On Oct 14, 8:43*am, wrote:
On Oct 13, 11:31*pm, Ramy wrote:

Here is a sobering suggestion how we can get more meaningful
statistics, at least for XC pilots, instead of using the number of SSA
members as a reference, which is far from reflecting the number of
active pilot:

Use the OLC 'statistics - all flights' for the year (http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0....html?st=olc&r......)
to find the toal number of pilots who submited at least one flight
this year since each pilot is listed only once (1023 for USA in 2011).
Then cross refernce with the list of names of pilots got killed in
2011, and you get a meaningful statistic for XC pilots. I don't have
all the names but I know of at least one OLC participant who is no
longer with us this year, which makes it at least 1/1000.
Someone who has all the names can come up with more accurate number.

Ramy

Interesting idea based on assumption that active pilots fly XC and log
their flights to OLC.
My club is an example of one that will not favor this method.
"Rough" (very) statistics.
Members that are "active" defined as flying at least 10 flights last
year- about 60.
Total flights- about 1600
Members flying cross country - about a *dozen
Members logging into OLC- about 3.
Possibly Frank Whitely would have a way to get a better handle on US
activity though obviously there is some activity that SSA does not
see. I would guess that is not a huge percentage of total activity.
FWIW
UH

The only way we'll get there is to have soaring organizations report
their activity as is done in some European countries.

To that end, a software package the enables such data collection and
eases the burden of record keeping for clubs, chapters, and commercial
operators that could generate periodic reports would move us several
steps forward. There are actually efforts in progress.

Then again, there are some clubs and commercial operators that have no
SSA affiliation. Within and outside of the SSA, several seem to work
at avoiding contact, though individuals within those organizations are
quite approachable.

Frank Whiteley