Make Sailplane Racing Great Again

On Saturday, March 4, 2017 at 2:01:31 PM UTC-5, Craig Reinholt wrote:
On Saturday, March 4, 2017 at 9:53:51 AM UTC-8, wrote:
You've said it best, there are lots of "tough nuts to crack."

I very much respect that you are not in denial. Essentially your statistics show a decline of almost 50% in soaring. That's sad.

In another 10 years, we will be lucky to even have the minimum entrants to have a race.

I get it, not everyone likes racing. People own ferrari's but don't necessarily want to race them. There's the cost of repairs from a wreck, etc.. Likewise, not everyone who owns an ASG-29 wants to take a couple weeks off or a national race.

But we need to be asking those who are NOT interested in racing "Why are you not interested?"

There you will find the answers.

Sean,
Say you're 42 years old glider pilot. Have a loving spouse. Two kids. $100,000 annual family income. Three weeks vacation. House payments, college savings account, Friday night pizza. How many families will burn 33% to 67% vacation time and a lot of money on a competition? How many of the spouses and children love to go to a hot, dusty, out of the way airport for said soaring getaway? Certainly, most would prefer to be on the beach in FL, HA, or perhaps Disney World/Land and would be very vocal in that decision. An understandable tough sell on the part of the glider pilot to attend the Nationals or even Regionals.
Competition.... consider other sports. How many high school basketball, baseball, or tennis players compete locally in leagues at 40+ years old? The percentage is low.
In my club, there are about 4% regular competition pilots. Because we've pushed cross country the past few years, we have raised the percentage of regular XC pilots from about 8% to 20%. The remaining pilots come out for an afternoon outing within gliding distance of the gliderport. That is all the the soaring they want to do.
Regarding competition, a few at the club will go for a few years and then not participate for a few years. No matter how hard we sell how fun competition is, the average XC pilot doesn't buy into it for a plethora of reasons which have already been stated in multiple threads on RAS.
Your enthusiasm for competition is understandable, but please put yourself first in the shoes of the average glider pilot when carrying on about contest participation.

Craig - Completly agree with your points, only exception is that those of us in what i refer to as the "dark ages" (21 to 55) of soaring are only the average because there are some 15 year olds kicking around to offset the retirees. After pondering this problem for a few years, I think that it is just unrealistic to expect any substantial number of "dark age" pilots with younger children and still working up up the job ladder to participate in the sport.

Many of the pilots in the "golden era" of soaring were able to experience the sport when there were more than 4-5 producers competing in soaring, the strength of the dollar was significantly higher, and society was far different. Those pilots and their immediate successors are in a large part the current nucleus of the sport, and seem to be largely unable to appreciate the difference in current economic and time constraints that the next generation faces.