On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 3:43:03 PM UTC-4, gotovkotzepkoi wrote:
"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."

Paul hits the nail right on the head. Sailplanes are perceived as an old
man's game. Soaring Magazine is about as sexy as Popular Mechanics. No,
I take that back, Popular Mechanics is sexier than Soaring Magazine. One
small example: the Final Glide section. Ok, it's sad when people die but
Jesus, get it out of the magazine. It's like people who meet at the
mailbox at the retirement community where the first topic is: who died
last night? And let's take the upcoming film "Cloudbase". It's likely to
be the first really inspirational soaring film to come out of the US.
But who is depicted in the film? Old people. That simply reinforces the
opinion that many HG and PGing people have. If you want to motivate
young people from the HG and PG community then try something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKBk1Bmsm8M
..all young people here.




--
gotovkotzepkoi

I guess when i started flying over 40 years ago I wasn't paying so much attention to what age everyone was. I was more interested in flying. Then i switched to sailplanes a few years ago. You sure are worried about your image.. My club has people of all ages and you would be surprised that none of us wear bibs unless we are eating a steamed Lobster!