Asbjorn Hojmark wrote:

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 13:37:02 +0000, Robert Ehrlich
wrote:

if we didn't have this sponsoring in the past, France would certainly
not be among the 3 countries (with Germany and USA) where the number
of glider pilots exceeds (barely in France) 10000.

Actually that isn't very much. I believe there are approx 60M people
in France, and you say you have 10K glider pilots. There are in the
order of 5½M people in Denmark and we have close to 2K glider pilots.


I completely agree, this is not very much. The ratio pilots/people is often
higher in small countries, Finland is another good example. Maybe this
is due to the fact that this nevertherless put the number of pilots near
to the minimum workable number, i.e. if it were lower, gliding would have
vanished in that country and so the country would not show in the statistics.
Anyway my point was only that without public sponsoring, this number would
certainly be lower, if even gliding would still be practised here. According
to a book about gliding history in France, the number was 23000 in 1990, but
8500 among them were short time "licences" (in the sense of registration to
the national organisation (FFVV), not pilots certificates, even an intro ride
has such a registration).