US Competition Pilot Poll and Election

On the SSA website, you have to click on "Sailplane Racing" to get to contests. That's because the SSA was CREATED for "Racing."

I've been to too many gliderports in the USA and listened to the old timers speak to younger generations about how "back in my day, racing was racing." This conversation seems to happen enough, to be a major contributor to the demise of Soaring in the USA.

That's not motivational to hear George Moffat tell someone who is considering buying a racing sailplane. That's a big turn off when pilots stop and think about spending $80,000 for a racing glider that you can't race.

Sailplane Races in America have turned into Geo Cashing Contests in the Sky.. That's as boring as Pokémon Go.

Perhaps we should have two groups in America. A racing league for the serious competitors who have been pussified by the detachment from the rest of the world racing league and one league where nobody is interested in speed.

Sailplane Racing Association verses Tiddlywinks Geo-Cashing Pokémon Go League.

It's time for a REVOLUTION in the Soaring Society of America.

Otherwise, we will continue to shrink and shrink.

The SSA leaders will be judged on their ability to make changes. If not, they are not effective leaders! Thank you for your volunteering spirit, but if you are contributing in a harmful way to our sport, leading it into poor attendance worse every year, you need to stop as you are not helping the sport. We need leaders who are helpers not hinderers.

SSA Leadership, all eyes are on you. What do you want to remembered by? Our politicians are remembered as ineffective and ringing up the national debt.. It's your choice, wake up face reality, get in with the rest of the world.

Next election it is time to nominate and replace the leaders with good intentions, with one who are capable and competent.

This is a reality of our sport collapsing. We've taken the excitement out and now the foundation is no longer solid. This can be undone.

It looks like there we have a chicken-and-egg problem here, with two opposing propositions:

(a) The sport of soaring in America is on the decline because the contest rules are geared towards older pilots who'd prefer roaming through the skies all day to racing. Since this type of contest flying is not attractive to the younger competitive pilots, they are leaving the sport in droves.

(b) The decline in the sport of soaring in America is caused by the lack of new young glider pilots entering the ranks. Consequently, the glider pilot population is rapidly aging and the older pilots, who are now in the overwhelming majority, are tailoring the contest rules according to their own preferences. Most of the the senior pilots aren't very competitive and they enter contests in order to socialize and get some flying in. Others, who are still competitive at heart, realize that they no longer possess the psycho-physical capabilities required to be competitive with the hotshots like Sean, who are in their prime. Both groups of geezers, although for slightly different reasons, prefer the loosey-goosey tasks (like MAT and TAT with 30 mile radius) that currently prevail in the US contests.

From what I can tell, Sean and Wilbur subscribe to the proposition (a) and claim that changing the rules and turning the US contests into true racing competitions would bring about a renaissance in the sport of soaring in America.

However, what if the proposition (b) is the one much closer to the truth? What if the current arcane US contest rules are not the root cause, but rather the effect of the aging glider population and the decline in the sport of soaring in America? Then changing them would not do much, if anything, to fix the root cause of the problem.

As an illustration, take a look at the number of contestants in this year's Senior Soaring Championship (55 entries, 6 guests, and 7 on the waiting list), and compare it to this year's US Junior National Camp and Contest (6 entries). I rest my case.

However, there is a definite bright side for the competitive US glider pilots in their prime: they should find it relatively easy to do well enough in the US contests (given the past-their-prime competition) in order to qualify for the US gliding team. Compare this to the German or French gliding teams, where even the recent world champions are not assured of being selected.

Branko Stojkovic
XYU

I think everyone knows the chicken is just an eggs way of making another egg.


On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 8:32:40 AM UTC-7, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
It looks like there we have a chicken-and-egg problem here, with two opposing propositions:

Perhaps (though I strongly disagree) but still you still avoid (along with many) the key question...

What measured value does maintaining US rules provide vs. the efficiency and stability of using FAI rules (like every other country on earth does, happily, successfully and safely)?

