The decline of gliding - a worldwide issue?

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:28:36 -0800, R wrote:

To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for
the magic in doing.

Well, lets face it, flying behind an engine *is* boring compared with
flying a sailplane - just not as boring as driving a car.

I rediscovered that a few years back when I treated myself to a flight in
a DH Tiger Moth: that's a WW2 biplane basic trainer if you're on the left
side of the pond. It was nice to fly, with a similar response to control
inputs as a K13, but the view forward was terrible, despite being in an
open cockpit, thanks to all those wings and engine in front. After 15
minutes or so I started to notice the lack of the stimulation we all get
from constantly sensing what the air is doing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Originally Posted by Martin Gregorie[_6_]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 03:28:36 -0800, R wrote:

To many, flying an aircraft is boring. They lost touch looking for
the magic in doing.

Well, lets face it, flying behind an engine *is* boring compared with
flying a sailplane - just not as boring as driving a car.

I rediscovered that a few years back when I treated myself to a flight in
a DH Tiger Moth: that's a WW2 biplane basic trainer if you're on the left
side of the pond. It was nice to fly, with a similar response to control
inputs as a K13, but the view forward was terrible, despite being in an
open cockpit, thanks to all those wings and engine in front. After 15
minutes or so I started to notice the lack of the stimulation we all get
from constantly sensing what the air is doing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

If it's the view you seek try a helicopter. Stimulation? Do a full down autorotation, a 180 autorotation, a steep approach to a confined area with a confined area departure, recovery from Vortex Ring State. Nothing compares with the view from a helicopter, NOTHING.

Walt Connelly
Former Tow Pilot
Now Happy Helicopter Pilot.

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

That is a great summary - put a smile on my face; particularly #4 under combatting the decline! ;-)
But on a more serious side: Hobbs - we have a problem!
The first point to combat the decline is understanding the reason why soaring is in decline.
One approach - at least for the US - could be this:
There is a section in the SSA magazine called 'Milestones', where every month, clubs and commercial operations proudly present their members who soloed or obtained advanced ratings, etc.
Someone at the SSA could go back five, seven or even ten years and try to track down these individuals to see if they are still active, i.e. look at the SSA membership roster.
If they still are -- case closed.
If not -- try to find out why:
- Death (not too far fetched, looking at some of the pictures)?
- Too expensive?
- Lost interest - if so, why?
- Wife was opposed to it?
- Family happened?
- Bought a house? (Much easier and more comfortable to live in one of those than in a glider of equal value!)
- Soloed as youth member and moved out of the area for college/job etc. and couldn't find another club nearby?
- Other?

Uli
'AS'

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 8:06:02 AM UTC-7, AS wrote:
On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 3:33:23 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

Causes of the decline as identified by ras members:

1. Money
2. Playstations
3. iPhones
4. Lack of proper advertising
5. Fear of dying by catching the virus behind a worldwide pandemic
6. Gliders not having an engine and thus not making a "vroom-vroom" sound
7. People like opening pickle jars

How to combat the decline:

1. Advertising
2. Don't run a ground school because it's boring and unnecessary
3. Nurture a positive culture
4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax
That is a great summary - put a smile on my face; particularly #4 under combatting the decline! ;-)
But on a more serious side: Hobbs - we have a problem!
The first point to combat the decline is understanding the reason why soaring is in decline.
One approach - at least for the US - could be this:
There is a section in the SSA magazine called 'Milestones', where every month, clubs and commercial operations proudly present their members who soloed or obtained advanced ratings, etc.
Someone at the SSA could go back five, seven or even ten years and try to track down these individuals to see if they are still active, i.e. look at the SSA membership roster.
If they still are -- case closed.
If not -- try to find out why:
- Death (not too far fetched, looking at some of the pictures)?
- Too expensive?
- Lost interest - if so, why?
- Wife was opposed to it?
- Family happened?
- Bought a house? (Much easier and more comfortable to live in one of those than in a glider of equal value!)
- Soloed as youth member and moved out of the area for college/job etc. and couldn't find another club nearby?
- Other?

