Can gliding become a TV sport?

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 12:09:41 PM UTC-5, Bill D wrote:
At any one time our infrastructure can only accept a few thousand newcomers.

I wonder what the real 'uptake capacity' is? The two clubs that I know can optimistically accept 2-4 new students per year. The student experience breaks down if more than 2-3 students show up.

2-4 new students every year keep the club membership at a constant level, so there is not much incentive to increase the membership. The club gliders are fully booked at the present membership level and availability is already a problem if there is lift.

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 1:43:56 PM UTC-5, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 12:09:41 PM UTC-5, Bill D wrote: At any one time our infrastructure can only accept a few thousand newcomers. I wonder what the real 'uptake capacity' is? The two clubs that I know can optimistically accept 2-4 new students per year. The student experience breaks down if more than 2-3 students show up. 2-4 new students every year keep the club membership at a constant level, so there is not much incentive to increase the membership. The club gliders are fully booked at the present membership level and availability is already a problem if there is lift.

One experience point FWIW repeating dropped post.
Our club in SE NY does between 120 and 150 introductory flights a year. We do no advertising except exposure through SSA/Where to fly. This generates 6-10 new members/year, about 75% of whom solo and continue on.
A few years ago we were featured in th NY Times weekend section. This generated a lot of response resulting in somewhere around 400 introductory flights. We also connected many folks with other sites through Where to fly.
The interesting thing about this group was the very low conversion rate even though we handled people exactly the same as normal. We got about 5 or 6 members. The demographic was clearly different. There were a very high percentage of 20 to 30 year olds, almost no teens, and only a moderate number of older people. Our conclusion was that this was a group interested in experiencing gliding, but not interested in doing it.
The marketing benefit was in volume and revenue, but not in membership growth.
FWIW
UH

On Wednesday, February 27, 2013 11:43:56 AM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:

I wonder what the real 'uptake capacity' is?

The best estimate based on the number of trainers, tugs and instructors is about 1000 new starts per year in the US. It could be twice that if you take an optimistic view but the number isn't big. To accept a really large number of newcomers, we'd need a huge increase in the number of 2-seat trainers since that's the choke point. We actually have plenty of people with CGI-G certificates, we can fairly quickly increase the number of winches, tugs take longer for all the FAA 337 paperwork but trainers can take years from order to delivery.