of those who have started at retirement age never take it up. But this is of course in addition to the factors already talked about in this thread - fear of landing out, lack of retrieve crews etc. (During our course weeks, pilots do not have to make individual retrieve arrangements, and fellow club members are always willing to come and get a pilot in a field).

On Sunday, 20 July 2014 19:01:53 UTC+1, John Carlyle wrote:
MB, thank you for branching off a comment of mine in the contest improvement thread and starting this one! I'm sorry to be late to the discussion - a trip made posting before now impossible, though.



The comments in this thread are quite good, quite wide ranging, and quite inspiring. But most are aimed at a much higher level than what I consider to be the fundamental problem: how to get glider pilots to even consider trying XC? Broadly speaking, only about 10% of glider pilots in US clubs fly XC. Contest participation is even smaller, perhaps about 3%. These are not good numbers! What can we do?



MB's commendable efforts over about 10 years basically doubled his club's size member-wise, tripled his club's XC pilot contingent, and built a capable XC fleet for non-glider owners to take XC. I think one of the keys to this growth is his comment that several club officers "slowly steered the direction of the club to embrace and allow XC flight", ie, they changed the club culture. This may be the prime ingredient towards generating XC pilots.



For example, my club has (in addition to four G103 training ships) a Duo, an ASW-19, and a G102. Club rules permit using Duo and the single seaters for XC. Here are their 5 year utilization rates in hours (flights):



2014 2013 2012 2011 2010

Duo 18(11) 27(29) 72(94) 80(67) 89(101)

19 25(24) 13(9) 25(19) 51(43) 59(48)

102 22(27) 66(65) 44(59) 5(10) 51(44)



What you cannot see in the numbers is that most of these are local flights, not XC flights. Add in the fact that for 2010 through 2013 only 9 pilots each year (out of about 120 club members) flew XC (determined by their flights appearing on the OLC, on the local Governor's Cup contest, or on a contest score sheet). Two further interesting facts are that 90% of these 9 XC pilots flew ASEL before flying gliders XC, 80% of them own their own glider, and only 20% of them learned to fly gliders at my club. In other words, we've had very little club generation of XC pilots.



Morgan mentioned his frustration is "trying to motivate and introduce XC to people". He's not alone. Like him, we use non-CFIG pilots to introduce people to XC. Also like him, we've given introductory XC flights a number of people. This year we're glad that we've enticed 3 new pilots to fly XC, but these folks bought their own gliders and they were not among our XC introductory flight participants!



Chris Fleming mentioned that he believes the problem in the US might be due to focusing on "low-cost basic training" and ignoring or discouraging "the progression to XC soaring". Perhaps so, my club's experience certainly bears this out. However, Martin Gregorie said that in his UK club "more members go XC than don't". Is the experience at other UK clubs similar to that at Martin's club? I have anecdotal evidence that in several Dutch and German glider clubs only about 10% of their members soar XC, similar to the US. What is the general European glider experience?



Does generating XC pilots come down to club culture?



-John, Q3