On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 12:10:44 AM UTC-6, David Shelton wrote:
On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:31:17 AM UTC-7, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 5:03:57 AM UTC-6, David Shelton wrote:
It is worth noting that paragliding is on the rise in the USA, and it is attracting a younger crowd. At the very least, we should be marketing more to this group. Sometimes I wonder if paragliding is the future of our sport, and not the $150k motor glider.
I am not a risk averse person and believe that persons have the right to participate in activities that enrich their life experience, but I think informed decisions do factor into choices. Currently, paragliding web sites are preaching 'It's safer than driving' because there's a 1/10,000 chance of dying in a car and 1/11,000 chance of dying while paragliding. Since the FAA doesn't track Part103 flight statistics, we're left to 'industry' thinking, I suppose as if death were the only factor. I think if they bothered to discuss the number of broken backs, broken limbs, concussions, and other injuries, it might paint a different picture. Believe me, I don't want more government oversight either. Here in Colorado, the state government has pending legislature to require the ski industry to provide explicit information on injuries and deaths, which is oppose in some quarters. The winter sports realm already divides up the accidents and incidents. For example, if you back country ski and perish in an avalanche, that's not a skiing fatality, that's an avalanche fatality. I haven't skiied in a long time and when I did, people didn't wear helmets. Same applies to snowmobiling. Kind of skews the safety statistics I think. Because I'm involved and interested in the sport of soaring, I've had Google Alerts enabled in my g-mail account for several years to filter for news by gliding, soaring, sailplane, glider, and a few others. Of course, sugar gliders, base units in the commercial truck industry, porch swings, Fortnite, and others get tagged, but it works pretty well. Though I don't look for paragliding or hang-gliding, I still get plenty of alerts about those activities, many times the number of soaring related alerts. Maybe I should try the other filters because maybe some media channels actually do accurately report on paragliding. Several soaring pilots I know came to the sport from hang-gliding, including RAS posters. Many have proved to be excellent sailplane pilots. A few years ago I recall 5 of the top 10 US OLC pilots for a year were these pilots. I don't know if the any of the other five had HG experience in the past. In addition, quite a few local glider pilots have the same background. I haven't surveyed anything, but I only known of one who arrived from paragliding and he took up soaring after breaking a number of bones in a severe paragliding mishap. A lot of young people go rock climbing also. I personally find rocks very unforgiving even for minor errors and if on hits you from above. I've known about three rock climbers personally, one remained unscathed and major in avalanche studies, another came home one evening with a big scrap and goose egg on his forehead and no skin on his knuckles (he moved on to HG , set at least one world record, and hosts a well-known HG web site, http://ozreport..com/), and one had a large 300lb boulder peeled her from the rocks in a 30ft rope drop and ended up losing motion in a smashed finger, suffered a concussion and had an ankle injury. She was lucky to have survived and it had nothing to do with her skill and ability. I hope a number of these young people will both survive and find their way to soaring and many HG pilots have done.
FWIW, Dr. Dan shared this on his FB page recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj7sjJi6zJ4
Paragliding is certainly more dangerous than sailplanes, but plenty of people rightfully think that sailplane pilots are crazy. Both activities are extreme sports compared to the average persons risk tolerance.

Hang gliding is on a swift decline, and has largely been replaced by paragliding. Unless they figure out how to fit a hang glider into a backpack, I don't think the sport will ever thrive again. I also know a few former hang gliders that transitioned into sailplanes. Now that paragliders out-number hang gliders 2:1 in the US, I expect they will be providing more of the sailplane recruits from now on. I believe the model airplane industry is also thriving. The question is... how do you market to them?

These days, the best way to sell anything involves building marketing funnels, customized landing pages, targeted Google ads, social media campaigns, search engine optimization, etc. As an aging group, I'm afraid we aren't the most competitive bunch in the digital space, which is where potential young recruits spend so much time. It might be a good idea for soaring clubs to solicite a professional SEO audit, and to put more effort into implementing the resulting suggestions.

Regarding cost... rising cost certainly does make it harder to grow the sport. However, I've instructed several privileged youth; the parents completely funded their flying expenses. Even with unlimited financial resources, my experience is that it is getting harder to get teens to read books or study. They have a million things competing for their time. Learning to fly doesn't doesn't always compete with video games or Youtube. I honestly don't know how to overcome this part of the problem.
I agree that HG has issues though the rigid wings were a vast improvement in safety and performance. I agree all are air sports with degrees of extreme. The AMA, like the EAA, and SSA have pretty high average age memberships. A few years ago, EAA said it was 64. SSA took a guess at 57 about 105years ago. Probably more like EAA now. AMA was similar, but their engagement with drones may have skewed this in the past 5-6 years. There are 129,000 student pilots without medicals in the FAA releasable data. A small percentage may be glider students, but a large number are undoubtedly signed up for a drone rating. My last pull listed over 96,000 U/SUAS drone only ratings. EAA is also showing interest there. There are also quite a few Student Pilots with lapsed medicals, which means they didn't achieve their goal, which the AOPA survey a few years ago elaborated on. I don't see any of these as low hanging fruit and of course there's no Part103 ratings.