On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 8:11:50 AM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Friday, August 28, 2015 at 3:30:13 AM UTC-4, Roger Hurley wrote:

To make cross-country soaring more
attractive and accessible, to encourage more to just go fly more, and
cross-country, the gamechanger is engines.

In particular FES? FES is a modern encouragement to balance out the modern deterrents. I understand that FES(s) are catching on big time in the UK. I wonder if any of them are club ships? It will be interesting to see how FES changes XC participation in the UK.

I wonder if new pilots will decide that they don't need FES after a few flights, or if they will decide that it is essential.

FES, at this time, is limited to what I would call high end, new single seat aircraft. These are not the machines that new pilots will be flying cross country. It will take a very long time before these ships trickle down to the group of pilots that we have been discussing.
UH