On Sunday, October 27, 2019 at 11:55:32 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Friday, October 25, 2019 at 1:56:21 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
Lots of people stay out of racing because they perceive it to be dangerous, citing gaggles and midair risk; because they don't want to land out a lot; because they don't have or want to bring a crew.

Thanks, John.

I was researching a contest I flew back in 1980 (yeah, almost 40 years ago). Many of the gliders are still competing as are a few of the pilots. Technology has changed--navigation was via map/compass and TP verification was by photo. Your choice of final glide calculators was cardboard or plastic.

The big difference: there were over 90 entries for 67 spots. So when I read about "big" contests here with 25 gliders per class, I just want to laugh out loud. Many of you have no idea (no offense to JJ, UH, KS, KM, SZ, and others who were around then).

What happened? As with Amelia Earhart, no one really knows, but class proliferation has gotta be one reason. That's competition classes, not--never mind. We had 3 classes then. Now there are 7 (excluding 1-26). Maybe more; we keep adding to the list.

The retirement of a generation of pilots who were military trained during WWII and got into soaring afterward probably contributed.

Costs have gone up, for sure. Median household income in 1980 was $18,684, about what we had in our LS-3 at the time. The same figure now is $68,000+. That's household income, not the cost of a new state-of-the-art sailplane. I guess I didn't have to explain that. It would be interesting to engage the IRS/FBI to investigate actual pilots from 1980 and 2019 to determine their household incomes. Maybe we can get Elizabeth Warren on that one if she's elected. But I suspect 1980 skewed somewhat more to the middle class than current rosters do. Soaring has never been cheap; it's just more expensive now.

And speaking of demand that declines with higher prices, I listened to the experts who predicted that mandating GPS data loggers would increase contest participation. Right. So I'm similarly cynical that participation declines from increasing landouts will be more than offset by a national upsurge in soaring popularity from one of our own winning the Worlds. We didn't see it the last 4 times an American was World Champion but, hey, this Internet thing means the old rules don't apply, and I'm not referring to competition rules.

The U.S. Rules (for competition) weren't simple then, but they're arguably more complex now, although I applaud the Rules Committee for their work to streamline them. I don't hear anyone saying that FAI Rules are simpler, however. So even if rules complexity were an aggravating factor in declining participation, it apparently wouldn't favor adopting FAI Rules.

In fact, I'd agree with John that if FAI Rules lead to more landouts and, by implication, fewer crewless pilots, then adopting them wholesale would hurt contest participation.

I suspect Tim Taylor and others are correct in saying that moving to FAI Rules would improve the chances of U.S. pilots making it onto the podium. But if that comes at the cost of even a handful of pilots dropping out of competition, that's too high a price, IMO, in an environment where more than one class is worried about having the minimum number of competitors show up for a Nationals. I've been crewless for most of the past 13 years. I've flown my class nationals (Standard) the past 5 years and landed out 3 times, 2 of those at airports for an aero retrieve. Being crewless may or may not affect the way I fly but for sure being able to do so affects whether I show up. The same is true for tasks that result in more landouts: e.g., ASTs, especially in uncertain weather. I actually like flying ASTs and knowing we're competing on the same course, but TATs and MATs definitely get us home more often than in the old days, and I'm not even talking about distance tasks (look it up).

One of my concerns is abdicating responsibility for rules governance to another organization. We have enough complaints now (mostly undeserved) about our own Rules Committee--and we can lobby those folks any time we want. With FAI Rules, how much further removed will be the IGC Plenary or whomever makes the decisions? Many think the U.S. Rules have been arguably better in certain ways over the years (I definitely like the flexibility the current start cylinder provides to tailor one's start to the conditions and course). How much noise will we make when we can no longer control our own destiny, so to speak? Fast forward to 2022: "I'm tired of trying to work from within to make change in the IGC; it's time for the U.S. to go our own way!")

I know, I know, we can deal with these conflicts with local procedures. But isn't FAI Rules with enough local procedures to accommodate our preferences essentially the same as U.S. Rules that combine the best of FAI and U.S..?

Just for grins, how about two sets of rules at the same contest? I'm not sure it's still true but for a while we had two different standards for GPS flight recorders (Appendix B seems to have been omitted from the Rules in 2019). If you wanted to be considered for the U.S. Team, you needed a higher-standard flight recorder than did the masses (all 5 or 6 of them). So why not score the Nationals using FAI and US formulae and only the FAI scores count for U.S. Team selection? Or assign ASTs but allow 5 or 10 mile circles and score them both ways, with only the 500m circle flights counting for U.S. Team selection. Sure, that means you could win the Nationals but be excluded for Team selection (which could have happened with the flight recorder rule). But if changing the world order by pushing American pilots up the ranks is that important, so be it.

I'm confident the Rules Committee will do the right thing as long as they continue to pay attention to shrinking contest rolls and trying to address that.

Chip Bearden
JB

With regard to pilot participation, I think that at best the rules would have a minor effect on this. There is a far bigger and more complex problem here, that affects not just soaring, but general aviation in general, and that is the declining numbers and aging out of pilots. And it's not simply just because "flying has become so expensive". I think it has more to do with less young people having an interest in aviation to start with. They are more interested in saying at home and playing video games, than building a model airplane. When I grew up I had a passion for aviation. I'd read books on the subject. My first toy was a model of a 747. I built RC gliders, even designing and flying my own model, from the ground up. When I talk to others around me at work or in my other social circles, there is very little interest in aviation. I find this a bit strange. And I feel the solution to our problem of dwindling numbers at contests has more to do with increasing interest in aviation, and improving access to flying, than it does with worrying about rules. Granted, rules can have an effect on how elite pilots train for and think about flying specific tasks, and this can have an effect on how they perform at the international level, but if we don't do more to improve participation in the sport at its base, discussing differences in rules won't matter. The more people involved in soaring, the more will start flying contests.