Here's .02 from a current non-participant.....

I've seen or been involved in this 'type' of discussion many times before. Tons of R/C cars sold.....HARDLY ANY ever make it to the track. In Archery, it was 'how can we get all the bow hunters to come shoot our tournament?'......The golf guys look for ways to get the recreational players to join a league.....I've tried for YEARS to get dirt bike riding buddies to sign up for an actual race.....and on and on and on.

It seems that MOST people don't enjoy being measured, scored, aprasied and or more importantly, BEATEN. People can make excuses about not having enough time....not having enough money.....etc etc. At the end of the day, most folks aren't looking for anything even remotely resembling negative feedback. When forced to fly specific manouvers, one's weaknesses are prominently displayed to the world. For the folks here in this forum, that might sound like a cool chance to improve. To the average person, it's just more negaitve feedabck (and this time....without a paycheck. ).

You might have better luck finding the competive types and convincing them to fly models, rather than trying to instill the competitve spirit into the average modeler.