Some good points KM. After lurking for a long time re this I finally feel
compelled to share my thoughts as one of the "silent" folks out here.

I do not want you to call the police with my license plate number should I
pass you going over the speed limit. Nor do I want you to call my HOA
should I paint my house a slightly different shade of brown without their
permission. Nor do I wish you to report me to the club when I move my golf
ball slightly out of the rough.

Nor do I want you to review every one of my OLC flights in order to look for
infractions. Yup I bust 18K once in a great while. And not that I'm a
religious person but I think that "Let he without sin cast the first stone"
fits this discussion perfectly.

Before some squeaker writes back with yet another scenario of gliders
getting sucked into a 747 engine and offing all 400 souls on board resulting
in gliding being shut down forever I'll say that I am sure I could come up
with at least a dozen other equally harrowing potential conflicts but that
I'd suggest that all of those scenarios are statistically more likely to
occur where we all fly most frequently......between sunrise and sunset and
under 18K. That's why I have a transponder.

If you happened to notice that there are a couple of bad apples that
consistently fly outside the rules or if there is a gross infraction on any
given flight then pull them aside and ask them if they had considered how
that could impact not only them but the rest of us. But everyone looking
over everyone elses shoulder....come on folks.....pick up a good book or
play with your kids for a few minutes more each day instead.

Finally is there any data to show that this is really a problem i.e. the
discussions here have centered around one or two pilots and one or two
flights. The rest of the discussion has been conjecture. Let's go have fun
for God's sake and quit giving new pilots the impression that we're all a
bunch of paranoid anal retentive old farts.

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix