Martin Eiler keeps saying that we need a celebrity glider pilot, who would
make it "cool."

Problem with that is that the celebrity most likely wants to keep such
activity private as a way to get away from the crowd.

At 00:25 09 May 2011, bildan wrote:
On May 8, 10:45=A0am, "kirk.stant" wrote:
Well, I think we need to take off our blinders and face reality.
Flying is no longer an exciting adventure; it's going through TSA
searches and being crammed into a tubular extrusion for hours without
food or entertainment. =A0Or it's UAVs whacking bad guys, controlled
from an Air Base in Nevada.

There will always be a small group of people of all ages who will
gravitate to gliding, either because they can't afford power flying,
or like to try something different, or are attracted to the
competitive aspects.

But to expect people to rush to gliding because we can make it less
expensive? =A0Won't happen. It's already about as inexpensive as
flying
can get!

And forget homebuilding - the numbers will never be very big. =A0The
SSA
isn't the EAA, unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately!).

The European model would appear to work better, judging by where all
the new gliders come from - more social aspects, bigger clubs with
better equipment (NO 2-33s!!!!), much greater emphasis on gliding as a
sport (XC, badges, OLC, racing, records) than as just twirlybirding on
a nice Saturday afternoon.

But even the euros are losing membership! So as much as I prefer their
approach to the typical US glider operation, they still have the same
problem - flying just isn't sexy any more.

So what is the answer? =A0Quit worrying about it, go out and fly, try
to
introduce someone to gliding who might actually be interested.

Kirk
66

Kirk, if they actually knew about us, I think there is a real
possibility of interesting 1 in a thousand (.1%) of the US
population. That's 300,000 new pilots. Should that happen, the
immediate problem would be we don't have the training gliders,
instructors or tow planes to handle that number. Nice problem to have
though.