I came to sailplanes after 275 hours of paragliding, which I still love. The hook for me was the fact that in the New York area, it was much easier to score airtime in a glider than in a paraglider. I have thought about this issue of "recruiting" PG and HG pilots for years. One thought is to arrange to "trade a page" in Soaring and the USHPA magazines: each issue could host a page written by a pilot of the other discipline, in order to shed some light on the respective sports, and gain access to each other's membership.

I think the big barrier is the perceived cost of learning to soar / getting the Private Pilot Glider ticket / owning a sailplane. I once sat on the launch at Ellenville not flying, waiting hour after hour for the wind to sit down, and watched sailplanes soaring the ridge over our heads. When I asked my fellow PG / HG pilots why we weren't doing that, the answer was "Sailplanes are a rich man's game." Give me a page in "Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine" to do a cost per hour comparison and I can clear that up. But that's a message we need time to communicate repeatedly.

Another barrier is lack of "hipness." Take a look at the USHPA magazine and you'll see what I mean -- it makes Soaring Magazine look like a poorly designed high school newspaper, or some geriatric version of that. Soaring Mag does not make soaring look "sexy," I'm sad to say. We need to hire a young, hip designer and a young, hip editor and let them have their way with our rag.

Lots of good ideas in this thread. I, for one, would be happy to "mentor" PG pilots into our little sport. A lot of these guys and gals are already really excellent soaring pilots who understand the air and how to soar in a truly low-performance (8:1 L/D) aircraft. Give them a good taste of 35:1, a two hour XC flight in the ASK 21, a $15,000 first-generation glass ship and a $30 tow and you will have more members of the SSA...at least a few more.....