On Jan 9, 9:07 pm, Frank Whiteley wrote:
Tell me, do you think your club is a success story? What time does
training start and end? How many new glider ratings have come from
your club in the past three years?

Frank Whiteley

Frank -

This is a bit off topic..... But to be honest, IMHO the culture
appeared to be rotting in many ways. Its not that it was a bad group
of people - it was just aging, insular, and
"tired" (organizationally). Before I did soaring, I was involved in
amateur auto-racing and saw this in a similar club: A small group of
people stopped bringing in new blood, and then after the same people
did all the work for 20 or 30 years, they just burned out and the
thing started coming apart at the seams...

Luckily, we've just merged two local clubs into one, and along with
some newer members (including myself), that seems to have injected
fresh life into things! We are hopeful that this will give us the
boost we need to freshen our fleets, and get more organized about
training and bringing new members in. For years, there was this
attitude that you "couldn't soar" near Seattle - that you had to drive
to the other side of the state for desert conditions in order to
really fly. But some talented and energetic pilots started proving
that long flights were possible over here, and there's been a growing
movement to do more and more flying in our area.

Right now we're evaluating our fleets, our assets (including T-hangars
and such), our training, our fees, and are trying to come up with
revisions that will make this new club (of 150+ members) more vibrant
and sustainable. We're financially sound (although our fleet is
old). The big issue is going to be the cultural changes. "Show up,
fly a little, and leave" has become the norm - and lacking much social
interaction or volunteerism beyond a small core group is holding us
back IMHO.

But we have a cadre of ~20 dedicated people who are putting lots of
hours of work into making things better. If we can start retaining
students with a more formalized training regimen, and get people to
consider the glider operation an "all day affair" where everyone
pitches in, then we'll be in a great position. Its possible, just
going to take a sustained effort.

--Noel