Why is Soaring declining

Well, I think also thermal soaring is not for everyone.
Flying in a tight circle for a while is "interesting"
even on my tummy, and I've been doing it a while.

I fly the sightseeing flights at sunset with a high tow for
newbies, lest they get sick. A great thermal day
doesn't seem like the best "first ride" day. If my
wife came with me on a typical "good soaring day" for
me, she'd blow guts, especially with my waggly rusty
rudder skills ;(

The hang glider and parachute and experienced pilot
guys, on the other hand, get right into it with nary
a whimper. The younguns also seem to do better than
the 40+ crowd on the first flight. I keep the
"Qyat Earp" bags handy...

We had a guy getting a power license who'd
toss cookies after every one of his first dozen flights,
and that was a Cezzna 152. About 100 circles in a
sailplane woulda been interesting :PPPP....

Gliding is easy to teach, easy to solo, mildly interesting
(mostly the tow) and not too expensive to get to license. Soaring is
quite different: nuances of weather, a lot of technique
to get it right, lots of decisions in flight, and L/D
does make a difference. And thermal soaring can have
a pretty bumpy tow and tight circles after release.

I dunno if I'd have gotten into the sport if the Hawaii
shoreline wasn't so pretty and if it wasn't for the smooth
ridge soaring...I still envy you guys with nice long
consistent ridgelines...personally I hate circling and
having to work for lift...I'd rather just float around all
day in peace at less than 15 degrees of bank...

Yep, it is a sport and a hobby. And just like freezing
my butt off in a catamaran vs. champagne and strawberries
on a 70 foot "sailboat", soaring vs. gliding/power has some
challenges that can involve a tad bit of suffering...
--

------------+
Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA

Eric Greenwell wrote in message ...

There is some truth to this claim, but it's more complicated than the
manufacturers "not listening".

Yes. Just as J.I.Case decided to abandon their smaller tractors for
more "profitable" higher buck tractors some twenty years ago. From 96
tractors per day, down to 21 now, and the tractors say "New Holland"
on them. Ten years ago it was already too late for them to try to
reclaim their major market, those farmers that didn't have $100K for a
shiny new humongous machine that they didn't really need.


Just join a thread ripping apart the PW5 to see how something "more
pedestrian" might sell.

Then look at how many of the voices ripping the pw actually have flown
or own one. Not a very good ratio of first hand knowledge to personal
opinion. Probably closer to 5% first hand and 95% ignorant badmouth.
2-33, 1-26, PW-5, Russia, makes no difference, it's below 40:1 and
anything that can be said negatively will be. Nobody asks if it's
serving the purpose for which it was designed.


Threads on a newsgroup are about as effective as dragging a foot to
stop a semi headed for a cliff on a 10% grade.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 06:29:53 UTC, (Lennie
the Lurker) wrote:

: Then look at how many of the voices ripping the pw actually have flown
: or own one. Not a very good ratio of first hand knowledge to personal
: opinion. Probably closer to 5% first hand and 95% ignorant badmouth.
: 2-33, 1-26, PW-5, Russia, makes no difference, it's below 40:1 and
: anything that can be said negatively will be. Nobody asks if it's
: serving the purpose for which it was designed.

As a 34:1 chap myself, and a strong supporter of the SIFOWs brigade, I
have nothing against the PW-5 per se. However, I am not sure that it
has fulfilled the purpose for which it was designed:

1) Stimulating interest by being affordable. Unfortunately for the
PW-5 (and the Silent, and the Russia, and ...) there are just too many
second hand gliders around for the same sort of money, and a ten year
old glider isn't nearly such an off-putting proposition as a ten-year
old car. So in this respect it has failed - it hasn't caused a surge
of interest, even if it costs what it was meant to. This is not to
disparage some local successes - it seems to have given the people in
New Zealand a way to renew a predominately Ka6 club fleet effectively
and popularly.

2) Stimulating interest by being a competition class. Unfortunately
for the PW-5, there just aren't that many pilots around who care about
competing. And, almost by definition, those who don't care enough to
be selling their houses, spouses and cars to buy something big and
modern are also unlikely to pay a premium for occasional lower-level
competition. It's a shame that more top-end pilots haven't taken to
it, but I suspect that the competition year is already pretty crowded.

I haven't flown one, though I'd like to, particularly to see how it
compares with my Pirat. From all accounts it's a very nice wee glider,
but I'm afraid that as far as renewing the sport goes, it has been a
failure. The cheap, simple, competitive gliders which attract people
into flying have lots of strings and pack intoa big rucksack. Maybe
the conventional gliding world should swallow its pride, descend from
its high horse, make common cause - and try to lure the paragliders
across when they get to an age when breaking ankles seems less
attractive ...

