On Wednesday, July 16, 2014 7:10:58 PM UTC-7, Kevin Brooker wrote:


Even if families are taken out of the picture how many of us have friends
to bring along for crew? Maybe once and then most likely, if they don't
fly themselves, never again. For the most part crewing is thankless,
sedentary, and awfully dull. Crewing requires a certain amount of
adventurous spirit to drive around unfamiliar parts of the country with an
unfamiliar rig for hours to scoop up a friend. I enjoy retrieves but many
do not. Why not have a trailer backing contest; lock picking competition;
something else to do while the pilots are flying. At least they'd have
something to do and might become the National Champion Retrieve Crew.

Yes, doing something besides the status quo will require work. For decades
the rule changes; class changes; task changes and flight regime changes
have been taking place in various forms and contest attendance is still
falling. The lack of attendance has very little to do with the actual
flying. Attendance is down for all of the non-flying reasons. What is the
risk in trying something different to improve the contest experience?

--

Kevin Brooker

It's a noble sentiment. I don't know how realistic it is.

As someone who grew up in the social soaring scene of the 70s and who brought my two daughters to a bunch of Soaring contests more recently (almost all at Parowan, UT), I'd make a couple of observations.

1) Many more families are much busier now with a lot more structured time for kids and a lot more two-income (or single parent) households. The idea of one parent being a competitive glider pilot and the other dutifully minding the kids and crewing duties is so rare today as to be nonexistent. I don't think entertainment will bring it back - it's a secular shift in the structure of the family over the past three decades.

2) My kids came with me because they wanted to be with me - even if I was gone flying for 5 hours in the middle of the day. They found things to do during the days, but mostly this was gong to WalMart, reading books, surfing the Internet, hitting the Dairy Freeze. I think organized activities would have neutral to negative rather than a positive. A pool would have been welcome, but not realistic. Soaring sites are not destination resorts and generally are not surrounded by points of interest within close proximity that would be on anyone's list if they weren't already trapped there. Sure, the petroglyphs at the Parowan gap are interesting, but no one's going to build a vacation around it so it's just a way to pass the time, not a reason to go.

I think the effort/return of having a social director for a contest just isn't there. Better for participants to do a little advanced planning and maybe even get together with other soaring families to try to make a more personal experience. Picking things to do gets personal very fast.

BTW - one of our best vacations was a National Parks tour following a Sports Class Nationals at Parowan - but that was in the week after the contest ant took us on a 1000 mile loop around southern Utah. My daughters also loved hitting Las Vegas for a couple of days after contests on the drive home. None of these things require the contest staff to do anything.

I'm sue other people have their own experiences.

9B