Originally Posted by
burtona
It's not just classic pattern. AMA and F3A pattern are both in a death spiral too. Numbers of contest and contestants keeps dropping every year.What's left are almost all older men that keep aging. Almost no new young flyers.
IMO. the next crop of potential pilots will come from the drone racing group. A ton of youngsters 16 to 30 years old compete on a semi-weely basis at our home field. I make sure to pull out a pattern plane just as they are tearing the course down after a competition. Many love the plane, and have questions I am glad to answer. They are already bit by the competition bug....so when they get bored with drones, we can pick off a few here and there to become pattern pilots.
Gary