On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 4:45:59 AM UTC-6, wrote:
Money is an easy scapegoat but not the root of the problem. Look around and see where people spend discretionary cash. Skiing, car racing, RVs, drones, computers, the list is long. People have the cash they choose to spend it elsewhere.

If each club just ate the fees to scholarship a kid it would not help very much and be super low risk to the organization since very few would take up on the offer.

Racing classes are similar. Yes travel is a huge expense for contests. Changing classes isn’t s fix. Maybe changing he format is the way to go. GPS opens a huge possibility for tasking yet the rules are completely attached to the camera era. Contests have not changed much since the 60s and 70s. Many sports have multiple disciplines within and give out a championship to each discipline.

For example biathlon has a sprint, pursuit, mass start, individual, and s few relays. Why not emulate this with soaring contests. Set a short, med, and long task.. what about a MAT and OLC style task with one winner for each. The current format punishes a bad day. Change it up and try something else on the racing scene. If the sport is dying where is the risk in taking a chance?

Adding classes has been done for years and is diluting things and has also not brought more into the sport. Aviation has an image problem not a money problem.

The sport is dying because of a general lack of interest in aviation. The interest in aviation is dying, in large part, due to expense, or perceived expense. There are ways to make it more affordable, but initial capital outlay for a club is still a very large amount of money.