Ian

(Lennie the Lurker) wrote in message . com...

Look at the situation as it is, not as you want to
see it. Soaring doesn't need another $80k custom built hand made by
gnomes or trolls in der black forest, but anything that doesn't
measure up to some peoples wishes will be met with a blast of badmouth
right away. Almost every sailplane made today is made with the
competitor in mind, and the manufacturers aren't going to listen to
any suggestion that maybe something more pedestrian might sell. Which
suits the competitors quite well, and insures that the number of new
people will remain small, and declining.

Saying that people are "too lazy" to soar is like me saying soaring
people are too lazy to try metalworking. I just made a skid plate for
a 2-33 out of 1/4 inch AR plate, 3 1/2 hours pushing it through the
saw to cut to size. Call me lazy if you will, but I'd rather push the
steel than pay through the nose for what soaring costs, and it's just
as interesting.

While I think there are other causes for the decline of recreational
aviation in general, you have identified the real problem - Money. Or
more precisely the cost of having fun.

The hang glider population around my parts is zero now. 25 years ago
when it was new it grew fairly fast but as the state of the art
advanced from bamboo, tarps, and tape the cost of having fun slowly
went up. Those established in the sport could afford the evolution
and continued to have fun - and fly safer. But gradually the cost of
an "acceptable" entry level glider (and the associated accessories)
got to the point that the newcomers balked at the initial outlay of
cash and turned to other hobbies. A sad side to this story is that
there were actually lots of serviceable used gliders sitting unflown
in garages but I heard more than once, "You don't want that one. It's
old and doesn't fly as well as this newer one. If you really want to
have fun you need the better one. Sure it cost a bit more, but it's
worth it" It may have "been worth it", but it cost too much and the
former new glider pilot spent his money on a snowmobile, or a bike, or
a horse.

The original bunch gradually quit flying for one reason or another
until there are no folks jumping of the local hill. And as with lots
of hobbies a good bit of the attraction of the activity is not only
the activity but the socializing that goes along with friends mutually
enjoying their chosen sport. Flying is fun, but it's even better when
you can share the good times with a friend.

I'm interested in getting started in gliding and have my own unique
challenges to overcome. The general impression most of the people I
talk to have of gliding (power pilots or earth bound alike) is that
glider pilots are flying their gliders on the weekends there isn't a
polo match or a fox hunt. This isn't my impression but I do think
there is too much emphasis on competition and "performance" and not
enough on having fun. I get the feeling that if I show up somewhere
with a 4th hand Woodstock towed behind an old Jetta and step out on
the field dressed in Levi's and a T-shirt there will be a few pilots
quietly snickering in the background about my poor performing
hardware. Fortunately I'm the kind of guy that really doesn't care
what others think. I'm there to satisfy me, not the critics. But the
average Joe is very image conscious and doesn't like being the odd one
in the group. It's just another unfortunate result of living in an
image dominated society.

So in my opinion if you want gliding to grow you need to make it
conspicous, fun, comfortable, and at least as cheap to try other
hobbies. Take some lessons from the early hang gliders. Build a
primary glider, find a hill, invite the local kids and let them bounce
down the hill a few times...............

Those that like it may become regulars. But if they never try it, due
to negative preconceptions of the sport, how can they know?
===============================
Leon McAtee

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:03:04 UTC, (Leon
McAtee) wrote:

: While I think there are other causes for the decline of recreational
: aviation in general, you have identified the real problem - Money. Or
: more precisely the cost of having fun.

I think there is another fundamental problem he learning to glide
(in the UK, anyway) just isn't much fun. Typically it involves
standing round an airfield all day, hoping that an instructor whom
you've never met before will deign to give you a couple of circuits
and filling in the rest of your time acting as ground crew for the
private owners who seem incapable of driving tractors or hooking up
cables.

Worst of all, that's how many of the old farts / committee members /
instructors want it to be, because that's how it was in their day.
Well, maybe it was, but suffering doesn't broaden the soul
particularly and there are many, many other hobbies which don't
involve a year or two of being bored and patronized in the learning.

Gliding clubs in the UK have absolutely no problem in attracting new
people into the sport. They are absolutely lousy at retaining them.