Sure, the SSA has created a hugely disproportionate, anemic, senior heavy age distribution for itself and simultaneously conditioned it's membership to react negatively to the any suggestion of racing, assigned task or adopting the same rules which are used happily, successfully, and safely by all other soaring nations. But that situation IN NOW WAY justifies continuing down the existing failed course with US rules and wasting all the time, energy and resources.

Yes, we need to start focusing far, far more aggressively (vs not at all) on re-developing youth in contest soaring. This is essential. But we need to re-connect with the international soaring community and stop isolating ourselves and softening our pilots skills. There is incredible value in that reconnection with FAI and the international community which our "elders" insist that we leave on the table.

We need to immediately refocus the wasted efforts of our failed (zero to negative net value) US rules on higher priority efforts.

The idea that we are old and grumpy (US soaring, SSA) and a rule change won't improve participation for the "old guys" is just awful. So is saying that youth will not respond. Look at Britain. look at Germany. Australia. Etc, etc. We need some 18-32 yr olds on our rules committee. We need to stop putting only the good old boys on the rules committee. The current crop actually works to keep youth or "non like minded" contest pilots off thier precious RC. This is corrupt, unhealthy and shameful, and they know it.

This is going to end up being a long post. But, I've thought about this stuff - a lot. The problem with these RAS debates is that a small number of people who have really strong opinions tend to create a lot of noise that gets in the way of real analysis.

Since very few people will read this whole post, I'm going to put the punch line first. Based on actual data collected from a reasonably large sample of potential racing pilots, it's pretty clear that the rules have nothing to do with keeping people out. Time is number one. Skill building is number two. Rules was way down on the list - in the bottom third.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx...k5Yc2FQMTMxWnM

Now the full story.

A couple of years ago I actually put in the effort to gather some data. Now, a data-driven argument is nowhere near as fun as an ad hominem one, so for that I apologize in advance. The following describes a detailed survey I did back in 2011.

The objective of my study was to figure out why more people weren't flying contests. It started out with the assumption that people who owned gliders had gone far enough that they were hooked. In other words, they have taken the first big step toward (potentially) becoming a competition pilot. It's not a perfect assumption, but it's a good first approximation.

Next, I had to find out if there were a lot of potential racing gliders in our local area that were sitting around in trailers and hangars not doing much. Then, I had to figure out why the owners of those gliders weren't participating in races. The results were interesting and a little surprising in some ways and pretty predictable in others.

I know that the actuaries and statisticians among us will find all sorts of flaws, but I'm not aware of anyone in the US who has better data. So until someone comes up with a better analysis, here goes...

I started out by going to every glider operation in Region 2 asking the active pilots/usual suspects to help get me in touch with others who owned gliders. This covered primarily Wurtsboro, Middletown, Blairstown, Van Sant, Beltzville, PGC, Brandywine, and Morgantown. Figure that's eastern PA, NJ, and Southeastern NY - most of Region 2. I cross-checked the information against the FAA database of registered gliders in those states. I was able to "find" and get in touch with about 2/3 of the registered gliders based in this area along with their owners/pilots and got them to take an online survey. I definitely got the majority of glass single place ships covered (figuring those are the most likely to be used for XC and racing). So, while not complete, the survey should at least be statistically significant.

The survey and results are in the attached spreadsheet. I haven't tried to make it pretty, but I did grab screenshots from the survey in the PDF. Here's the big pictu

- 66 glider owners responded after a lot of work tracking people down. That's a pretty nice yield.
- 2/3 of those owners claim to "regularly" fly XC (I defined as more than 50KM from the home field). I thought that was a pleasant surprise; I would've figured half or less. We've been working for at least 15 years in Region 2 to drive participation in the OLC and local contests, so maybe that's having some impact.
- About half claim to participate in local/online contests (OLC and the Governor's Cup)
- Almost the same number claim to have participated in an SSA Sanctioned contest in the last 3 years. That was surprising... half the people who own a glider in our area say they flew a contest. I did a little cross checking and the ranking list, and those numbers seem to be plausible. I suspect that's better than in many other regions.
- As far as "why you don't participate in SSA Sanctioned contests", the results were fairly scattered. If you look at only the "Top 3 Reasons" (i..e. those that were ranked as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd roadblock), it was in order:
* Time
* Something Else
* Rainouts

The "Something Else" was set up to let folks give their thoughts/concerns, so the answers are all over the map. The results are similar if you look at only the Top 2 reasons. The something else freeform responses are included in the spreadsheet.

