The decline of gliding - a worldwide issue?

On Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:12:56 -0800, John Foster wrote:

I believe the key to reversing this trend is getting more youth
involved. I have a dream to start a club at my local airport. However,
I am going solo on this, as there is only one other glider pilot in my
area. A friend of mine is the director of the local Boy's and Girls
Club, a non-profit organization where kids can go after school while
parents are still at work, and get help with their homework, or get
involved in a number of other activities they offer. I have presented
my idea to him of offering some kind of flight training to kids who are
interested.

Sounds like a very good idea.

Have to thought about adding model flying to the mix? Here I'm thinking
about free flight models - uncontrolled, so flying them successfully
needs some knowledge of aerodynamics and trimming. Some suitable starter
models are shown on my website he

https://www.gregorie.org/freeflight/index.html

- I'm thinking primarily of the Easymini catapult glider: the rest of the
topics are more advances and show what yo can do with free flight.

The only fly in this ointment is that the Chinese are currently causing a
world balsa shortage, having bought many of the balsa tree plantations fo
use making wind turbine blades.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org