Train Wreck

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 7:31:45 AM UTC-4, wrote:
This thread shows the true colors of the SSA. Look at all you children fighting when you could be supportive instead.

The SSA keeps shrinking year after year! Is anyone surprised?

If the SSA was a business, the controlling shareholders would have everyone fired in management. Starting from the top down.

Lost in Sean Fidler's somewhat embarrassing behavior is that he has case. At the meeting in Cordele last summer where new changes to the team selection process were hotly debated, I noted that we had abandoned a preferential voting system in the past: at least one highly ranked pilot allegedly manipulated it to his advantage by persuading his buddies to downscore a certain leading pilot to keep him off the team. I warned that even the appearance of backroom dealings or lack of transparency in the new voting system would likely push us to return to the purely quantitative process we had until recently (and that was thought not to accomplish the objective of selecting the best teams).

The clumsy, poorly handled way the new system was introduced this spring had me shaking my head. How could some of our smart pilots be so tone deaf? Now, barely weeks after the first votes, I'm still shaking my head.

This isn't a tempest in a teapot to the small number who fly competitively. Selection to the U.S. Team is a Very Big Deal to those at the top of the competitive pyramid. I'll repeat what I said in Cordele: even the APPEARANCE of conflicts of interest or backroom deals is unacceptable.

Have we learned nothing?

Chip Bearden

I posted before I read Steve's and Tim's recent contributions. Hear, hear. Santayana's words had occurred to me, too.

At least in soaring, I can't charge it off to most of our crowd being too young to have lived through the mistakes of the past.

Chip Bearden

I posted before I read Steve's and Tim's recent contributions. Hear, hear.
Santayana's words had occurred to me, too.
And to me as well, as noted previously not a contest pilot but merely an
interested observer.

At least in soaring, I can't charge it off to most of our crowd being too
young to have lived through the mistakes of the past.
Given the acrimony directly expressed and inferrable from this thread-to-date,
it's good to know senses of humor can still find expression.

And writing as one NOT too young to have lived through the mistakes of the
past, it's also good to (apparently) learn - from the posts of Steve K., Tim
T. and Chip B. (none of whom I know, but two of whom I could pick from a
lineup) - that something previously only guessed at seems to be the actual
case at present, i.e. (re-)introducing personal preferences into U.S. Team
pilot selection. Neo-geezers like me well remember the brouhaha from the
mid-/late-70s in "Soaring" mag accompanying the leaving off of George Moffat
from the U.S. Team when he was at the time (if memory accurately serves) the
existing (two-time) U.S. World Champion. So far as I could then tell, the only
positive aspect I could see flowing from that whole unfortunate - apparently
(from an organizational perspective) self-created - situation, was Mr.
Moffat's grace under the circumstances (Moffat being another individual I
could pick from a lineup). Kids can you spell, f - o - o - t - s - h - o - t?

Assuming that I am accurately assessing the general aspects of the US Team
selection process that have led to the present situation, I find myself in
slack-jawed disbelief that the present situation - ill-grace being "merely" an
incidental accompaniment - was not entirely predictable - and therefore
avoidable - at the time the decision to "revisit the past" in a selection
sense was taken...reGARDless of how that decision was undertaken/implemented.
Understand I intend here to express no opinion on the *quality* of that
decision - noting again, I have no dog in the fight - but rather/"merely" upon
its *nature"...and its predictable results. Sheesh...

Respectfully,
Bob W.

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