On Sunday, January 31, 2016 at 12:01:30 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
To all of you who are interested in contests but have not yet flown one: Just Show Up! Every sports class regionals is designed as an entry level affair. Go to the practice day, explain that it's your first contest, and you'll get all the help you need. Yes, it would help to read the rules appendix and guide to competition, and have a vague idea of what the task types, start and finish procedures are. But even so, you'll get a "mentor" who can help explain everything to you. There will be several other first-timers. The camps, clinics and so forth are even better, but they are really not necessary before you go to a sports regionals. Just Show Up!

John Cochrane BB

I will add, it seem's (to me) whenever the SSA/Soaring magazine has done a pole (about Soaring content), the majority of SSA members complain about the level of reporting of contest's/contest reporting/contest (basically too much) info.

So, for some SSA members (mostly here on RAS) that seem like there is a dearth of contest info (in any form), maybe some of it the SSA is responding to those that make the most noise?
Not saying good or bad, just saying I've been around long enough to have seen multiple SSA/Soaring poles over ~30+ years.

As I've stated before, I started by crewing for much better pilots, then did "Little guys meets" in the NE US, followed by actual contest's.
Yes, I had "on field mentors" along the way as well. Maybe I'm in the 0.1% of the group in the US.


As a XC/contest pilot/CFIG, I've never "blown someone off" that had XC/contest questions.