At 19:07 13 March 2018, AS wrote:

Hello Michael,

you are describing almost to the T the procedures in my club in
Germany!
On=
e exception was that we allowed members to buy-out the
'Winterarbeit', if
t=
hey wanted to or had only two left hands with thumbs on them!
That
generate=
d enough funds to contract out certain jobs like re-roofing the
hangar,
etc=
..
As for the general membership age: in Germany, the clubs recruit
out of
the=
local high-schools - in the US out of the local retirement homes!

A funny story from a few years ago involving one of the few high-
school
age=
d kids we had: his mom dropped him off in the morning before his
lesson
and=
asked me when she could pick him back up. I told her that junior
should
ca=
ll her after he helped washing, waxing and putting away the
gliders, to
whi=
ch she replied with a mix of astonishment and horror: 'You mean
my son has
=
to work here? Why am I paying monthly dues?' In her mind,
learning to fly
g=
liders was like scheduling a lesson with the tennis- or golf-pro,
although
=
we briefed her on that when she signed junior up. Maybe we need
to do a
bet=
ter job at that but in general, I do not think that the average
US-teenager=
has the stamina to involve himself/herself in a 'German-style' club
operat=
ion. This may be due to the chicken and egg problem: why would I
like to
ha=
ng out at the airport with a bunch of geezers if there are no peer-
group
ar=
ound? Successful clubs like Harris Hill or Caesar Creek all have a
youth
gr=
oup and a club-house - which as mentioned above - are the
nucleus for
growi=
ng a group. Randomly pick a web-site of a German club and look
for the tab
=
'Jugendgruppe' (Youth group). You will see a good number of 14-
21 year old
=
fully integrated into or even running the entire operation!=20

Another issue is the geography of the US and life here in general.
In
Germa=
ny, a kid learns to fly and when leaving the area for college, he/she
joins=
the local AKAFLIEG or soaring club - there are 900 clubs to pick
from. In
=
the US, if you happen to have a kid who solos during high-school,
he/she
is=
most likely lost to the sport since there is no soaring operation
within
e=
asy reach of the college town. My son at NAU in Flagstaff, AZ is the
best
e=
xample. One can only hope that this person comes back to soaring
at a
later=
time in life.
Getting off the soap-box now - have I contributed enough to
thread-drift?
;=
-)

Uli
'AS'

Hi Uli,

It was the same at my club in Germany for winter work hours. You
just got billed for the number of hours below the quota that you
didn't work. If you worked zero hours, you got billed the full
amount.

At Nutmeg, we have had junior scholarships going since the late
1960's. We normally always have one or two high school age kids
flying with us. Some have gone on to successful military or civilian
pilot careers. A few have stayed with soaring, but it is hard. "Life"
gets in the way... college, marriage, children, etc.. All you can hope
to do is to instill the love of soaring in them, so that eventually, they
will return to it somewhere, somehow. I was SSA Youth Education
Chairman for about 8 years back in the 1980's. it's a tough nut to
crack.

More thread-drift...

RO