Uli
'AS'
Uli,

The AOPA study on student pilots failing to complete of several years ago was telling, mostly lack of instructor/student bonding. Clearly everyone started training with a goal. I did look at recipients of soaring flight scholarships and found that easily 80% were still in aviation, many in soaring, and some had ATPs. I tried to get access to other soaring scholarship recipients (non-SSA) and got a few which were included in the results, but this needs to be revisited with other groups giving soaring opportunities. Bob Wander spoke at an SSA Convention Focus on Clubs Track a few years ago and emphasized the need for instructor/student bonding and the need, if not bonding properly, to help the student find an instructor they could bond with. I guess this speaks to the need under the FAA system of a student working with a single instructor, rather than a rotating pool, to make progress and to succeed. I felt a bit different in the UK where all gliding instructors received centralized training and used a national syllabus, that progress wasn't dependent on flying with the same instructor regularly. However, my observation and impression of US training is that it seems to work best if the student regularly trains with the same CFI-G, which doesn't work with rotating instructor du jour scheduling. Perhaps someone disagrees. I'm not an instructor. What seems to work is what I call the 'dance ticket method', that is, an instructor arranges time, glider, and student, and then make best use of a two-hour training window. This seems to keep the student on track and is the same scheduling method my wife did as a driving instructor for 22 years. Do the same and arrange for a tow pilot if not a scheduled flying day to do finishing work when nearing the check ride. Does this fit with the way a club operates or has 'always done things'? Maybe, maybe not. The instructor then knows he has a student or two or three on any given day. Works best if the instructor is getting compensated and taking the time to 'push' the student. Leaving it up to the student to 'show up' is surely less effective. Need to show interest in the student and their progress.

A few years ago, the FAA quit expiring student pilot licenses. A recent pull of the FAA Ratings database (does not include those who've opted for privacy) includes the following student pilots:
83,191 with expired medicals 2012-2021.
16,804 with no medical dates nor expiries.
6,389 who have medical dates between 022012-082016 but no expiry dates.

There's no filter to know how many were glider students. But I would hate to think 16,804 reflects that. Maybe many are student drone pilot pilots that haven't completed their certification yet so are still listed as student pilots and there are 96,155 remote pilots in the FAA registry.

Anyone want to explore further?

Frank Whiteley

The clubs are in general decline, not just the gliding clubs but all clubs. Nowadays people want to be independent, autonomous, free to do what they want with no obligations, clubs carry obligations.

Often people take on an activity on their own and then join clubs or societies to share their experiences and improve with like minded people. With gliding you need to join and put up with "whatever" before you get onto your activity, so it is not an easy gradual commitment where you get to experience and fall in love with an activity before you have to put up with the 'family'.

We require a club and federation model to maintain the cost of gliding relatively low, that is achieved by extensive use of free volunteer work. If we had to pay at professional rates for what is necessary to commit gliding, the cost would be prohibitive. Standards, management, governance, maintenance, tuition, certification, competitions, towing etc are largely performed by volunteers. Many people are happy to get involved once they are hooked into gliding but again for the newcomer that is not an attractive model.

So Gliding reliance on clubs puts us in a bad position to attract new people.

Should we have a glide now pay later model? Well I am afraid that is already what we do with the volunteer model, I can't imagine asking current pilots to pay on top of the effort they put to attract new pilots.
We need to face the reality that to increase the freedom and independence of the pilots and thereby attract new pilots, gliding will become more expensive and less accessible.

But does the decline of gliding have anything to do with cost? I doubt, chess had a similar decline and it can't be due to the ever rising cost of the chess sets, right? What we need is Netflix to do a sexy serie like The Queen Gambit but about Gliding then Gliding will raise just like chess is now. Good luck with that, 2 minutes in 50 Shades of Grey was as good as we will ever get.

