Participating in Contests

The impression that the super pilots with full time organized ground
crews and $90k+ ships makes going to a contest with a older generation
glider say a HP-11 with ~36:1 glide rather futile and would perhaps
feel like a 2nd class pilot showing up with such a craft amoungst all
the expensive glass.

Having never been to a contest I suppose it may just take one good
experience to make me a regular attendee but I just have not felt the
urge to get all the resources together to make that 1st one. Perhaps
its lazy convenience that keeps me at the local club. Distance is
another factor but would probably drive up to 500 miles to go to a 3
day weekend event.

I think what would make me come to one would be a contest amoungst
more of the older generation gliders and some explanation of how
retrieves would be made if I did not bring my own retrieve crew.
Knowing I would have a retrieve crew available at the contest would
remove 75% of the reluctance and flying with older gliders to keep it
interesting, would remove the last 25% and get me to come out.

I know from my sail boating experiences that going to a contest is the
fasterst way to learn from much more experienced pilots and accelerate
your own progress.

I think another good idea for first timers would be to have an
optional pre-contest orientation weekend where perhaps a month before
the contest you could go to the site with a number of others and fly
the area to get the lay of the land for us first timers. For that
matter they should just have a firstimers class with detailed
explanations of what to expect, what not to do, where not to go and
how to prepare for that particular site. Show us where the house
thermal are.

Another factor for some will also be the availability of a proper
Logger as they seem unnecessarily expensive and are not standard
equipment in older gliders. Perhaps allowing a PDA with GPS, or even a
simple hand held GPS unit to substitude as a turnpoint recorder would
help in this area.

Remove some or all of those barriers and Im sure the contests would
get greater attendance.