Promote your glider operation

So how to we turn these good ideas into tangible action at a national
level? What is the mechanism by which new initiatives are taken up by
the SSA? Who ya gonna call? As a start, I will pledge $100 to any
fund earmarked for gathering some of these statistics and creating an
action plan. I want to save my sport from extinction. Anyone else?

On Nov 24, 12:26*pm, "Matt Herron Jr." wrote:
So how to we turn these good ideas into tangible action at a national
level? *What is the mechanism by which new initiatives are taken up by
the SSA? *Who ya gonna call? *As a start, I will pledge $100 to any
fund earmarked for gathering some of these statistics and creating an
action plan. *I want to save my sport from extinction. *Anyone else?

Mat, get with Frank W. We don't need the $100 as much as we need
someone to call and collect information. There's only about 200
glider operations in the US but it's amazingly difficult to contact
them and get current information. Last winter were never able to
contact about 15% of them.

The "contact difficulty" problem goes a long way to explain our loss
of members. There may be lots of people out there who want to fly
gliders but who can't contact a club near them. We gotta make that
easier.

Bill D

On Nov 24, 10:33*am, MickiMinner wrote:
I think all of the above posters have the right idea...the concept is
to "grow" the sport,
but nobody has any grasp of what the numbers are of active glider
pilots,
instructor pilots, new rides, FAST offers, Calls to local glider
ports,
rate of activity.

I do believe that statistics, numbers need to be compiled.
We can't figure out if we need pull marketing, viral marketing,
publicity campaigns, and any other types of publicity until we know
what we are pushing for!
One Example of what we need to know:
Do we want to approach pilots with power tickets? *Do we have better
success with youth? or better success at converting the power pilot,
or do we have a better success rate with the person that calls for a
"joy ride".

Omri has a a great idea that an individual giving the ride should have
the passion and personality to address the needs of the person
enquiring and taking a test ride.

the bottom line for me, is that we need to compile some data. *Regular
surveys of the clubs, or reporting of how many calls/rides/instruction
requests/new members. *Can't market what you don't know.
just my 2cents
Micki

Miki, I absolutely agree accurate, current statistics are needed. The
first thing I did was to conduct a survey by calling and e-mailing all
the organizations listed with the SSA. That's where the numbers in my
earlier post came from. The responses weren't universal but there was
enough to extrapolate the rest with pretty good accuracy. It would
really help if soaring organizations kept their data on the "Where to
Fly" list up to date.

What jumped out was our aggregate annual training capacity doesn't
exceed 2000/year and may be as low as 1000. At any given time only
about 300 - 400 new students can be accepted - that's with business as
usual.

Commercial operations generally fly any day the weather is flyable
with northern operations putting in about 180 days a year and southern
operators about 300 days a year with limited opportunity increase that
number.

Clubs tend to only operate on fair weather weekends which averages out
to less than 60 days a year. The big opportunity to expand the
training capacity without adding equipment is for clubs to stage
training camps that run 14 days straight. Some clubs do several of
these camps a year.

I could only find 179 tow planes but I'll allow that I might have
missed a few which is why I said 200 tugs. Winches can increase our
"uphill capacity" significantly and are well suited for training.

We actually have plenty of instructors but a lot of them aren't really
active instructors. The SSA might bring some back to active status by
organizing a group instructor liability policy. I think it would also
help if more attractive training gliders were available. (Some of us
old guys are too creaky to fold ourselves into the back seat of a 2-33
or L-13.)