Rules complexity or frustration with rules was... drumroll please... third from last (7th out of 9).

My takeaway here is that there's not some silver bullet that would suddenly increase participation. HOWEVER, it does suggest that rules/fairness/competition concerns that tend to occupy the minds of the hardcore racing pilot are (not surprisingly) not nearly as important to the fence sitters. IF we're serious about increasing participation (and if that's the charter of the Rules Committee or the SRA or some other interested group), the lessons seem to be:

- Test out more long-weekend races or other formats that minimize having to take long vacations.
- Create a structure that would allow newbies and folks with families to feel comfortable (e.g. the Mifflin beginner's contests, Caesar Creek XC and Racing Camp, etc.)
- Create a more structured marketing and awareness campaign targeted at the potential competitors. For instance, I think a list comprising pilots who ARE on the OLC list with some reasonable number of points (say 750 or more) and are NOT on the SSA Ranking List would be a great place to start using publicly available data.

Point being, while a few hardcore rules wonks argue over how many turnpoints fit on the head of a pin, a whole group of potential racing pilots isn't being addressed at all. This isn't unique to soaring, but since we have a small population of potential pilots to start with, we can't afford to address all potential populations.

Erik Mann (P3)



On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 11:32:40 AM UTC-4, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
It looks like there we have a chicken-and-egg problem here, with two opposing propositions:

(a) The sport of soaring in America is on the decline because the contest rules are geared towards older pilots who'd prefer roaming through the skies all day to racing. Since this type of contest flying is not attractive to the younger competitive pilots, they are leaving the sport in droves.

(b) The decline in the sport of soaring in America is caused by the lack of new young glider pilots entering the ranks. Consequently, the glider pilot population is rapidly aging and the older pilots, who are now in the overwhelming majority, are tailoring the contest rules according to their own preferences. Most of the the senior pilots aren't very competitive and they enter contests in order to socialize and get some flying in. Others, who are still competitive at heart, realize that they no longer possess the psycho-physical capabilities required to be competitive with the hotshots like Sean, who are in their prime. Both groups of geezers, although for slightly different reasons, prefer the loosey-goosey tasks (like MAT and TAT with 30 mile radius) that currently prevail in the US contests.

From what I can tell, Sean and Wilbur subscribe to the proposition (a) and claim that changing the rules and turning the US contests into true racing competitions would bring about a renaissance in the sport of soaring in America.

However, what if the proposition (b) is the one much closer to the truth? What if the current arcane US contest rules are not the root cause, but rather the effect of the aging glider population and the decline in the sport of soaring in America? Then changing them would not do much, if anything, to fix the root cause of the problem.

As an illustration, take a look at the number of contestants in this year's Senior Soaring Championship (55 entries, 6 guests, and 7 on the waiting list), and compare it to this year's US Junior National Camp and Contest (6 entries). I rest my case.

However, there is a definite bright side for the competitive US glider pilots in their prime: they should find it relatively easy to do well enough in the US contests (given the past-their-prime competition) in order to qualify for the US gliding team. Compare this to the German or French gliding teams, where even the recent world champions are not assured of being selected.

Branko Stojkovic
XYU

Erik,

Nice analysis, Thanks for the effort. I also think that the "us/them" discussion overlooks the vast differences in distance that US competitors have to travel in order to compete "nationally". That plays in the time factor. In most European countries the travel across the country can be done in a day, two at the most, while if you want to do that in the US you need 4 days minimum (unless you want to be too fatigued to fly when you get there).

I'm in the "old man" age group, but I also want to race a defined course. I've been part of the soaring scene since the late '60's, as a crew first and then just an onlooker as my family came and the left home. I now get to jump in with both feet (wings) but the "contests" are not racing, just as Sean complains.

