I would never drive 2 days each way for possible 5 days of flying
(including practice day). My criteria: reasonable distance, chance for
good weather (based on location) and reasonable length of the contest,
no less than 6 flying days plus a practice day. For example drive up
on Saturday, Sunday practice, Mon-Sat contest , Sunday back home
(exactly like Perry).

On Jun 15, 9:13*am, wrote:
I'm not in the game so maybe this isn't an issue but my guess is races are too long. *Fit everything in a week. *Have Mon. be the practice day, race ends on Fri. Two days to drive in, two days to drive home. *Of course you would lose more contests to weather and maybe luck makes a bigger contribution then consistency, but if a race can be done in one week of vacation time the value/time spent changes.







On Thursday, June 14, 2012 7:30:37 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
My website has a copy of the article "The National Contest
Participation Dilemma" that appeared in this month's Soaring. I put
together a lot of numbers on contest participation, and tried to get
at some causes.

A few surprises: lots of new pilots show up, but they don't stick.
Pilots do not like to drive long distances. There are lots of contest-
capable gliders out there.

The article is meant to stir up discussion on what we should do,
including east/west nationals, mixed handicapped classes, picking team
members from outside "their" class, or (not in the article because I
hadn't heard of the idea at the time) having just one big nationals
with many small classes and multiple super-regional qualifiers.

Direct link
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...ocs/participat...

Webpage
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...index.htm#misc

John Cochrane