The decline of gliding - a worldwide issue?

[quote=Dan Marotta;1039944]The following statement came right off the FAA website:

If you are going to pilot a balloon or glider, you don't need a medical
certificate. All you need to do is write a statement certifying that you
have no medical defect that would make you unable to pilot a balloon or
glider.

So it would appear that if you have lost medical certification, you
can't legally fly a glider. If you never had a medical certificate,
it's up to you to decide. If you think you might fail your next flight
medical exam, consider dropping to Basic Med (USA only).

Dan
5J

That is one interpretation. As I understood it, to fly a glider you need to self certify using the "IAMSAFER" acronym. I know more than one airline pilot who has had a myocardial infarction with incapacitation. A couple of these pilots are now flying gliders quite well and openly.

Is it a matter of having had a medical, experienced an event they knew would cause them to fail the next medical and went right to gliders? Seems a bit implausible to me. I've done hundreds of Thallium Stress Tests and many of them on pilots who have busted their medical. Lots of guys walking around out there with shunts too, an event not involving a MI. While scar tissue in the myocardium will always be scar tissue, some are able to rehab themselves to a reasonable degree and live a normal life. I assure you there are many glider pilots with EKGs which would not pass a medical and yet they live and perform adequately. It would not be unreasonable for someone in this condition to self certify. JMHO.

Walt Connelly
Former Tow Pilot
Now Happy Helicopter Pilot.

I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 6:08:25 AM UTC-5, R wrote:
On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

Good LORD...now that is hilarious....love the summary, Richardson.
My small food for thought is back when I started in '73 Soaring was magical as was flying, NASA. Now, seems constant hyper-stimulation from all directions has reduced the amount of time allowed per time slot to do fun RELAXING activities. In other words, people are not willing or have a hard time separating themselves from the stimulation they get all day. To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for the magic in doing.
So Richardson , add Walking Dead.
R

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:28:36 -0800, R wrote:

To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for
the magic in doing.

Well, lets face it, flying behind an engine *is* boring compared with
flying a sailplane - just not as boring as driving a car.

I rediscovered that a few years back when I treated myself to a flight in
a DH Tiger Moth: that's a WW2 biplane basic trainer if you're on the left
side of the pond. It was nice to fly, with a similar response to control
inputs as a K13, but the view forward was terrible, despite being in an
open cockpit, thanks to all those wings and engine in front. After 15
minutes or so I started to notice the lack of the stimulation we all get
from constantly sensing what the air is doing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Originally Posted by Martin Gregorie[_6_]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:28:36 -0800, R wrote:

To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for
the magic in doing.

Well, lets face it, flying behind an engine *is* boring compared with
flying a sailplane - just not as boring as driving a car.

I rediscovered that a few years back when I treated myself to a flight in
a DH Tiger Moth: that's a WW2 biplane basic trainer if you're on the left
side of the pond. It was nice to fly, with a similar response to control
inputs as a K13, but the view forward was terrible, despite being in an
open cockpit, thanks to all those wings and engine in front. After 15
minutes or so I started to notice the lack of the stimulation we all get
from constantly sensing what the air is doing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

If it's the view you seek try a helicopter. Stimulation? Do a full down autorotation, a 180 autorotation, a steep approach to a confined area with a confined area departure, recovery from Vortex Ring State. Nothing compares with the view from a helicopter, NOTHING.

Walt Connelly
Former Tow Pilot
Now Happy Helicopter Pilot.

There is something special about flying a helicopter. Mankind's version of a magic carpet.

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 11:43:09 AM UTC-8, Walt Connelly wrote:
'Martin Gregorie[_6_ Wrote:
;1040015']On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:28:36 -0800, R wrote:
-
To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for
the magic in doing.
-
Well, lets face it, flying behind an engine *is* boring compared with
flying a sailplane - just not as boring as driving a car.

