Maybe some history is needed here. As a past officer that helped Phoenix the LSF from extinction and an avid competition winch launch and e-launch sailplane pilot I will tell you what I know and what I think. Most of you do not know me unless you are a NATS, MSL or Polecat participant so I thought posting my credentials was needed.
The LSF is the name of the organization, not the name of the Pilot Improvement Program which is the SAP so the discussion here is not changing the LSF and not changing the existing SAP, that does not seem to be clear to everyone.
Our LSF as an organization has a big responsibility as the SIG for the AMA and that may be it's primary function now as it has influence over the advancement and well being of soaring in the USA.
OK, now the history lesson about LSF:
The SIG at one time was another organization that kind of floundered and did not foster soaring to the extent it should have been and after several years of inactivity and several years of hit and miss meetings, that organization agreed to allow the LSF to take over. LSF eventually got the go-ahead form the AMA and now LSF was no longer just a database for SAP aspirants but a parent organization for all of soaring in the USA. This was a huge change and the most significant change to LSF since its founding.
The LSF as the SIG now had responsibility for running the soaring events at the NATS but that included only winch launch, cross country, and hand launch. Electric launch was not part of the LSF's responsibility at this time. Electric launch was what was called LMR and the Electric Launch SIG was a group of people that were into seeing how much power you could get from an electric motor and climb the highest in some fixed time frame. Soaring was not a big part of the game as the planes would rocket to OOS positions in under 20 seconds and making the relatively short duration's was not too demanding. The "Electric SIG" also had the responsibility for running their portion of the NATS and this is important because their numbers were very low and not very impressive to the AMA. Over several years, the 'Electric SIG" tried to make it more of a sailplane contest to get participation up to acceptable levels but that did not happen and their management group decided that the LSF may be a better at promoting electric launch sailplanes. After all they are all supposed to be sailplanes. So after several years of negotiating and several meetings, that group handed over electric launched sailplane responsibility to the LSF, once again with AMA blessings.
OK, now LSF had the responsibility (and still has) of promoting electric-launch sailplanes as well as all the other sailplane launch forms at the NATS. So you can see that in the larger scheme of things, the LSF is now a promoter of soaring and certainly not just a database manager.
In as much as I am a member and past officer of LSF and fully understand it's function in our world, I fully support the new ESAP as a way of promoting soaring. There maybe a few little items to be cleared up but the idea that LSF should not do everything in its power to promote soaring would be to say that the LSF should not do its assigned responsibility.
Sorry for the soapbox but I feel there are too many people out there that think LSF is still just a database and not a force to promote soaring.
Jack
