On 4/8/2016 2:06 PM, wrote:
On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 12:23:01 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
I see that our under-20 pilots find great pleasure in flying on weak days
for an hour. That tells me that I'm on the right track. Don't lose
'Beginner's Mind'.

That's one of the reasons I wasted so much time and money trying to get a
winch going, to allow some cheap fun (plus practice takeoff and landings)
closer to home when an epic XC wasn't necessarily in the cards. It seems
like we don't have enough pilots left around our area who enjoy flying for
the sake of flying, rather than racking up OLC points.

Marc


I dunno/have-no-opinion about how OLC has-affected/is-affecting pilot
motivation, but the "selective day tendency" was something that became
apparent to me within a year or two of bumbling into the sport in the early
1970s, as "fairly common". And I agree with you both that it's (arguably)
something of a force mitigating against continuing participation. (It's a
pretty small mental step from "This day isn't worth going to the airport
over," to "ANY day isn't good enough.") Those times on "looked dodgy/dead"
days I was able to convince others to join me by taking a tow were always
pretty rare, even if anyone showed up at the field at all. Many were the times
I'd be aloft for "from well beyond dead-air times" to hours, and no one else
took tows...bizarro, to me. And yet - having learned in the east, where "good
days" were far from "visually common" - I felt ANY stick time was worth it,
and by springing for at least one tow pretty much every day I went to the
field, I learned buckets'-worth about how dynamic the atmosphere actually is.
(Useful on XC, too! )

As to targeting pilots for winching, I imagine I'd pretty much write off just
about every "experienced glider pilot I know" as a target-winchee,
concentrating instead on the steady stream of newbies filtering into local
clubs; they pretty much lack preconceptions about it. IMO/observation most
people simply aren't mentally into "new experiences like that" once they've
ascended whatever learning curve(s) they're comfortable with. (Aerotow was
good enough for my old man & it's good enough for me!)

Bob W.