I think it is mostly about image, what is gliding, who is it for, would you want to be one of them? That is something that needs to be worked on at all levels, federations, clubs, individuals. The Clubhouses with 1970's carpet and rules posted on the walls don't really help.


I don't have a solution but I'll venture offering some suggestions, nothing really new nor ground breaking:
- Make it a family friendly activity so the Husband, Wife, Pops or Kid do not have to take time off from the family every time they go gliding. Whatever it takes, put a swimming pool, skatepark, fitness center, coffee shop or whatever at the airfield so it becomes family friendly.
- Make gliding easy to do anywhere, anytime, most clubs are cliquey, someone coming from another club is not trusted, they need to earn their stripes, they needs check rides, often re-certification, redo what they already did.. We need standards and trust in them. When you are in holidays and your wife and daughter want to go shopping for the day you should be able to go to the local gliding club to continue your training where you left it, not a day pushing gliders just to be "assessed" at the end of the day because they have never seen you before.
- Most people are honest, when they have fun they want to share it and repay for it. Make them feel useful, let them do things, make them understand the real value of their contribution, be engaged, heard, proud. From day one, not only once they are known, trusted and respected.
- Rather than advertising and discounting gliding, we need to create an image that is appealing. When people know what they want, they know how to use Google and find us.
- I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with playstations and iphones (I have both and glide 120+ hours per year), we don't need need to trigger an EMP over large cities to bring people into gliding.

While it may be the case that a volunteer/club model keeps costs low while gliding continues to use 1950's infrastructure and methods, this will not necessarily be the case if/when we begin to adopt alternative technologies at scale.

For a typical winch launch you need as a minimum:
1. A wing runner
2. A signaller
3. A winch driver
4. A recovery driver to fetch the glider when it lands and bring it back to the launch point

None of these are required for self-launching.
Furthermore, turnaround time will be faster with a powered glider in part because it can taxi under its own power.

We need to adopt self-launching with slot booking, as power has been doing since the beginning.

Gliding isn't in decline because it's becoming too expensive. It is in decline because it does not cater to the needs and expectations of modern society. I will say again: fewer people these days are willing to stand around on an airfield for an entire day for perhaps 20 mins in the air.
That's the problem...


....along with the fact that we're not publicly executing those who choose not to pay tax, of course.




On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 8:46:22 AM UTC, Jax wrote:
The clubs are in general decline, not just the gliding clubs but all clubs. Nowadays people want to be independent, autonomous, free to do what they want with no obligations, clubs carry obligations.

Often people take on an activity on their own and then join clubs or societies to share their experiences and improve with like minded people. With gliding you need to join and put up with "whatever" before you get onto your activity, so it is not an easy gradual commitment where you get to experience and fall in love with an activity before you have to put up with the 'family'.

We require a club and federation model to maintain the cost of gliding relatively low, that is achieved by extensive use of free volunteer work. If we had to pay at professional rates for what is necessary to commit gliding, the cost would be prohibitive. Standards, management, governance, maintenance, tuition, certification, competitions, towing etc are largely performed by volunteers. Many people are happy to get involved once they are hooked into gliding but again for the newcomer that is not an attractive model.

So Gliding reliance on clubs puts us in a bad position to attract new people.

Should we have a glide now pay later model? Well I am afraid that is already what we do with the volunteer model, I can't imagine asking current pilots to pay on top of the effort they put to attract new pilots.
We need to face the reality that to increase the freedom and independence of the pilots and thereby attract new pilots, gliding will become more expensive and less accessible.

But does the decline of gliding have anything to do with cost? I doubt, chess had a similar decline and it can't be due to the ever rising cost of the chess sets, right? What we need is Netflix to do a sexy serie like The Queen Gambit but about Gliding then Gliding will raise just like chess is now. Good luck with that, 2 minutes in 50 Shades of Grey was as good as we will ever get.

I think it is mostly about image, what is gliding, who is it for, would you want to be one of them? That is something that needs to be worked on at all levels, federations, clubs, individuals. The Clubhouses with 1970's carpet and rules posted on the walls don't really help.


