Attendance

I see bits and pieces of data about entry levels at contests, but it is hit or miss. Can I get a casual survey going about the number of entries in your local/area/regional contests this summer compared to the last 2 or 3 years? I'm trying to get a feel for how attendance is doing is different parts of the country since 9/11.
Thanks!
Kelvin

Kelvin,

While I am having trouble understanding where you are going with this, to what purpose we can use the data, if I were pursuing this sort of information the AMA may well be the best source.

You can go through contest reports in back issues of Stunt News. I have been interested in counting up how many individuals have competed in all CL stunt contests over the past couple of years. Not how many entrants as you want to know, but how many individuals entered one or more events at one or more contests. I counted them up for the 2002 nationals and let it go at that. I talked with Steve Kauluf at AMA Headquarters and he didn't think the AMA could help me. I don't recall if it was a matter that the AMA had no data or had done no analysis of data. Give him a call in any case.

My first thought is for just your observations of whether attendance is up, down, or about the same. Trying to see if our observations from this summer jibe with other areas of the country. Good idea, I will do some mining of SN data. But I'm not really looking for hard numbers, at least at this point.

I'll assume you mean 9-11-2001. I always write it with the year, because I don't want to forget what year it was, & don't want you to forget, either. We had a contest the following weekend. Frankly, I think the recent World CL Champs had more effect on our turnouts. That, and weather forcasts, accurate or not. Steve

As an attendee, not a CD, I have noticed that in this years contests I've attended and flown in, 6, the number of OTS and Intermediate entries have been down from the last four years. I know for a fact that the World Meet and the Nats affected two of these as the flyers mentioned that's why they did not attend two of the local meets. Also more guys have moved up to Advanced and I think the fun is going out of OTS for many. Classic seems to be growing. At one meet where there is usually 10 +/- entrees in OTS, there were only two or three. Same for a meet later, only 3 in Intermediate, but there were many more in Basic and beginner which is Great news. This is in the district 5 area for the most part. The weather has played a great part in attendance being down and we have had the wettest summer in many years down here. Gas prices have never been mentioned as a deterrent to attendance, just the weather or another meet that was prefered over the local one.

It's been a record cold summer in MN. A few scattered overnight temps in the 20's this week! Only over 90 a couple of days. Contest weather has been at least decent except the wind has blown a lot.