Eric Greenwell wrote in message ...

It's not the rules, it's the weather. If you want to learn to fly
really well, leave Arizona and go someplace with weak weather. When
those guys come here and fly by our rules, they still come out top. A
good pilot will win regardless of the rules. It's not an amazing
observation that it's easier for a weak weather pilot to adapt to
strong conditions than the reverse.


I'm not sure I totally agree. France has great soaring weather, and
the Brits and Germans often run off to exotic locales (Spain, South
Africa, etc.) to fly in conditions everybit as good as ours can be.
On the other hand, Arizona in spring or fall can provide lots of good
weak weather training, with the additional pucker factor of no place
to landout! A pilot needs to be able to handle everything from
survival mode to warp speed. A pilot who only flies in weak weather
is going to be unbelievably slow our west in strong conditions, and a
pilot who only flies in strong conditions will be back in the bar
having a beer pretty quick in weak conditions.

The bigger problem, IMHO, is the TOTAL lack of a system in the US to
develop pilots that can compete in the Worlds succesfully. We have
great individual pilots, but no system to select and train pilots to
compete at the world level.

Until that happens, we will stay in the middle of the pack, at best.

And our rules don't help...Since they barely correlate to what the
rest of the world uses.

Kirk
66