How do we inspire pilots to truly take up cross country soaring ?

The same can be said of sailing but we still have female classification and it is wildly successful.

Women like competing with other women (in sailing for sure). They are not very prevalent right now in the USA and Canada. I can count the female glider pilots I know on one hand.

Obviously, worldwide women glider competition is more popular. To me it makes great sense. Women should be recognized when they do compete in the USA. It will encourage others.

I am one of those few female glider racers and am friends with the others. I don't think any of us would appreciate being scored separately. Junior classing makes sense because the young ones have had a limited number of years to learn the sport. I'm interested in flying Women's World Gliding Championships because of the prestige a win would bring the US Team not because I think women belong in a different category.

Sarah Arnold
(the infamous racing pilot)

Hmmmmm. Last I checked, I did not see a large crowd of US female pilots who compete with the men. SKA is a fairly unique person! We need dozens more!

The reason why women are not competing in US contests is an interesting discussion point (new thread?). It is not a physical thing of course. In fact women have a physical advantage (in addition to their mental/emotional strengths!). It's also not a financial thing. So, what is it? I believe that both Europe and Australia have far more women competing in contests.

Personally, I would think that if: A) women's soaring was to grow in the US someday and B) 5-10 women were attending a future US contest...many of those women would appreciate a separate women's classification in the same way juniors would. Maybe I am wrong but I would definitely want to hear from "other women" as well when/if they hopefully materialize some day.

Remember, I am proposing an overall scoring for everyone (as normal) but individual clasifications (per suggestions) for beginner, various SSA ranking levels and of course feminine.

IOW, if we magically had 3 women at a contest in 2016, they should get a gold, silver and bronze medal no matter what their overall scores happen to be! They should be celebrated along with Jr's and beginners! Building numbers these competition categories (beginners, juniors and women) at our future events Is FAR MORE important to the US Soaring community than overall winners.

We simply have to do something significant to stem this tide of shrinking or stale numbers. It costs nothing to try these ideas. If it fails, so what? Let's not continue to sit on our hands in almost every aspect of our organization. We need some big ideas and some serious innovation. The sport of soaring is incredible...we need to market it and compete. Simple as that.

Just my opinion of course!

Sean
7T

Maybe the answer is to quit keeping score at all and everybody should get a trophy the way it is in American schools today? ;^)

Boggs

No! I'm not saying that at all!!!

On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 12:12:55 PM UTC-4, Sean Fidler wrote:
Hmmmmm. Last I checked, I did not see a large crowd of US female pilots who compete with the men. SKA is a fairly unique person! We need dozens more!

The reason why women are not competing in US contests is an interesting discussion point (new thread?). It is not a physical thing of course. In fact women have a physical advantage (in addition to their mental/emotional strengths!). It's also not a financial thing. So, what is it? I believe that both Europe and Australia have far more women competing in contests.

Personally, I would think that if: A) women's soaring was to grow in the US someday and B) 5-10 women were attending a future US contest...many of those women would appreciate a separate women's classification in the same way juniors would. Maybe I am wrong but I would definitely want to hear from "other women" as well when/if they hopefully materialize some day.

Remember, I am proposing an overall scoring for everyone (as normal) but individual clasifications (per suggestions) for beginner, various SSA ranking levels and of course feminine.

IOW, if we magically had 3 women at a contest in 2016, they should get a gold, silver and bronze medal no matter what their overall scores happen to be! They should be celebrated along with Jr's and beginners! Building numbers these competition categories (beginners, juniors and women) at our future events Is FAR MORE important to the US Soaring community than overall winners.

We simply have to do something significant to stem this tide of shrinking or stale numbers. It costs nothing to try these ideas. If it fails, so what? Let's not continue to sit on our hands in almost every aspect of our organization. We need some big ideas and some serious innovation. The sport of soaring is incredible...we need to market it and compete. Simple as that.

Just my opinion of course!