I rediscovered that a few years back when I treated myself to a flight
in
a DH Tiger Moth: that's a WW2 biplane basic trainer if you're on the
left
side of the pond. It was nice to fly, with a similar response to control

inputs as a K13, but the view forward was terrible, despite being in an

open cockpit, thanks to all those wings and engine in front. After 15
minutes or so I started to notice the lack of the stimulation we all get

from constantly sensing what the air is doing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org
If it's the view you seek try a helicopter. Stimulation? Do a full
down autorotation, a 180 autorotation, a steep approach to a confined
area with a confined area departure, recovery from Vortex Ring State.
Nothing compares with the view from a helicopter, NOTHING.
Walt Connelly
Former Tow Pilot
Now Happy Helicopter Pilot.




--
Walt Connelly

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

That is a great summary - put a smile on my face; particularly #4 under combatting the decline! ;-)
But on a more serious side: Hobbs - we have a problem!
The first point to combat the decline is understanding the reason why soaring is in decline.
One approach - at least for the US - could be this:
There is a section in the SSA magazine called 'Milestones', where every month, clubs and commercial operations proudly present their members who soloed or obtained advanced ratings, etc.
Someone at the SSA could go back five, seven or even ten years and try to track down these individuals to see if they are still active, i.e. look at the SSA membership roster.
If they still are -- case closed.
If not -- try to find out why:
- Death (not too far fetched, looking at some of the pictures)?
- Too expensive?
- Lost interest - if so, why?
- Wife was opposed to it?
- Family happened?
- Bought a house? (Much easier and more comfortable to live in one of those than in a glider of equal value!)
- Soloed as youth member and moved out of the area for college/job etc. and couldn't find another club nearby?
- Other?

Uli
'AS'

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 8:06:02 AM UTC-7, AS wrote:
On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax
That is a great summary - put a smile on my face; particularly #4 under combatting the decline! ;-)
But on a more serious side: Hobbs - we have a problem!
The first point to combat the decline is understanding the reason why soaring is in decline.
One approach - at least for the US - could be this:
There is a section in the SSA magazine called 'Milestones', where every month, clubs and commercial operations proudly present their members who soloed or obtained advanced ratings, etc.
Someone at the SSA could go back five, seven or even ten years and try to track down these individuals to see if they are still active, i.e. look at the SSA membership roster.
If they still are -- case closed.
If not -- try to find out why:
- Death (not too far fetched, looking at some of the pictures)?
- Too expensive?
- Lost interest - if so, why?
- Wife was opposed to it?
- Family happened?
- Bought a house? (Much easier and more comfortable to live in one of those than in a glider of equal value!)
- Soloed as youth member and moved out of the area for college/job etc. and couldn't find another club nearby?
- Other?

Uli
'AS'
Uli,

The AOPA study on student pilots failing to complete of several years ago was telling, mostly lack of instructor/student bonding. Clearly everyone started training with a goal. I did look at recipients of soaring flight scholarships and found that easily 80% were still in aviation, many in soaring, and some had ATPs. I tried to get access to other soaring scholarship recipients (non-SSA) and got a few which were included in the results, but this needs to be revisited with other groups giving soaring opportunities. Bob Wander spoke at an SSA Convention Focus on Clubs Track a few years ago and emphasized the need for instructor/student bonding and the need, if not bonding properly, to help the student find an instructor they could bond with. I guess this speaks to the need under the FAA system of a student working with a single instructor, rather than a rotating pool, to make progress and to succeed. I felt a bit different in the UK where all gliding instructors received centralized training and used a national syllabus, that progress wasn't dependent on flying with the same instructor regularly. However, my observation and impression of US training is that it seems to work best if the student regularly trains with the same CFI-G, which doesn't work with rotating instructor du jour scheduling. Perhaps someone disagrees. I'm not an instructor. What seems to work is what I call the 'dance ticket method', that is, an instructor arranges time, glider, and student, and then make best use of a two-hour training window. This seems to keep the student on track and is the same scheduling method my wife did as a driving instructor for 22 years. Do the same and arrange for a tow pilot if not a scheduled flying day to do finishing work when nearing the check ride. Does this fit with the way a club operates or has 'always done things'? Maybe, maybe not. The instructor then knows he has a student or two or three on any given day. Works best if the instructor is getting compensated and taking the time to 'push' the student. Leaving it up to the student to 'show up' is surely less effective. Need to show interest in the student and their progress.

