We link to the pilot survey about the 2015 Quest Air Open
National Championships

As many readers know, Belinda and I are committed to transparency
when it comes to running hang gliding competitions. All the pilots who flew at
the 2015 Quest Air Open got a copy of our income and expenses, for example, as
did other interested individuals.

The USHPA sends out a pilot survey after every competition and usually gets a
great response rate. You'll find the USHPA's summary of that survey
here. I have a few comments below that answer some issues raised.

Pilots wrote:

You can't have a better location for a hang gliding competition
than Quest. Great towing in most directions on grass, some shade, camping on
site, mild conditions and light winds, the list goes on. I've never seen Quest
look so good! Fun to have people camping around the LZ and the facilities
supported the crowd well.

Challenging flying was possible from the park with safe landing options in and
around turn points. I love flying out of Quest. Florida a lot place for landing.
Quest is an epic place for holding a hang gliding comp! The weather and place
were perfect for a hang glider competition. Best location on the east coast.

Thanks for your support. A pilot wrote a couple of times:

Need a dedicated scorer.

We actually did have a dedicated volunteer scorekeeper, Timothy
Ettridge. Scorekeepers are a rare breed  and it is very hard to find one,
much less a volunteer one (so that pilot fees can be kept down.) Only Mitch
Shipley (trainee), Timothy Ettridge (trainee), and myself are people who live in
the US who are scoring our competitions.

I assume that this person means someone to download their flight instrument and
send their track log to the scorekeeper. We paid two sport class pilots who were
always back early to Quest Air to assist other pilots to download their flights.
This didn't mean that everything went as well as one could hope for. Hiring an
additional dedicated person (who has extensive training) to do this task means
increasing pilot fees, reducing pilot services, or reducing prizes.

A pilot wrote:

Move the competition up two weeks to reduce potential for thunder
storms.

The plan is to move the competition back by one week. Its timing
depends on Jamie's Americus Cup or Flytec Race and Rally. She has agreed to move
her competition back one week. We'll do whatever she says. If she wants to have
her competition two weeks early, we'll move ours back two weeks.

A pilot writes:

Increase a little the entry fee and make higher awards. More
highly ranked pilots from Europe will come and more US pilots also will come.

We provided significant support to encourage Oleg Bondarchuk to
come to the competition. The European pilots say that what attracts them is two
competitions in a row. There is always a balance between the total fee, the
money spent on pilot services (two dinners, etc.) and the money that goes to
prizes. We give out a lot of money as prizes and trophies (you can see the
income and expenses
here).
I would love to know the magic formula to get huge attendance to the
competition. Terry Reynolds has put up $10,000 and Jim Zeiset put up $5000 of
their own money for prizes and this has attracted a good number of pilots. This
is a one off and Belinda and I are not going to do this.

A pilot wrote:

Get the Groveland retailers involved, gas stations, grocery,
restaurants etc to provide support. Get hang gliding retailers of various
equipment (tee-shirts, tow equip, camera peripherals, radio equip, helmets etc)
to provide support. Again, it takes dedicated effort to do this but the
positives outweigh the time spent.

We get great support from our sponsors: Flytec, Wills Wing, the
USHPA, and Moyes. We gave out many prizes and day prizes to pilots throughout
the competition focusing on encouraging the Sport Class. There is little to no
support outside the hang gliding community (except at the Big Spring Nationals,
where we get huge support from the community and local business) for hang
gliding competition. The city of Groveland has little connection with Quest Air.
This is also true of all the other hang gliding competitions in the US.

A pilot wrote:

It was poor choice not to give trophies to all top three winners
of sports competition.

Trophies are given out based on the number of pilots in a class.
The trophies given out at the Quest Air Open were quite expensive. We won't have
such expensive trophies again.