Ian

--

Ian Johnston writes
I think there is another fundamental problem he learning to glide
(in the UK, anyway) just isn't much fun. Typically it involves
standing round an airfield all day, hoping that an instructor whom
you've never met before will deign to give you a couple of circuits
and filling in the rest of your time acting as ground crew for the
private owners who seem incapable of driving tractors or hooking up
cables.

In part, perhaps I can see why you might say that (here in the UK,
anyway). But speaking from personal experience, learning to glide has so
far cost me a day per weekend (or half a day when other commitments have
encroached) since last October, and when I do go solo (odds are that
might be sometime in the next month or so at my current rate of
progress) the sum total financial cost will have been £470, to the penny
as long as you exclude the additional cash I've also spent on various
gliding books to tide me over on rainy days.

Compare that to the $7000 financial cost and clear personal trauma
Lennie the Lurker has apparently suffered over on the other side of the
Atlantic in trying to achieve the same, along with the terribly bitter
state that the experience has obviously left him in, and I'd have to say
that we have a terrific deal here in the UK and so must be doing
something right.

As for whether it's fun as well as economical... I suppose I've spent a
good part of this last British winter crawling out of bed at the crack
of dawn when my natural habit would otherwise be to continue sleeping
off the previous night's excesses, and then shivering on a cold, damp
and utterly unsheltered airfield whilst intermittently manning the
lights, retrieving the cables and manhandling the club's K13's whilst
waiting for my chance to fly in one.

On the other hand, that time has been in the warm company of a small
number of similar enthusiasts and other stalwarts still gripped enough
by this flying thing to want to do the same in preference to spending
the winter warm and snug at home. Not to mention the instructors that
have turned up week after week to give their time freely in order to
teach us how to do this flying thing safely... And their enthusiasm is,
absolutely without exception, utterly infectious.

For the first couple of months that did mean that each week was
inevitably with an instructor I'd never met before and the flying
through the winter, of course, did consist mainly of launch, circuit,
land. On the other hand, the typical day gave me up to six launches to
1600' plus (if I could give the whole day to the thing - otherwise it
would be half a day and three launches) so the value was somewhat more
than "a couple of circuits" :P

And after the first couple of months I'd worked my way through most of
the instructors on the rota, so they ceased being strangers quickly
enough. As for the others at the launch point, across the winter they
tend to be a smallish, select group, the same faces week on week more or
less, and so they ceased to be strangers by week two or three.

Worst of all, that's how many of the old farts / committee members /
instructors want it to be, because that's how it was in their day.
Well, maybe it was, but suffering doesn't broaden the soul
particularly and there are many, many other hobbies which don't
involve a year or two of being bored and patronized in the learning.

Gliding clubs in the UK have absolutely no problem in attracting new
people into the sport. They are absolutely lousy at retaining them.

I can honestly say in the last six months I really haven't spent much
time bored. Just being around aircraft has been enough of a novelty for
me to prevent that, and it isn't as if there isn't plenty to do whilst
not flying. I've been antagonised a couple of times, and patronised
maybe twice. But in the broad spectrum of the last six months' worth of
experience, these occasions have been real exceptions. And in any broad
enough group of people you will always get these exceptions. In my
experience it doesn't matter whether you're talking about gliding,
fishing, or amateur dramatics. It's the cost of interacting with people.
But at 5'8 and 140lbs (including parachute), I'm big enough and ugly
enough to deal with such provocation on my own terms :P

I'd say that soaring is, like many things, something you are either
going to take to or you won't. On the other hand, it is the sort of
experience that many will want to try, if given the chance. And of them,
some, albeit a small minority, will bite.

In this, the cheap trial lesson is your friend. In today's terms, £25 is
the sort of change I have in my back pocket that I might spend down the
pub on a Saturday night without thinking about it. Giving me three
flights instead of one for £50 might seem like a good deal, but that
brings it to the sort of expenditure level that I have to clear through
my wife

Aside from that, you have to make the opportunity known, and your
obvious target audience is your local community. To put that into
context, I live within about 10 miles of two gliding clubs. But it's
taken me 15 years to realise just how accessible gliding really is, and
in the end this epiphany of realisation came in the form of a £70 trial
lesson voucher brought in the basement of Debenhams as a Chrismas
present from my wife that had me travelling to Wales to redeem
(Talgarth, to be precise - a lovely place that I sincerely plan to
re-visit one of these days).

It strikes me therefore as unsurprising that this journey has taken 15
years, and I figure it was only luck that meant it didn't take another
15.