I don't have a solution but I'll venture offering some suggestions, nothing really new nor ground breaking:
- Make it a family friendly activity so the Husband, Wife, Pops or Kid do not have to take time off from the family every time they go gliding. Whatever it takes, put a swimming pool, skatepark, fitness center, coffee shop or whatever at the airfield so it becomes family friendly.
- Make gliding easy to do anywhere, anytime, most clubs are cliquey, someone coming from another club is not trusted, they need to earn their stripes, they needs check rides, often re-certification, redo what they already did. We need standards and trust in them. When you are in holidays and your wife and daughter want to go shopping for the day you should be able to go to the local gliding club to continue your training where you left it, not a day pushing gliders just to be "assessed" at the end of the day because they have never seen you before.
- Most people are honest, when they have fun they want to share it and repay for it. Make them feel useful, let them do things, make them understand the real value of their contribution, be engaged, heard, proud. From day one, not only once they are known, trusted and respected.
- Rather than advertising and discounting gliding, we need to create an image that is appealing. When people know what they want, they know how to use Google and find us.
- I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with playstations and iphones (I have both and glide 120+ hours per year), we don't need need to trigger an EMP over large cities to bring people into gliding.

On Friday, 12 March 2021 at 10:33:06 UTC, wrote:
While it may be the case that a volunteer/club model keeps costs low while gliding continues to use 1950's infrastructure and methods, this will not necessarily be the case if/when we begin to adopt alternative technologies at scale.

For a typical winch launch you need as a minimum:
1. A wing runner
2. A signaller
3. A winch driver
4. A recovery driver to fetch the glider when it lands and bring it back to the launch point

None of these are required for self-launching.
Furthermore, turnaround time will be faster with a powered glider in part because it can taxi under its own power.

We need to adopt self-launching with slot booking, as power has been doing since the beginning.

Gliding isn't in decline because it's becoming too expensive. It is in decline because it does not cater to the needs and expectations of modern society. I will say again: fewer people these days are willing to stand around on an airfield for an entire day for perhaps 20 mins in the air.
That's the problem...

People have a range of interests and what they do in gliding, instructing, tugs, local soaring, decent cross countries, and you still haven't really elaborated on why you think this 20 minute flight might be a big ambition for a significant proportion. OK for you if that's what you want, but even some early solos still hope they might get an hour and a bit.

Nobody is stopping you doing this for yourself. Several clubs have some self-launching gliders. If you turn up on the potential best day of the year, and there's a queue of 100+ gliders waiting for the first wispy cu to appear before they all go, some on badge or tecord attempts, nobody will object to you going to the front and do your flight first. If launching is already in progress when you turn up, take your place in the queue, or it might fit in ok to let you go from alongside

Even if a club had 100 gliders that are all self-launching you might still have queue issues if you want to be there only an hour predefined by your booking several days earlier, compared to the people rigging at 8 am on a 750 km day. Note that the keen local soarers and trainees in two seaters aren't excluded on those days, they get their flights too.

On less busy days, it wont be a problem for you. But believe it or not, and perhaps you won't, even from early on, more people want to fly on the nice days. Your suggestions don't seem to take much account of that variability of demand.

Regretfully you seem to have misunderstood what has been said.

Nobody is suggesting that standing around on an airfield all day for a 20min flight is an ambition!

The idea is that fewer people would be willing to do this and as such gliding, in its current form, does not satisfy the demands of modern society.

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 2:15:45 PM UTC, andy l wrote:
On Friday, 12 March 2021 at 10:33:06 UTC, wrote:
While it may be the case that a volunteer/club model keeps costs low while gliding continues to use 1950's infrastructure and methods, this will not necessarily be the case if/when we begin to adopt alternative technologies at scale.

For a typical winch launch you need as a minimum:
1. A wing runner
2. A signaller
3. A winch driver
4. A recovery driver to fetch the glider when it lands and bring it back to the launch point

None of these are required for self-launching.
Furthermore, turnaround time will be faster with a powered glider in part because it can taxi under its own power.

