Bad publicity

I have seen the emergency services twice at a field
that I have landed in. Both times we called them.

Maybe it says something about your landings more than
an uneducated public! ;-)

At 08:24 22 January 2004, Mike Lindsay wrote:
In article , Alistair Wright
writes

'Martin Gregorie' wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:01:07 -0000, 'David Starer'
wrote:

Well Martin, you and I both know that whenever you
land out in the UK there
will shortly be police car and a crowd of gawpers asking
where the 'crash'
is! In more than twenty C/C flights I always encountered
this response.
Even when I showed people that my engine hadn't fallen
off, they still often
could not comprehend the idea of flying without one.
So much for our
'air-minded public I used to think. On two occasions
some local worthy
actually summoned the Fire Brigade who were NOT amused
to find no crash and
certainly no fire.

I had this happen when I landed near a busy road near
Bury St Edmunds.
I had a policeman on a motor-bite, two fire engines
and a doctor.
I tried to get the policeman to help me derig, I've
never seen one
disappear so quickly. But it was a Skylark 4, notoriously
heavy.

The next day I landed out again, my second phone call
was a 999 to tell
the police there wasn't an emergency. They were a bit
non-plussed, but
quite glad to know.

--
Mike Lindsay

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Starer"
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.soaring
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 7:01 PM
Subject: Bad publicity


I just searched on "glider" on the BBC's news web site. What I found
shocked
me. Of 46 results returned for the period since May 1998, not a single one
mentioned any form of achievement whatsoever in gliding. See here for the
search page:


http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/...&start=1&q=gli
der&scope=newsukfs


Your search didn't reaveal this one
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1431834.stm about some 90 year olds having a
few trial lessons, but it's still not the sort of publicity we want.

When we were doing very well in the Junior world championships I emailed the
BBC online sports people to draw their attention to it. This was on a day
when they were covering the European Blind Football Championships,
wheelchair tennis, World Netball Championships.and US baseball*. Now, I
have no problem with them covering these minority sports, but you would have
thought that they could make room for gliding amongst them. Predicably
there was no response - not even a reply to my email. The BGA at this time
were also producing a deluge of press releases so they really should have
been aware of the British sucesses.

A friend of mine once complained to the Times newspaper that they didn't
cover gliding and their response was that they didn't have anyone to cover
it. She said "yes you do" and became the voluntary Times gliding
correspondent. They used some of the stuff she produced but eventually got
bored with it. Perhaps someone needs to volunteer their services to the
BBC.

*I know baseball isn't a minority sport for many reading this, but I'm
talking about the UK here.

Stephen

Stephen Cook ] writes
A friend of mine once complained to the Times newspaper that they
didn't cover gliding and their response was that they didn't have
anyone to cover it. She said "yes you do" and became the voluntary
Times gliding correspondent. They used some of the stuff she produced
but eventually got bored with it. Perhaps someone needs to volunteer
their services to the BBC.

That's usually the way with the media (admittedly, I'm drawing more from
my experience with music and theatre than gliding, but there might be an
analogy here). If you point them at a story or item of interest and hope
they'll cover it, odds are they'll ignore you. If, on the other hand,
you cut out their need to do any real work themselves and provide them
the story written up and ready to print, the hit-rate (and thus
exposure) climbs considerably.

Perhaps all clubs should have a "volunteer" in the form of a budding
freelance journalist for feeding the press and public relations monster?

And whilst 90 year old grannies taking to the sky might not be the sort
of cut and dash image we'd really want to portray, any publicity is good
publicity, and it was nice seeing a picutre of one of the club's K8s on
the BBC website :P

--
Bill Gribble

/----------------------------------\
| http://www.cotswoldgliding.co.uk |
| http://members.aol.com/annsweb |
| http://www.shatteredkingdoms.org |
\----------------------------------/

The important publicity is in gliding clubs own hands,
local coverage is fairly easy to come by, have an open
day, a charity event, an air show or just a feature
on club achievements. This will get plenty of interested
potential members to try gliding, assuming you have
a reasonable population nearby it really is that easy.
So why are numbers falling, because many clubs are
so badly organised, new recruits and ab-initios are
EXPECTED to hang around all day and maybe get a 5 min
circuit at 4pm.
In the past people had the time to do that, but today
most do not, they value their time and want to feel
that it is worthwhile. Pressure from work , family,
partners and other sports terminates a great many flying
careers, clubs must recognise this ( assuming they
really want more members and by no means all do!! ).
Notably, a few clubs have recognised this and are thriving,
most have yet to change.
Gliding need not be expensive, it will cost about £
700 in flyingtime plus membership say £200 thats £900
for your first year and you should be solo by then,
after that it's up to you. There are plenty of sports
more expensive, boats, horses, motorcycles, golf and
many others.
Having my own glider I spend £2000 each year which
is just about what it would cost to keep a horse, it
is a comparison that I use to put the cost in perspective
to outsiders. Everyone knows someone who has a horse
even if they cannot afford one themselves. The majority
of horse owners that I know are women, so they really
do have time and money to follow their sport and are
not tied to the sink exclusively. Regretably though
most of them choose other ways to spend their spare
cash.


David Smith

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Smith"
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.soaring
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 7:37 PM
Subject: Bad Publicity

snipped

So why are numbers falling, because many clubs are
so badly organised, new recruits and ab-initios are
EXPECTED to hang around all day and maybe get a 5 min
circuit at 4pm.

This is because launching facilities are usually pretty limited at most
Clubs.
Even when I instructed at the London Club which was staffed by professionals
(as
well as us amateurs) the launch rate was pretty pathetic.

Some of this problem was down to inadequate provision of winches and tugs
but a
lot of it was just inefficiency and cost cutting (using cheap winch cable
which
broke a lot). Even aerotowing was not best quality due to underpowered tugs
and
an unwillingness to teach and use multiple towing.

Pressure from work , family,
partners and other sports terminates a great many flying
careers, clubs must recognise this ( assuming they
really want more members and by no means all do!! ).

It eventually terminated mine! I was finding time in air /time on ground a
very
poor ratio and I was an instructor! I had other hobbies which provided a
better
ratio of enjoyment to ennui, and I gave up gliding with about 700hrs and a
Silver C. I could see no chance of Gold without buying into a syndicate, as
club aircraft were just not available for me to attempt the necessary tasks.
While I enjoyed instructing (most of the time when I had pupils who were not
trying to kill me) it wasn't enough to keep my enthusiasm going. No one at
the
club seemed bothered about my departure either.

Having my own glider I spend £2000 each year which
is just about what it would cost to keep a horse, it
is a comparison that I use to put the cost in perspective
to outsiders.

Yes, but you overlook the investment in time that you put in to get to the
stage
where you were allowed to fly a high performance machine. I bet that cost a
bob
or two, and a lot of potential pilots just can't see that day coming and
give
up.

Alistair Wright
long retired glider pilot