I'm on the west coast and it would take more than 15 days to take the trip to the SGP in FL. Not in the cards for me. I might have to take up the gauntlet to try and run one on the left coast.

Sean, I'll get in touch.

Mike

On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 6:03:31 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
This is going to end up being a long post. But, I've thought about this stuff - a lot. The problem with these RAS debates is that a small number of people who have really strong opinions tend to create a lot of noise that gets in the way of real analysis.

Since very few people will read this whole post, I'm going to put the punch line first. Based on actual data collected from a reasonably large sample of potential racing pilots, it's pretty clear that the rules have nothing to do with keeping people out. Time is number one. Skill building is number two. Rules was way down on the list - in the bottom third.

Thanks Erik.

Same story in Region 1.

-Evan

On Friday, October 21, 2016 at 6:56:52 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 6:03:31 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
This is going to end up being a long post. But, I've thought about this stuff - a lot. The problem with these RAS debates is that a small number of people who have really strong opinions tend to create a lot of noise that gets in the way of real analysis.

Since very few people will read this whole post, I'm going to put the punch line first. Based on actual data collected from a reasonably large sample of potential racing pilots, it's pretty clear that the rules have nothing to do with keeping people out. Time is number one. Skill building is number two. Rules was way down on the list - in the bottom third.

Thanks Erik.

Same story in Region 1.

-Evan

P3 & T8:

In your research, where did "cost" fall in the spectrum of "other reasons"? It sounds like focusing on time issues and making the camp/competition experience a good one is of more value than trying to run an event on absolute minimum $$?

J9

The approach was a "rank each reason" in priority order from 1 - 9. 1 is most important. 9 is least. This type of question then gets a scoring based on how many times it ranks first, second, etc. Pollsters will tell you that the top 3-4 matter; after that the ranking is less important as people really don't know how to differentiate between lower priorities.

Making a long story short, Expense was right in the middle. Definitely not top 3 but not negligible. Clearly there are folks who want to participate with the absolute minimum of expense and others who show up with quarter million motor homes.

Since it might be hard to read understand the spreadsheet, I'll just list the inhibitors in ranking order:

1. Time (by a wide margin)
2. Something else
3. Skill (comfort in a contest/XC setting)
4. Safety/risk
5. Rainouts (which I basically equate to time as well)
6. Expense
7. Rules complexity
8. Glider (not competitive)
9. Avionics (not competitive or current).

FWIW, the Something Else answer was probably not a good test design. If you read the text, they basically fall within the above (competing priorities, job demands, family not willing to come to comps, etc.). There are a few people who just categorically don't want to ruin gliding with competition.. There are also age and health issues. Some folks are linchpins of their club as a CFI and don't feel able to get away. etc.

But again, for the purposes of this discussion, it's clear that Rules don't keep people out. They may end up frustrating some people, but the survey would have captured that since people who got out of racing would have showed up. That's not to say rules don't lead some people to move on. But with scarce resources, it's my sense that more focus on recruitment and innovative contest structures would be way more beneficial.

P3






On Friday, October 21, 2016 at 10:59:50 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Friday, October 21, 2016 at 6:56:52 AM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 6:03:31 PM UTC-4, Papa3 wrote:
This is going to end up being a long post. But, I've thought about this stuff - a lot. The problem with these RAS debates is that a small number of people who have really strong opinions tend to create a lot of noise that gets in the way of real analysis.

Since very few people will read this whole post, I'm going to put the punch line first. Based on actual data collected from a reasonably large sample of potential racing pilots, it's pretty clear that the rules have nothing to do with keeping people out. Time is number one. Skill building is number two. Rules was way down on the list - in the bottom third.

Thanks Erik.

Same story in Region 1.

-Evan

P3 & T8:

In your research, where did "cost" fall in the spectrum of "other reasons"? It sounds like focusing on time issues and making the camp/competition experience a good one is of more value than trying to run an event on absolute minimum $$?

J9