A few years ago, the FAA quit expiring student pilot licenses. A recent pull of the FAA Ratings database (does not include those who've opted for privacy) includes the following student pilots:
83,191 with expired medicals 2012-2021.
16,804 with no medical dates nor expiries.
6,389 who have medical dates between 022012-082016 but no expiry dates.

There's no filter to know how many were glider students. But I would hate to think 16,804 reflects that. Maybe many are student drone pilot pilots that haven't completed their certification yet so are still listed as student pilots and there are 96,155 remote pilots in the FAA registry.

Anyone want to explore further?

Frank Whiteley

The clubs are in general decline, not just the gliding clubs but all clubs. Nowadays people want to be independent, autonomous, free to do what they want with no obligations, clubs carry obligations.

Often people take on an activity on their own and then join clubs or societies to share their experiences and improve with like minded people. With gliding you need to join and put up with "whatever" before you get onto your activity, so it is not an easy gradual commitment where you get to experience and fall in love with an activity before you have to put up with the 'family'.

We require a club and federation model to maintain the cost of gliding relatively low, that is achieved by extensive use of free volunteer work. If we had to pay at professional rates for what is necessary to commit gliding, the cost would be prohibitive. Standards, management, governance, maintenance, tuition, certification, competitions, towing etc are largely performed by volunteers. Many people are happy to get involved once they are hooked into gliding but again for the newcomer that is not an attractive model.

So Gliding reliance on clubs puts us in a bad position to attract new people.

Should we have a glide now pay later model? Well I am afraid that is already what we do with the volunteer model, I can't imagine asking current pilots to pay on top of the effort they put to attract new pilots.
We need to face the reality that to increase the freedom and independence of the pilots and thereby attract new pilots, gliding will become more expensive and less accessible.

But does the decline of gliding have anything to do with cost? I doubt, chess had a similar decline and it can't be due to the ever rising cost of the chess sets, right? What we need is Netflix to do a sexy serie like The Queen Gambit but about Gliding then Gliding will raise just like chess is now. Good luck with that, 2 minutes in 50 Shades of Grey was as good as we will ever get.

I think it is mostly about image, what is gliding, who is it for, would you want to be one of them? That is something that needs to be worked on at all levels, federations, clubs, individuals. The Clubhouses with 1970's carpet and rules posted on the walls don't really help.


I don't have a solution but I'll venture offering some suggestions, nothing really new nor ground breaking:
- Make it a family friendly activity so the Husband, Wife, Pops or Kid do not have to take time off from the family every time they go gliding. Whatever it takes, put a swimming pool, skatepark, fitness center, coffee shop or whatever at the airfield so it becomes family friendly.
- Make gliding easy to do anywhere, anytime, most clubs are cliquey, someone coming from another club is not trusted, they need to earn their stripes, they needs check rides, often re-certification, redo what they already did.. We need standards and trust in them. When you are in holidays and your wife and daughter want to go shopping for the day you should be able to go to the local gliding club to continue your training where you left it, not a day pushing gliders just to be "assessed" at the end of the day because they have never seen you before.
- Most people are honest, when they have fun they want to share it and repay for it. Make them feel useful, let them do things, make them understand the real value of their contribution, be engaged, heard, proud. From day one, not only once they are known, trusted and respected.
- Rather than advertising and discounting gliding, we need to create an image that is appealing. When people know what they want, they know how to use Google and find us.
- I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with playstations and iphones (I have both and glide 120+ hours per year), we don't need need to trigger an EMP over large cities to bring people into gliding.