Peter, if I may propose a theory – that is because the people at e.g. Aero are a self-selected crowd of aviators, they are more focused on the international aspect of aviation, and, most importantly, not put off / intimidated by English. Many people are simply not willing to put forward the effort to use a foreign language, especially if they are not fluent in it. They see more value on the various local forums, which every country has, and they are not all cesspools, even if they have advertising (because, be it as it may, most people don’t care enough for it to matter). The self selection by virtue of visiting a popular GA airport in a foreign country works in a similar way, since the people that made it to LOWZ obviously have at least the ELP 4 and actually use it, making it much more likely for them to be able to use the language with relative ease.
Your point about ‘read only’ participation actually supports the above theory – reading something in a foreign language is much easier than writing, and the benefit of being able to click ‘new’ is perhaps not enough to convince people to sign up.
Ockham’s razor and all that.
I agree with you.
However I think there is a bigger factor. You need to read EuroGA for a very short time to see most actually flying-related contributions are not from the aeroclub type of pilot. They are from pilots who get out there and “do stuff”.
I started a thread here 
Peter wrote:
The trouble is that I get a bit fed up with doing all this myself.
Sorry Peter, was just at Oshkosh and didn’t even think for a second about distributing flyers.
In any case, I don’t have any, but now, thinking about sharing my experience with everyone while catching up on threads, did I see this and think, “Rats! That’s a decent place to do it”…
The place is so massive, I’m not sure where I could have sprinkled them, but could possibly have at least done something.
I’ve definitely gained from this site and your engineering-style efforts to help document your experience and expertise.
Thanks Do many Europeans go there? However having US based pilots here is great too – they see a whole different world out there.
It is now clear that by far the best way to leave leaflets around and get new people here is Aero Friedrichshafen.
Airports are the next best thing but they involve some effort on my part, creating a list and digging out postal addresses. But that is what I will do next… I got diverted doing the aeroclubs but one gets nothing from that.
I ran across a number of Brits and heard a few Germans there, so there must be a decent population of them given that I only talked to about fifty people out of the 600k+ who attended this year…
I’d guess that a large percentage of them are home builders or experimental drivers.
While not exactly the same crowd, but I’d guess that a number of Americans would appreciate reading about GA in Europe based on my conversations there.
Sadly, most of my experience was a cautionary tale to them, which made them appreciate how good they have it. (AvGas is 2.5x cheaper there, there are no landing fees and wide open airspace with friendly FBO operators and and and…)
It is nearly impossible to imagine how fun flying is in the US until you’ve done it…
Highly recommended!
AF wrote:
It is nearly impossible to imagine how fun flying is in the US until you’ve done it…
Highly recommended!
I agree. I almost stopped flying after I left the US and moved to France. But now I am as happy as can be.
Aviathor wrote:
I agree. I almost stopped flying after I left the US and moved toFranceAustria.
Ditto.
I think buying my own plane will help (once I’m done with the ridiculously long process of registration… 10 mos so far…)
Spot the EuroGA leaflet on the wall at the Mali Losinj airport cafe
Mailing leaflets to aeroclubs did absolutely nothing so I am going to do an airport mailing in the next few weeks.
I have some suggestions here. However, if there are pilots here who can positively drop the leaflets in the right place, it would be far better to post them to that pilot, than to rely on whoever opens the envelope to not bin them.
When this was done in the past it was relatively successful – especially if done at the GA “watering holes”. We want airports which get some “go places” visitors. One example of what I am thinking of is Zell am See.
Any offers?
I left one at Ameridair hangar at LFPT after a flight earlier this week (it was late, I didn’t take a picture).
Some will be put at LFPN as well.
I’ll put some where I land also.
