Hard Deck

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 at 3:05:44 PM UTC-5, wrote:
"Something is keeping pilots from racing in droves" from up-thread.


This comes up periodically along with a lot of heart-felt opinions. Below is a note to the US RC that I sent about 6 years ago based on an actual online survey with a statistically significant percentage of potential racing pilots in NY/NJ/PA. It's a bit long, but the conclusion is that there isn't one primary reason folks (at least here in the East) don't compete. The single biggest reason was that people don't have the time to go spend a week at a contest (especially if it gets rained out) given all of the other competing demands for time and money.

Here's the full note. I can make the actual Survey Monkey raw data available should anyone be interested.


Hey guys,

Just passing along the results of a survey I put together last year. The objective was to find out a) if there were a lot of potential racing gliders in our local area that were sitting around in trailers and hangars not doing much and b) 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. Figured you guys might be interested as having some hard data (albeit from only one region) that might lead to better informed priorities.

I started out by going to every glider operation in Region 2 asking the leaders to help get me in touch with folks 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.. I cross-checked that against the FAA database of registered gliders in those states. I think I was able to "find" about 2/3 of the registered gliders based in this area along with their owners/pilots. I definitely think I 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.
- 2/3 of those claim to "regularly" fly XC (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 particpated 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.
- When I tried to get at the "why you don't participate" reasons, 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.

My takeaway here is that there's not some silver bullet that would suddenly increase particpation. 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.

Enjoy. This gave me something to do on a very cold November day!

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 at 1:23:17 PM UTC-8, Papa3 wrote:
snip
My takeaway here is that there's not some silver bullet that would suddenly increase particpation. 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.


A little data goes a long way.

Some additional food for thought.

Of the 450-odd pilots on the Pilot Ranking List (having flown at least one contest in the past three years):

- 40% flew only one contest in three years
- 20% flew two contests
- 20% flew an average of one contest per year
- 20% flew an average of 2.25 contests per year

That means 112 pilots represent 50% of the contest entries and 224 pilots represent three-quarters of the contest entries. That's pretty concentrated.

Over the past dozen years:
- The number of pilots on the PRL has fallen by an average of 2.6% per year, or twelve pilots per year
- The number of contest entries per year had fallen by 3.5% per year, or 15 entries

I'd guess that there are another couple hundred who are still active but haven't competed in the past three years. I'd be curious to compare that list to the active OLC list and de-dupe it to see who are the obvious candidates and whether there is a racing value proposition that might appeal.

A few years ago, the RC invited local OLC pilots gather one evening during the RC meeting. The anecdotal evidence is that the most active OLC pilots decline to race for reasons that seem quite different from Erik's survey, so I for one would be interested in learning more form a broader group of OLC (or other XC) pilots.

Another datapoint is that we saw pretty good uptake in pilots flying the daily racing task at the last Nephi OLC event. I think some of this is that there was only daily, rather than cumulative, scoring so pilots didn't feel pressure to fly every day (or submit their scores even if they did).

I'd also be very interested to see a mixed Regional/OLC event - more participants would certainly help organizer economics and it's a good opportunity for neophytes to "ride along" with racers.

Andy Blackburn
9B

Andy,

Thank you for sharing that. In reviewing the SSA's financial report i noticed a downward trend in entry fee revenue. This explains it. Any thought on how to make olc pilots take up flying in contests?

R6N is advertising its regional (running concurrent with the US Juniors Camp Contest) as a "rookie camp" but i suspect the hard part is getting the message out to potential first-timers. We're sending posters out to all nearby soaring clubs but its hard to find new blood. I'm open to any suggestions..

- Chris Schrader