The decline of gliding - a worldwide issue?

I wholly reject this foregone conclusion, it makes me so angry!

At the club I fly at (south of Calgary, Alberta) we have experienced a recent resurgence in interest that is converting into students and our students (at least early observations) are sticking with it. There are a few things we are doing that make me feel as though this is sustainable, and replicable.

1 - Promotion/education - our club offers a winter "introduction to soaring", 3-evening seminar series educating interested individuals on the nuts and bolts of soaring - the practical how and why. This is NOT ground school. Ground school is a tax on interest and should be levied only on those who are sufficiently interested - it's not a great way to recruit people to the sport. It's necessary once convinced of the value of pursuing the sport, but not required to convert on passing interest. Our goal is to teach individuals about the basic theory of flight, specific site operations, patterns, and soaring meteorology, plus some XC storytelling to make them drool. They should be aware of basic fundamentals and safe when they show up at the field.

2 - Recruiting - we have a fixed price, set number of tow training package we call "Objective Oriented Training" and limit our student intake to 10 (membership of about 70) per year. If these students don't complete all the flights (40 - 25 limited to 30 minutes depending on the time of year they join) then they are unlikely to achieve an outcome, unlikely to return, and 'high margin' since they pre-paid for flights they chose not to use. If the student flies through the flights they are more likely to achieve an outcome, and more likely to return (see step 3). Coming into 2021 we have 25 people on our waiting list and expect 6 of 8 students from 2020 to return, but as members not students.

3 - Retention - gliding is an activity, soaring is a sport, and it's defined by task flying. We created the Proving Grounds (soaringtasks.com) at our club and myself and some friends have scaled it into a product that's now supported by the Soaring Association of Canada, Soaring Society of America and 3 forward-thinking clubs in the Netherlands. The platform introduces the concept of task flying, and the tools required to do this starting with a short task around the airfield that a time building pilot can attempt before requiring approval for a medium (60miles) task that takes them outside of final glide. Finally, a large task (90sm) that will require skill to complete and in doing so should have developed a safe XC pilot. IGC traces are emailed to a club bot for scoring (average speed) and times are ranked on magnetic whiteboard slips, organized from fastest to slowest on beautiful trophy boards in the clubhouse.

Here is where the 'old guard' needs to accept that the "up and comers" are interested in the sport of soaring, not the activity of gliding. We need to reconcile what that means and have the humility to put down the Volkslogger and take a lesson from the teenager with XCSoar - or at least not dismiss their enthusiasm and interest.

4 - Promotion/advertising - I personally always preach "tell our story" and at our club we do this to service various audiences. We share professional content to our tiny LinkedIn audience, we share photos and videos on Instagram (@glidecunim) to the international gliding audience (so our analytics tell us), and cross-post those to our Facebook page (fb.me/glidecunim) that is a similar-sized audience, but predominantly 'local'. We also produce a weekly newsletter during the flying season that is very formulaic but widely celebrated for the especially interested called 'Turnpoints' (https://mailchi.mp/97ee50b8eb17/turnpoints_signup) with 217 subscribers and a 70+% open rate it's a point of pride for many of us. Keep in mind twice as many people are reading it each week as we have members.

4a - Promotion/advertising - here the Soaring Association of Canada covers 80% of marketing spend up to $1250 ($1000 rebate) that we have historically spent on trying to sell intro flights. In 2020 with none of this promotion being cost-effective, we invested in our physical collateral with new trade show posters and 'rack cards' that share a common back but have 8 different captivating front photos. All printed through Vistaprint for about $800.

We are doing something amazing - generally in the sport, specifically at Cu Nim (cunim.org) and telling this story should be easy. We need to remember rule #1 - know your audience. Look around your club and see if you recognize common traits, cater content to folks like this that might be captivated by the story you have to tell, the things you can tinker on.

5 - Culture - nothing matters more than culture. We use Slack to organize our "doers" and have active conversations that email can't support. This winter things have been pretty quiet until a few folks started getting Condor and now we're as active for posts as we would be during the flying season. Condor and Slack have been a great way to keep our most enthusiastic members connected and with a cornerstone of positive, supportive energy we have established a really terrific "vibe" on the flightline - of people looking to get more from each flight, and doing whatever they can to get into an aircraft and have that flight.

One of the greatest things about soaring, beyond soaring is that the club experience provides a rich social experience, and the opportunity to be USEFUL. I have a theory that people like to be USEFUL - at least those who fit in well at gliding clubs. Like being asked to open a pickle jar - what is that satisfaction? Immediate usefulness.

It's easy to make people feel useful with some basic supportive training, and it's not too hard for the sport to keep making you feel like the king of the world - if you're interested in soaring. If you're interested in gliding, well... you've got a problem.

I am AMAZED by the content coming from Europe, especially the young people.

This should be a golden age of soaring if we'd stop lamenting the certainty of its demise!
- Flight computers are free
- Forecasting borders on cheating
- Ample supply of adequate or better gliders that depreciate slower than inflation
- Sharing platforms - content: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Mailchimp...
- Sharing platforms - traces: WeGlide, Skylines, ... OLC

Hear me talk about this stuff on episode 86 of Soaring the Sky Podcast.