Hank,

Thanks for reminding us of the 2011 poll. I downloaded the comments to Section 6 over the weekend. Makes interesting reading. And you recall correctly, out of the very long list of people responded, there was only one person who cited The Rules as a major inhibitor. If I get time, I'll do some keyword mining, but you only have to read the comments quickly to find out that the main issues a

- Time off from work/family
- Distance to contests (see point 1)
- Comfort/skills
- Costs (a little different from what I uncovered but then again this poll would naturally have that "bias" since it's focused on people who ARE competing) Note that more focus was on Total Cost (including hotels and travel) rather than "just" the competition-specific costs (with a couple notable outliers)

There's an obvious trend here if we can address it. I've got some thoughts, but it clearly revolves around smaller but well-structured contests which leverage technology (remote scoring, quality of competition, etc.) to be able to create a new type of "regional". I really think that small competitions (maybe a single class limited to 15 pilots - combined FAI, Sports, etc.) which could be run on a "pop-up" basis when a period of good weather is coming could actually be doable by many clubs and FBOs. It would require "re-engineering" the entire process of running a contest, but if enough smart minds put their energy to it I'm sure it could be done. It's like the GTA and Chicagoland models but maybe taken up a small notch.


On Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 4:20:36 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 2:35:21 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
Regarding the data. There were 580 people on the SSA Pilot Ranking List in the year that I did the survey. I got 66 responses. Depending on how you want to look at it, the respondents were either about an 11 percent sample or a 6 percent sample (about half of the people had competed in a sanctioned contest and half hadn't). By anyone's measure, that's a statistically significant survey.

If you want to have a facts-based discussion on the issue, then go ahead and design and execute a better survey.

And maybe use your real name - it makes it so much more transparent.

Erik Mann (P3)




The 2011 pilot poll asked about participation and barriers to participation in topic 6. I recall that the responses very much agreed with those shown in the P3 poll.
Time and money mentioned a lot. Rules and tasks- not much.
I agree with P3- it is good to know who you are exchanging views with. An experienced competition pilot or somebody that rode in the sniffer once?
UH