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I flew a contest in St. Louis and got into a discussion with the pres about why lots of guys show up if they call a 'fun soar' day, but not many show up for contests.
I knew why but heck its just my opinion...so I asked him who would be a representative 'sport soarer' in the club. He told me and I got the guys address, and proceeded to head over to the guy's house to find him cutting the grass. I snuk up and conked him on the head with my Super Stand pole, then stuffed him in my truck.
When I got to the motel, I tied him to a chair with wing tape, then took off his shirt and applied the new really aggressive hinge tape that I got from Don Richmond at Visalia...all over his hairy chest and back. I brought him back by spritzing some CA Kicker under his nose and began my interrogation (for an RCSD article of course :-)...asking the same question over and over... WHY DON"T YOU FLY YOUR CLUB CONTESTS!
"I'm not interested in competitions"..
.yep I could see it was going to be a long nite before I'd make it thru the usual canned 'reasons'.... RIPPPP! I pulled off a piece of tape.
YEOW!!!! he exclaimed
"its too much stress" RIPPPP!
"No full size plane sticks its nose in the ground for a landing" RIPPPP!
"I don't need to prove anything" RIPPPP!
"Its not 'fun' " RIPPPP!
I finally ran out of Hinge tape, so I clipped a long length of carbon pushrod and began shoving them under his finger nails....then inserted some elevator bellcranks in places they don't fit too well....and finally I was close to him finally fessing up with the truth... he replied,
"Cuz I don't own a stop watch!!!!"...
It was getting late and I had a 8:30 pilots meeting the next day so it was time to get serious, pull out all the stops, yep the one thing that will break any sailplaner....
I reached for his wallet....
"Okay Okay!!!! I'll tell you why us sport soarers don't come to contests, its because we aren't PREPARED!" We never practice.... heck we aren't sure how to practice!... When we come to the field, we don' t have a talking timer to count down specific amont of minutes of flight time, and we never have a target to land at. SO when contest day comes up we aren't comfortable suddenly being expected to control the sailplane on purpose!. We just aren't prepared and that makes us feel like we aren't welcome.... We love to fly and want to fly every opportunity, we want to join in the fun those contest guys seem to have! We just haven't practiced and don't have the confidence to feel we belong.
Now that I had him talking, I couldn't get him to shut up...
he continued...
"When I turned 16 there were 8 of us in our town who went down to get our drivers licenses... when we got there, there was some government guys there who separated us into two groups....I was in the 'Sport Drivers' group of four, the other group was called the 'Elitists'.
Those poor Elitests really got screwed! Us Sport Drivers were taken to a 100 acre driving area that had no obstructions and was surrounded by thick soft rubber bumpers. The instructor assigned us each a car, showed us how to start it and make it go, but that was it....he may have mentioned something about a 'brake', but there really was no need, mostly all we had to do was to stay away from each other. IT was a ball, we could drive anywhere, anyway, fast or slow. On weekends we go out and drive around for hours on end, we'd do circles and figure 8's, and pretty much just drive around....it was great.. and we did it for about 2 years...near the end it got kind of boring"
(big surprise ending in Part 2~)
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