On Thursday, April 5, 2018 at 5:17:26 PM UTC-4, kirk.stant wrote:
If a club member (even in his own plane) is still flying and unaccounted for, I think it is absolutely unacceptable for the club operations to shut down. That's why you join (and pay for) a club!

At our club, the "hard core" hangs around until the last ship is down or retrieved. Tracking is via Spot or Cell or radio calls. We more commonly do aero retrieves, so a tow plane and pilot will be ready until we are sure they are not needed (then, and only then, do we open the beer cooler).

The club I was a member of (for 3 months) before joining this one did not have that philosophy. After they asked me to come back and land on a windy but perfectly good XC day - around 2pm! - because they couldn't stay up and were all about to go home, I quit and moved to a much more accommodating operation. And haven't regretted it a minute. My wife/crew was surprised I lasted that long!

Kirk
66

The club wanted you down early so they can go home? Wow, that's amazing, Kirk.

Despite what I said above about it being the responsibility of "buddies" and not the club as a whole, it is generally the case in our club too that the "hard core" stick around until everybody's back home and de-rigged. But we don't have any firm "procedures" for that, AFAIK. At this point we have so many members with private gliders that on a good XC day there are usually several members flying XC, and some of those are the "hard core" that wait around. It wasn't always like that.