The biggest problem I see is that the "Sports" class has become the
alternate year contest for those pilots that don't want to travel
across the country to fly in their respective classes.

If the rules committee would move to create an East and West Nationals
for each class, the Club class would have a much better chance to be
what it is in Europe. *Not everyone owns a current racer and a club
class ship ;-).

So far the rules committee seems to be stuck in the past of cheap gas,
people with lots of vacation time and love to drive for days to get to
a Nationals. *They will say we have a problem with numbers at
contests, but staunchly refuse to think outside the box.

I guess if I had one of the latest ships, the money to travel
thousands of miles and plenty of vacation time I wouldn't want to
change the rules either so that others might be able to compete with
me at the nationals.

I am still waiting for any response form the rules committee on why we
can't change the current system and why they are happy letting the
numbers decline each year and do nothing to change it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I've been thinking about this for a while. I put the numbers together
and you're right. Typically about 3 pilots cross the Mississippi to
attend contests at Cordele, Mifflin, Montague, or Ephrata. Everyone
else either flies sports, or shifts up a class -- standard in 15, 15
in 18, 18 in open.

On the one hand, most pilots seem happy -- they seem to far prefer
flying in slightly wrong class rather than dragging all the way across
the country -- so what's the problem
On the other hand, clearly it's less than optimal, and the structure
of our contests isn't meeting what pilots want -- national-level
competition within a 2 day drive.

It's also an issue for US team selection. Take a look at the current
rankings

http://soaringweb.org/US_TEAM

you can see that US team selection picks from a very small pool of
pilots who actually show up in the same class for 2-3 years in a
row.

It's not that easy. Multiple nationals in each class means even
smaller contests, unless you merge classes with handicaps which is an
anathema to most FAI class pilots. US team selection would then have
to aggregate at least across multiple contests, and better yet across
classes. That's not that hard either, but it changes deep-set
traditions.

So, at least one rules commitee member is thinking hard about this
issue.

The poll is open, so it's a good time to tell the RC how you feel.

John Cochrane
BB