So I'd say that if you're really concerned with declining numbers, make
cheap "trial lessons" easily available, convenient and accessible, and
when the punters turn up at the airfield, make sure they're looked after
and made to feel welcome and involved for the **duration of the time**
they are actually at the field, and not just whilst they're under the
care of their actual instructor, strapped into the front seat of a
glider.

Anyway, I appreciate that much of what I have to say on this matter
could be both construed as the naive opinion of a newbie and deemed
terribly parochial, in that it relates to my own experiences so far in
the UK which I understand to be very different from somebody learning to
glide elsewhere in the world, stateside especially.

On the other hand, the subject is in part about attracting newcomers to
soaring, of which I am quite recently one myself. And maybe my own
experiences in this (which are, by and by, entirely positive now that
I'm actually here) might make an interesting point of comparison to any
other points of view or experiences found here.



--
Bill Gribble

/---------------------------------------\
| http://www.cotswoldgliding.co.uk |
| http://www.scapegoatsanon.demon.co.uk |
\---------------------------------------/

(Leon McAtee) wrote in message . com...

I get the feeling that if I show up somewhere
with a 4th hand Woodstock towed behind an old Jetta and step out on
the field dressed in Levi's and a T-shirt there will be a few pilots
quietly snickering in the background about my poor performing
hardware.

No. THey wouldn't be in the background, they'd be in your face and
loudly proclaiming it to you. Not all of them, a bare minority, but
enough that after three years of it, the thought of listening to it
again made my reaction to thinking about the airport one of wanting to
puke.

somewhere
with a 4th hand Woodstock towed behind an old Jetta and step out on
the field dressed in Levi's and a T-shirt there will be a few pilots
quietly snickering in the background about my poor performing
hardware.

Too right! A large percentage of members at my club proclaim anything other
than glass as a Piece of Sh** and gladly tell new students this. Never mind
having to "dumb down" to fly a 1-26.

Sadly, the new students who haven't a clue take on the same attitude.

Jim Vincent
CFIG
N483SZ
illspam

will remain small, and declining.

Saying that people are "too lazy" to soar is like me saying soaring
people are too lazy to try metalworking. I just made a skid plate for
a 2-33 out of 1/4 inch AR plate, 3 1/2 hours pushing it through the
saw to cut to size. Call me lazy if you will, but I'd rather push the
steel than pay through the nose for what soaring costs, and it's just
as interesting.

BUT Lennie......You went about it the wrong way! I used to take some
stock with the corect width, had the guy where I picked it up, just
cut it with a big shear! Usually made three of them at a time.
Clamped them all together and hoped for a good drill bit in the press.
Those were the times, replacing those skids, while customers were
waiting to fly!

I was lucky to give Lessons in the 2-33 and long intro Flights in the
Janus and always had a big grin on my face jumping in the backseat of
the 2-33 for another lesson in the late afternoon. The differences
made it interesting!
Please be nice to those good ships. I wonder where mine ended up,
owned it
for 25 years, sold it to the Airforce Academy and they probably gave
it away
to some nice Group?

WHERE did it end up? N 5742S .....

Places that give Sightseeing/ Intro rides, The commercial operators,
are our best bet for keeping soaring alive! Those operators need all
the help they can get. Insurance is a problem, seasons, locations etc.

But then, Bill, are you saying .....nothing is forever?

Dieter B
Gliders Of Aspen Inc surrounded by dozens of Gulfsteams and
other jets!

(soarski) wrote in message . com...
will remain small, and declining.

Saying that people are "too lazy" to soar is like me saying soaring
people are too lazy to try metalworking. I just made a skid plate for
a 2-33 out of 1/4 inch AR plate, 3 1/2 hours pushing it through the
saw to cut to size. Call me lazy if you will, but I'd rather push the
steel than pay through the nose for what soaring costs, and it's just
as interesting.

BUT Lennie......You went about it the wrong way! I used to take some
stock with the corect width, had the guy where I picked it up, just
cut it with a big shear! Usually made three of them at a time.
Clamped them all together and hoped for a good drill bit in the press.
Those were the times, replacing those skids, while customers were
waiting to fly!

You aren't going to cut AR plate with a shear. Unless you want to buy
the owner a new shear, that is. Same stuff bulldozer blades have for
their cutting edge. Should need replacing sometime in about 2030,
maybe. Saw speed was 40FPM, cutting rate 8 inches per hour. Drilling
no problem, used masonry bit in the milling machine, 320 RPM, and lots
of cutting oil. Interesting, but not something I want to do again.