On Sep 15, 10:45*pm, wrote:

Sounds like Harris Hill has an excellent and well rounded fleet for
people to work through. Many of us in smaller clubs are not so
fortunate and the top of the line is or was an L-13. Having those
next step aircraft available seems key to me in retaining members or
driving them down the road to ownership. Give them a taste of things
to come with an incentive ride in a Duo or K21 or anything that is
smooth, well handled and quiet and I think you stand a better chance
at them sticking with soaring and progressing their skills. That's my
primary argument for quality glass dual ships.

What percentage of club members show up on any given weekend during
the soaring season? Also, how big is the club?

There are many things that are out of our control. The weather, our
location relative to population centers, but if your club has managed
to find such successful ways of attracting and retaining members I'd
encourage or even beg you to share that info. It's certainly more
useful use of keyboard time than blamestorming around which glider we
should hold responsible for the success/failure of soaring.





We typically have 30-40 juniors.

Peter - that's fantastic. How do you attract and keep that many?

Don't want to speak for Peter, but maybe flying low performance,
affordable aircraft that enables a rating without a second mortgage
has something to do with it.

And of course, perhaps the glassholes dissing older trainers that may
not produce the latest champions are flying somewhere else...

Aerodyne