One of the big issues in soaring is retention of people. It is quite an
investment in training people to fly, hoping they will solo, get licensed, and
perhaps more importantly, stay in soaring.

If a person does not have the aviation interest to even know that gliders
exist, do we even want them in our sport? I think the pilots we want are those
that have the curiousity of aviation to know the range of options available in
aviation. If a person at an airshow is surprised that gliders even exist, it
seems to me that they lack the curiosity and drive to pursue this rather
challenging sport. IMO, the best indicator of a high potential candidate are
interests such as building model aircraft, flying kites, sailing etc. I
question whether even the typical power pilot would be a good glider guider.
I've met enough of them who have never even heard of gliding; their scope of
knowledge of aircraft is so limited that I wonder why they even got a power
ticket in the first place.

Rather than letting anyone join a club and take advantage of a flight training
program, how about giving an aptitude test to see if the canditate has the
basic intelligence and knowledge to better assure they might make it through
the flight training program? I would rather train one student to solo than
three students who quit half way through or take twice as many flights as most.
It would be a better utilization of club resouces, make everyone safer, and
increase the morale of the sport since the retention would be higher.

Jim Vincent
N483SZ
illspam