Sean
7T

You can't even stay on your own topic :-).

I'm much more interested in promoting XC. Competition is just one little piece of the whole.

People are just lazy. That's my opinion. My evidence includes the fact that one can join my own club (including one time initiation) for about 1/2 what most of us pay to insure *old* gliders and (when qualified) get the keys to an HpH 304c. Yep, a real, live 40+:1 glass slipper, equipped for basic XC and with a serviceable trailer too. The number of people who grab this opportunity is astonishingly small. Those that do almost invariably get smitten with the sport and move whatever pieces of heaven and earth are required to procure their own high performance glider (leaving the 304 available for the next convert!).

Most people, most *pilots* just don't want to put in the work.

It simply isn't possible to provide more encouragement than we already do.

Evan Ludeman / T8

I can't disagree that a majority of people are generally pretty lazy. They generally want to be the master of the "sport"' or "activity" in minutes or hours, not months or years.

On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 1:20:03 PM UTC-4, Sean Fidler wrote:
I can't disagree that a majority of people are generally pretty lazy. They generally want to be the master of the "sport"' or "activity" in minutes or hours, not months or years.

They also want to feel assured of a predictable favorable result pretty much all the time. That is, I think, why the list of people who want to go XC with me is very long, yet those that go by themselves later is much much shorter.
The worry about landing out is a really big deterrent, even where we fly in an area with a lot of airports to land on.
The best we can do is find the live ones and bring them along.
UH

I think it has been said, but if the culture of the club is an XC culture, then you will fledge more pilots. I fly with the Greater Boston Soaring Club. We are a large club, and have many regular XC pilots. When I started to fly with GBSC I joined the board, and made a few policy suggestions that would promote XC in the club. A fellow board member commented, "Promote XC, don't we discourage XC". And I think he was right, our policy's made it difficult, at the time I think I was the only cross country pilot on the board. Even with that headwind, we have made significant improvements in policy, and training. We have far to go, but the trailer trash end of the field is getting larger all the time.

Things we have done that helped.

Set up a XC mentor "dating service". If you are new, don't know the folks that are rigging their own gliders, I would match up a member that expressed interest in learning XC and matched them up with an experienced pilot. They could ask questions, perhaps get some encouragement etc.

We have 3 encampments each year, 2 "somewhat" focused on badge flying. One at Mifflin, and one at Mt Washington. A place like Mifflin where the off field options are so good, can ease the fear of leaving the nest.

We have put on a winter (or early spring) XC ground school. We put on a two evening presentation. The usual stuff, thermaling, fly to the next airport, call it home, repeat. Roy Bourgeois has a great off field landing review, with shots from the air, and on the ground for field selection.

I have done some lead follow, I now have a piece of a duo, and expect to do some dual.

Things I want to do:

Not all of our instructors are XC pilots, this is fine, but the elemental skills for XC can be taught locally, and I hope to put together a series of lessons, thermaling, gliding, a very local 25k triangle for confidence building, and an intentional land out at a nearby airport. I agree with Hank, that the fear of land outs is very high. In power flying, you end up at other airports all the time, but if you have learned to fly at our club, new pilots only fly from our local field. Landing "out", even at an airport is scary.

But the club culture is at the heart of this. If the club encourages advancement of your flying skills at least to silver, then that is a good place to decide if farther is for you. For some it is not, for others, they may move to competition, or records. But the bottom line, we have seen far more conversion to private ownership, and XC than we had in the past. You need to keep helping those along, not all will want to go, but those that do, tend to stick with it...

Agreed! Spark plugs! One on one personal relationships and true mentorship.

The other side of the coin is the type of person with the perseverance and drive to seek out the mentor. It's one thing to try and motivate and inspire someone, it's a completely different thing to have them ID YOU as a source of help, knowledge and motivation and make it easy for you to do so. A pleasure to help them...etc.

But those are very rare birds indeed.