US club class definition

1. Soaring as a spectator sport will never be popular.
2. If #1 is wrong you guys are going to hate what soaring becomes. All of you currently racing would be out of the game, perhaps allowed to compete only to fill the grid as backmarkers.
3. Soaring is declining in popularity because men have given up control of their free time. When soaring was more popular if your dad was a soaring pilot you grew up at the airport. Now you grow up playing team sports while your dad drives you around to your games, that is when he isn't standing around the mall holding your mother's purse.

So many naysayers!! Each of you are contributors to the decline in our sport!!

Does swimming in the olympics have explosions?? Does the Tour de France have explosions??? Does the World Cup have explosions???

Our sailplanes go almost as fast on a ridge day as a stock car. And on a moderate thermal day, the inter thermal speeds are around 100 mph, that's exciting!! Our sport may not have the explosions, but neither do so many other competitions that are televised and enjoyable to follow.

If you want this sport to draw interest, Grand Prix soaring is the solution.. Look at the reaction on the faces of the spectators in the videos from other countries. They enjoy the excitement just like other forms of racing.

Having a sport where the ultimate competition is not even a time trial, nor an all out race, but a screwed up set of rules where a winner can cross the finish place last and a loser can cross the finish line first, is a very very hard sport to sell.

The point you're missing, "Wil", is that not every one cares the
slightest bit about competition. If you want to race, have a ball, but
the vast majority of soaring pilots aren't interested in glider races.
I think the decline in the sport is due to what someone else stated
earlier: that today's man and woman have given up control of their free
time. I can't count the number of times I've heard, "Sorry, I have to
take the wife shopping", or "Sorry, I have to take the kids to the zoo".

It's a matter of choices and management. Some of us have one, some have
both, unfortunately a lot have neither. And what possible interest can
there be in watching a bunch of guys pedal their bicycles? And who
watches Olympic swimming anyway?

Dan (not afraid to sign my real name)

On 3/2/2017 12:04 PM, wrote:
So many naysayers!! Each of you are contributors to the decline in our sport!!

Does swimming in the olympics have explosions?? Does the Tour de France have explosions??? Does the World Cup have explosions???

Our sailplanes go almost as fast on a ridge day as a stock car. And on a moderate thermal day, the inter thermal speeds are around 100 mph, that's exciting!! Our sport may not have the explosions, but neither do so many other competitions that are televised and enjoyable to follow.

If you want this sport to draw interest, Grand Prix soaring is the solution. Look at the reaction on the faces of the spectators in the videos from other countries. They enjoy the excitement just like other forms of racing.

Having a sport where the ultimate competition is not even a time trial, nor an all out race, but a screwed up set of rules where a winner can cross the finish place last and a loser can cross the finish line first, is a very very hard sport to sell.

--
Dan, 5J

I would say that 95% of the pilots are not interested in competitions whatsoever.

Dan,

You've missed my point entirely. It went right over your head. But kudos to you and well played on preaching the mainstream political agenda of soaring cult policies (because it's always been this way, therefore it should remain this way forever). Don't you know an inability to change is handicaps the ability to grow?

Let's be clear:

When the wife says: "I would rather you take me shopping."

That translates to: "Your sport is boring, I can't cheer you on, there's no excitement for me, and I can't watch you from down below, when you come home first, I can't get excited you won, because you probably lost. It's not like all other forms of racing where spouses can get excited, because, sorry hunny, you're really not in a "race". I just sit on the side of the runway and get depressed."

When the kids say "Dad we would rather you take us to the zoo." That translates to:

"Dad, you leave us for hours, we feel abandoned. We can't watch your spot tracker and even begin to understand if you are winning. When you start heading home, you add another turnpoint with a MAT, fly away to a far off airport and go opposite direction. Really hard to understand. When it looks like your going to round a tue point, you go 30 miles past it like your lost, but then try to explain its for "more points". The rules are so co fusing with handicaps and turn cylinders that we would rather just go to the zoo."

Since you slammed swimming and biking, here are some stats for you.

Total number of viewers for the Tour de France was 3.5 BILLION.

Total number of viewers for the Olympic's in 2012 was 4.8 BILLION.

Total number of viewers for the last world soaring championship....maybe 1,000 estimated.

Grand Prix is on the rise! Soaring as we know it is on the demise!

This thread is all about how handicaps can push you from a loser to a winner. Just imagine how many fans of NASCAR would be upset if a 10th place finisher was by a handicap system announced 1st place. It would be an outrage and serious loss of interest in the sport.

I've said it before, the leadership in the SSA needs to make serious changes or otherwise face year over year decline in our sport. Perhaps doing away with the handicap system, and doing away with turn cylinders, and doing away with start anytime you want would be a new beginning and just would we need to revive the excitement of soaring.

I understand this is an unpopular stance, because in this sport, if you don't agree with the political figures at large, for no good reason, you will be looked at with serious discontent.

Folks, the silent majority has SPOKEN and either QUIT soaring or choose not to join.....

