Starting them young into soaring !!!

Last Sunday I did a few commercial glider rides for FBO at Mt. Valley Airport in Tehachapi California. One of the rides was the 10 year old daughter of Bryan Suits. Bryan Suits is an American war veteran of three military conflicts in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Iraq. And has been a talk radio host for more than 10 years. My sons and I have been listing to his show 'Dark Secret Place' on KFI AM-640 (Los Angeles) from 10 pm to midnight on Saturday's for a long time now. Bryan placed a video recorder in the glider while I gave his daughter a ride. I let her fly the glider. She learned quickly and will be taking formal glider pilot instructions when she is 13 years old. Here is a 4 minute edited down version of our flight that her father produced.

YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/gY4Dfd39fPo

Dark Secret Place radio show:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-d...lace-28067787/

Enjoy,
Oscar

On Wednesday, June 5, 2019 at 5:22:57 PM UTC+1, Glider Pilot wrote:
Last Sunday I did a few commercial glider rides for FBO at Mt. Valley Airport in Tehachapi California. One of the rides was the 10 year old daughter of Bryan Suits. Bryan Suits is an American war veteran of three military conflicts in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Iraq. And has been a talk radio host for more than 10 years. My sons and I have been listing to his show 'Dark Secret Place' on KFI AM-640 (Los Angeles) from 10 pm to midnight on Saturday's for a long time now. Bryan placed a video recorder in the glider while I gave his daughter a ride. I let her fly the glider. She learned quickly and will be taking formal glider pilot instructions when she is 13 years old. Here is a 4 minute edited down version of our flight that her father produced.

YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/gY4Dfd39fPo

Dark Secret Place radio show:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-d...lace-28067787/

Enjoy,
Oscar

The youngster's first attempt at flying is very impressive.

The arrangement of the shoulder straps (up and over the 2 large high back cushions with right one only just in place) needs to be rethought IMHO.

Fantastic you can give a shove to possible juniors.....
I was shoved decades ago.
I know of programs in many places, mostly in the NE US (I believe also many other places, I can only speak for those I have dealt with....no slight on any other locations/programs across the globe......:-)).

If a small part of current community pushed "just a bit", it helps a lot.

On Wednesday, June 5, 2019 at 2:40:53 PM UTC-6, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
Fantastic you can give a shove to possible juniors.....
I was shoved decades ago.
I know of programs in many places, mostly in the NE US (I believe also many other places, I can only speak for those I have dealt with....no slight on any other locations/programs across the globe......:-)).

If a small part of current community pushed "just a bit", it helps a lot.

Indeed being pushy helps.

One thing that's available for clubs and commercial operators is the SSA Cadet Youth Flight Scholarship.

CADET (June 30).
$750 for learning to fly gliders. Desire award.
The anchor program, the one that addresses the very first goal, is the Cadet Youth Flight Scholarship for would-be-pilots ages 13 to 22. Preferably, these will not be SSA members nor will they have any substantial experience with soaring. In essence, it is an excuse for Clubs and FBOs to contact local youth and invite them out to the glider field to see what we do. The incentive--to both the kids and the Club/FBO--is a $750 flight credit. Winners visit a glider field to have an application witnessed, make a convincing case for their desire to fly, write a creative essay about soaring, and state their financial need. In 1995, over one hundred kids wrote SSA for info on this program, two dozen thought about soaring long enough to write an essay, and half of those joined us as SSA Youth members. Funding for the Cadet program was initiated by Cadet designer and Hall-of-Famer Dr. Frank Gross, who matched gifts by 60 other SSA donors totaling $20,000 by December 1996.. Additional funding would help make additional, and perhaps larger awards, available. Details, a promotional poster, and a downloadable application form are at Cadet Youth Flight Scholarship.

https://www.ssa.org/Youth?show=blog&id=2388

Frank Whiteley

Awesome,

Op woensdag 5 juni 2019 18:22:57 UTC+2 schreef Glider Pilot:
Last Sunday I did a few commercial glider rides for FBO at Mt. Valley Airport in Tehachapi California. One of the rides was the 10 year old daughter of Bryan Suits. Bryan Suits is an American war veteran of three military conflicts in Kuwait, Bosnia, and Iraq. And has been a talk radio host for more than 10 years. My sons and I have been listing to his show 'Dark Secret Place' on KFI AM-640 (Los Angeles) from 10 pm to midnight on Saturday's for a long time now. Bryan placed a video recorder in the glider while I gave his daughter a ride. I let her fly the glider. She learned quickly and will be taking formal glider pilot instructions when she is 13 years old. Here is a 4 minute edited down version of our flight that her father produced.

YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/gY4Dfd39fPo

Dark Secret Place radio show:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-d...lace-28067787/

Enjoy,
Oscar

I started at 19, being color blind I always got told I wouldn't ever be able to fly, so I never got any info from clubs. At 19 I wanted to fly as a passenger once and got told being color blind is no problem to fly, you could only fly SR -30 minutes and SS +30 minutes, so I started straight away.

Nowadays, whenever I take passengers, in particular young passengers with me, I tell them it is a very accessible sport. One kid joined our club at 11, he was very good very fast. At 14 he got his medical certificate and flew solo straight away. A couple others joined him at 13-14 years old. They really enjoy it and it's a unique sport, dragging in other friends. Our club is one of the largest in Belgium and our national flight scores (onlineconstest/local website scoring) is always the highest

Senna, D-1339

All of us are ambassadors of the sport. Whether you take an active roll in recruitment or not, just being friendly to a visitor at your home club goes a long ways towards growing the sport. When it comes to kids who are enthusiastic about aviation, especially gliding, this is about the lowest hanging fruit one can think of in terms of recruitment.

Regardless of whether someone takes part in the EAA's Young Eagles youth ride program, I highly encourage SSA members to offer visitors a ride on their own dime from time to time, especially where it's known the passenger is interested in learning to fly gliders or otherwise become a pilot. Keep in mind, in many cases you can sign up both a parent and teenager to learn to fly gliders.

Another thing to consider is does your club have a nice looking glossy, color brochure and website to go with? Does it have a Facebook page? If not, these are things all clubs should be focusing their efforts on. Without these marketing basics, how do you expect the public ever to find you, let alone learn about our sport? Once these things are in place, club members can do what in the non-profit world is called community outreach, but in it's simplest terms, meet with civic groups, host Boy Scout Troops and Girl Scout Troops, attend local county fairs, festivals and farmer's markets, high school STEM or career events, EAA pancake breakfasts, EAA Young Eagle Rally's.... anywhere you can get yourself in front of a crowd of people.

Sadly, too many clubs take the position that they're not interested in growing their club (or the sport). I invite the leadership of these clubs to gather demographic data, more specifically age, and see exactly how many members the club will have to replace in 10 years just to stay the same size. Furthermore, I encourage Directors to try to quantify attrition rates among new members (0-2 years), existing members of 2-5 years, and various demographics such as members age 73 (the average age of death for Men in the USA), Student Pilots who have not earned their PPG as well as newly minted Private Pilots (see what those groups' attrition rates are and on average how long it takes before they drop out). If this doesn't scare you into marketing your club and conducting local public outreach, I don't know really what to say to you.

Clubs naturally suffer from attrition that's job and/or family related. Often times members leave because they have to care for elderly parents, children, or grandchildren, or the obligations of a club get to be too much for their hectic lives. Hybrid club models that charge members more $ for FBO type service do exist. Lastly, ask yourself is my club family-friendly or not? Can kids or grand-kids play at the airport or are they not welcome. Does the clubhouse feature amenities that a spouse can occupy their time with? Do they have a playgrounds, picnic tables or camping areas? Certainly, family-friendly sites benefit from these features and are much more welcoming for adults to bring their spouses, children and/or grandkids. IMHO, the a glider club really is no different than a yacht club or country club (where the regular planning of social activities are a must), except that we fly gliders instead of play golf or drive sailboats.

Moderate controlled growth in a club combined with improved member retention (especially members who've been with a club for less than 3 years), is the key to club success. And from a club Treasurer's point-of-view it's well worth our energy to focus on this as the larger and more active our club membership is the healthier are clubs tend to be financially.

- Chris Schrader
SSA Growth & Retention Committee

My son started at 13, and waited to solo for over a year until he was 15, the minimum here. He was as smooth as silk as a pilot.
His skills and airmanship became exceptional, but he hasn’t flown for a while now, however I’m sure he will get back to it one day.
Don’t underestimate the value of good role models in gliding too, in MOST cases.