Since the topic of travel / distance (in the USA) and lots of club
competitions (in the BGA) came up, let me ask this:

1) UK pilots: Can you actually take enough time off work and such to
compete in many of these 7 - 9 day competitions each year? Or do
folks still only go to 1 or 2 apiece?

2) USA pilots: If more Regionals were added, could you actually _go_
to a greater number of Regionals each year?

I've talked about this in another thread, but it seems to me that a
big factor in competition attendance is time-off-work and/or time-away-
from-family... At least for us non-retired pilots (read: young-punks /
whipper-snappers)! A week is a long time to be gone, especially if
you're trying to do it several times each year. This is why I brought
up the subject of shorter club/casual competitions in another thread -
it seems like a better way to get newbies into competition and to get
local clubs doing some fun-and-challenging flying... but I don't want
to hijack this thread here.

Let me just conclude with this question: Is there a consensus among
pilots about the primary purpose of Regionals? Is it to introduce new
people to competitive flying, is it to support "fun" contest-flying,
or is it a part of the "elimination" / ranking process to pick a US
Team?

Pick a primary purpose/goal and shape the event around that. If other
events are required to meet other needs, then organize those events
around that other particular goal. A competition can certainly be
both fun AND tough, but if you try to make one event all-things-to-all-
people its just going to be a mess...

--Noel