You are insane if you think a rule change will get pilot's wives and children interested. 'If only the rules changed we would have groupies' Nope. Although I've always said soaring should have umbrella girls on the grid, a la Formula 1. Bicycle racing is popular because everyone has ridden a bicycle and the cost of self identifying as a hardcore bicycle type is cheap. Olympic sports are popular because of pomp and if your kid is good at just about any them college is free.
How is the SGP going to compete with Redbull's Air Race's or these guys http://worldwingsuitleague.com/facts/wwl-partners/ And what do you expect from a successful SGP? Corporate sponsors? http://www.npr.org/2014/11/29/367362...ngerous-sports Billionaire funded professional teams? Larry Ellison won the America's Cup without even being on the boat, imagine that. Or just more middle aged guys manning up and taking back their weekends? That would be awesome, noble and good for soaring but I don't see how the SGP gets anyone there.

"Bicycle racing is popular because everyone has ridden a bicycle and the cost of self identifying as a hardcore bicycle type is cheap."

Whoomp! There it is. The precise reason so many things like NASCAR, Golf, Pro ball, even Pro Fishing for heavens sake, are popular spectator sports. They are "relatable". Everybody who has ever driven a car fantasizes that they could do what the NASCAR guys do. Everybody can see themselves wearing a patch covered sponsor outfit and reeling in a lunker bass. How do we make soaring relatable? Short answer: Can't be done with the general population.. The average Joe doesn't understand how flying works and doesn't have the attention span or motivation to learn. If it ain't immediately intuitive, then average people won't bother. So what are we to do? We have to find the "above average" types who can be educated. Those folks who actually seek out new things to learn and do. Doesn't "above average" describe all the people you know in soaring? How do we find them? Same way every seller of consumer products in the world does it: Marketing. Spend real money on real advertising done by professionals. For-profit companies with something to sell know this (or they go out of business). Somehow, recreational clubs never seem to get this. Sure, we try all sorts of things to get our message out there in front of the public, but it's strictly amateur hour. We need to have professional marketers generate some sustained mass market visibility for soaring. By mass market, I don't necessarily mean national network TV or newspapers although that would be great. A tighter focus to the "above average population" would likely be much more cost effective. Regardless, it needs to be slick, professionally produced, and sustained. I understand that such a campaign might be prohibitively expensive even if done in only a few markets, but I think that type of marketing is PART of what it will take to actually increase the soaring population.

If professional marketing is only part of the strategy, what's the rest? I hate to say it, but clubs ain't it. At least, clubs aren't on the front line. Clubs will be how we sustain soaring, but to get soaring growing again, we need to support commercial soaring schools. Clubs just do not have the capacity and steady customer service that can add enough new pilots to grow soaring. Soaring clubs typically saturate their instructional capacity at about 3 new pilots and even then it's often a "catch-as-catch-can" intermittent form of flight training. Commercial schools can manage the "throughput".. Anyone here know of a commercial glider operation with too much business?

So, gotta be some of youse out there that know about marketing and/or commercial soaring operations. How much money would it take to hit one major market with a sustained marketing campaign of, say, maybe one year duration. Ads, commercials, vids in publications, maybe on cable, or on internet sites that cater to middle aged folks with both money and smarts. How much new business can a typical commercial soaring operation accommodate? It would be instructive, at least, to see how this experiment would work out.

WB

Dear Tango Whiskey,

You state that 95% of glider pilots are not interesting in racing. I think that's an honest and accurate estimation!

When 95% of any group finds no interest or enjoyment in something, that's because it's poorly designed!!!

Well said, bravo, bravo...

95% of gliders pilots have spoken.
The wives have spoken.
The children have spoken.

Hmmm.....is not clear to you all that the design is broken???

A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage, and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on top.

Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, every time a monkey would start up the ladder, the others would pull it down and beat it up.

After a time, no monkey would dare try climbing the ladder, no matter how great the temptation.

The scientists then decided to replace one of the monkeys. The first thing this new monkey did was start to climb the ladder. Immediately, the others pulled him down and beat him up.

After several beatings, the new monkey learned never to go up the ladder, even though there was no evident reason not to, aside from the beatings.

The second monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The first monkey participated in the beating of the second monkey. A third monkey was changed and the same was repeated. The fourth monkey was changed, resulting in the same, before the fifth was finally replaced as well.

What was left was a group of five monkeys that – without ever having received a cold shower – continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder.

If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they beat up on all those who attempted to climb the ladder, their most likely answer would be “I don’t know. It’s just how things are done around here.�

Does that sound at all familiar?

Le vendredi 3 mars 2017 14:01:11 UTC+1, a écritÂ*:
Dear Tango Whiskey,

You state that 95% of glider pilots are not interesting in racing. I think that's an honest and accurate estimation!

When 95% of any group finds no interest or enjoyment in something, that's because it's poorly designed!!!

Well said, bravo, bravo...

95% of gliders pilots have spoken.
The wives have spoken.
The children have spoken.

Hmmm.....is not clear to you all that the design is broken???

Sorry Sean, or Wilbur, or whatever,

I've been doing soaring for 35+ years, and most of the folks (including me) is not interested in competition. Whatever the competition looks like.

I can understand that flying over a flat countryside can be boring, but I spend my time in the air exclusively in the Alps which is probably the most demanding (and exciting) terrain you can imagine. I don't need the "extra thrill" of a competition. I'm just competing against myself, and sometimes I win.

Decline in soaring does not have *anything* to do with competition rules, as others have pointed out. Changing the rules doesn't improve anything on this aspect. Attracting public to competition - well, the GP's have been around for what, 10 years? What did they change?

And if you have a wife waiting for you all day long next to the runway - well, my wife doesn't wait for me at the airfield, she's got a life on her own. And I like it that way.

Bert
Ventus cM "TW"