Could not agree more with Mike's comments, why do we all have to
belong to a club? Why can't I just join the GFA alone?
To me its like saying we can't trust you to fly safely unless you join a club!
If RAA pilots can be trusted to fly safely without belonging to a
club why can't soaring pilots? Sure have a flight review every year
or two like GA pilots to check standard of flying but why insist on
joining a club?
I would also agree with Geoff Kidd that Soaring is a terrific
"potentially" marketable product for a whole range of people who want
to fly but I don't agree that clubs are going to thrive if there are
lots of new participants. In fact you will not get the new
participants if you rely on old style clubs to attract the participants.
Why? Because many clubs operations have a poor product to sell to new
participants.
Gliding relative to many other adventure sports is not outrageously
expensive, many many Australians ski and that can be hideously
expensive for example. Many Australians have the money to fly but are
not attracted to our current style of operations. What will attract
the 21st Century participant to our sport is an efficient, modern,
readily accessible, value for money/time operation that treats the
"customer" in the manner we consumers expect to be treated and once
trained allows them to exercise the ability to fly without having to
necessarily belong to a club.
There is an ongoing place for traditional club style operations
especially in regional areas but I would argue that either the near
city clubs need to adopt a far more "commercial" approach to their
operations or positive steps need to be taken to establish facilities
that attract new participants by showcasing a modern efficiently run
soaring centre that values the customer and helps them achieve their
potential and goals. Many new participants once trained will
willingly consider joining clubs that suit their flying
style/personal circumstances but the clubs will have to make
themselves attractive to join eg meet the "consumers" needs. At the
moment its like being coerced into joining something, eg "you must
join a club in order to soar" and as a consequence clubs are not
sufficiently motivated to make themselves offer an attractive
product. Make it voluntary and perhaps we will see more innovation
from clubs to attract members.
This gets back to what the role of the GFA is. In my view the
obsession with being the "regulator" and keeping CASA at bay has been
at the expense of what GFA should be doing which is getting out there
and developing gliding on the ground. Is the USA system of the
government through the FAA regulating gliding any more onerous then
the system we have here with the GFA regulating gliding? GFA have to
get CASA approval for their regs anyway don't they?
Mark
At 10:47 18/12/2005, you wrote:
At 08:38 AM 18/12/05 +1100, you wrote:
> Terry Roake's report of Dec 16th mentions Mergers in the following way:
> MERGERS DO NOT SOLVE CLUB PROBLEMS -
>Marco Dohmen (Germany) has completed an in depth study on the merger
>of clubs as a possible solution to gliding's present problems.
>Stefanie Becker has taken the research even further and according to
>her, mergers bring only short term relief. Gliding needs
>re-organising lifting itself into the 21st century. Gliding does
>little to help itself!
I'd take John Roake's Ramblings with a grain of salt until you read the
original article.
Not everything in them is necessarily 100%.
In the Australian setup only 1 in 10000 residents flys gliders. If you
figure a club needs 10 members to be viable under the present setup of
every club a training organisation, you can't on average have a gliding
club unless you have a population of 100,000 to draw on. Kind of limits the
options doesn't it?
Emilis is right - there are many glidings but we have a national body
determined to force only one model on everyone. Even you guys at Tocumwal
have a notional club to belong to. Why?
The latest idiocy from the rocket scientists at GFA exec is the idea of a
"GFA Club". Why not look at RAAus? They only have to belong to their
national body and only belong to a club if it is convenient and/or they
want to. The rest just own aircraft and go flying from whatever paddock or
airfield is nearby. Several operate out of the Toowoomba airport which is
Council owned.
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
phone Int'l + 61 746 355784
fax Int'l + 61 746 358796
cellphone Int'l + 61 428 355784
Int'l + 61 429 355784
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