RE: Low turnouts for District 7 contests
One thing that I did with my local club is have a mini pattern contest as a program at one of our field meetings, We flew the sportsman sequence with the rule of fly what you are most comfortable flying, except if you were an active pattern competitor, then you had to fly a 40 sized trainer. I flew the sportsman sequence first with my integral to show what it should look like and explain the sequence. Then flew the first round with the trainer (not pretty but recognizable) we had about 6 new guys try it with their sports planes and three start showing up to close by contests. So one little program shed some of the fear from a few of the guys and added three new people.