We need to adopt self-launching with slot booking, as power has been doing since the beginning.

Gliding isn't in decline because it's becoming too expensive. It is in decline because it does not cater to the needs and expectations of modern society. I will say again: fewer people these days are willing to stand around on an airfield for an entire day for perhaps 20 mins in the air.
That's the problem...

People have a range of interests and what they do in gliding, instructing, tugs, local soaring, decent cross countries, and you still haven't really elaborated on why you think this 20 minute flight might be a big ambition for a significant proportion. OK for you if that's what you want, but even some early solos still hope they might get an hour and a bit.

Nobody is stopping you doing this for yourself. Several clubs have some self-launching gliders. If you turn up on the potential best day of the year, and there's a queue of 100+ gliders waiting for the first wispy cu to appear before they all go, some on badge or tecord attempts, nobody will object to you going to the front and do your flight first. If launching is already in progress when you turn up, take your place in the queue, or it might fit in ok to let you go from alongside

Even if a club had 100 gliders that are all self-launching you might still have queue issues if you want to be there only an hour predefined by your booking several days earlier, compared to the people rigging at 8 am on a 750 km day. Note that the keen local soarers and trainees in two seaters aren't excluded on those days, they get their flights too.

On less busy days, it wont be a problem for you. But believe it or not, and perhaps you won't, even from early on, more people want to fly on the nice days. Your suggestions don't seem to take much account of that variability of demand.

fredag den 12. marts 2021 kl. 15.15.45 UTC+1 skrev andy l:
On Friday, 12 March 2021 at 10:33:06 UTC, wrote:
While it may be the case that a volunteer/club model keeps costs low while gliding continues to use 1950's infrastructure and methods, this will not necessarily be the case if/when we begin to adopt alternative technologies at scale.

For a typical winch launch you need as a minimum:
1. A wing runner
2. A signaller
3. A winch driver
4. A recovery driver to fetch the glider when it lands and bring it back to the launch point

None of these are required for self-launching.
Furthermore, turnaround time will be faster with a powered glider in part because it can taxi under its own power.

We need to adopt self-launching with slot booking, as power has been doing since the beginning.

Gliding isn't in decline because it's becoming too expensive. It is in decline because it does not cater to the needs and expectations of modern society. I will say again: fewer people these days are willing to stand around on an airfield for an entire day for perhaps 20 mins in the air.
That's the problem...

People have a range of interests and what they do in gliding, instructing, tugs, local soaring, decent cross countries, and you still haven't really elaborated on why you think this 20 minute flight might be a big ambition for a significant proportion. OK for you if that's what you want, but even some early solos still hope they might get an hour and a bit.

Nobody is stopping you doing this for yourself. Several clubs have some self-launching gliders. If you turn up on the potential best day of the year, and there's a queue of 100+ gliders waiting for the first wispy cu to appear before they all go, some on badge or tecord attempts, nobody will object to you going to the front and do your flight first. If launching is already in progress when you turn up, take your place in the queue, or it might fit in ok to let you go from alongside

Even if a club had 100 gliders that are all self-launching you might still have queue issues if you want to be there only an hour predefined by your booking several days earlier, compared to the people rigging at 8 am on a 750 km day. Note that the keen local soarers and trainees in two seaters aren't excluded on those days, they get their flights too.

On less busy days, it wont be a problem for you. But believe it or not, and perhaps you won't, even from early on, more people want to fly on the nice days. Your suggestions don't seem to take much account of that variability of demand.

Then all we'll need is the production of a reliable self launch engine that's meant to be used for it.
And since self launchers have been around for decades, why don't we have them? Has anything changed to reason different expectations. Not really.

Gliding is too inexpensive.

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 2:42:23 PM UTC, wrote:
Gliding is too inexpensive.

You're right.
Gliding is declining because punters turn up to clubs wanting a trial lesson and become so disgusted with how cheap it is that they take their business elsewhere.