Hangar Talk – June 2017

New Members

We’d like to welcome 3 new members to the club (2 are past members) –

• Russell Walker – a past member from many years ago
• Mike Linton – also a past member from a few years ago
• David Magee – A new member who previously flew with the SAAMBR club in Queensland

I’m sure you will all give them a warm welcome to the club.

June 30 Membership Renewals

Many thanks to those of you who heeded the message to get your renewals in early. I have now been able to process all but 5 members (2 of whom have made contact and will renew shortly). It certainly makes the job easier and I have now registered all the renewals on the MAAA register as at June 30 so you are all insured. Remember, those that have not renewed are not insured from tomorrow July 1.

June 29 – Get well soon Merv

I learnt on Thursday that Merv Cameron is in hospital again and I am sure all members will share our thoughts in sending Merv our best wishes for a speedy recovery. Merv has been a stalwart at the club and we hope to see him back at the field soon.

Saturday, June 17 – Pattern Competition

Whilst I couldn’t attend, I received plenty of feedback that our first foray back into competitions was a success. So much so that it was reported that the Pattern entrant numbers were the best in recent years. Kudos to LMAC. I received a report and photos from Will Deal on June 19 (thanks Will) and he wrote –

Hello George,
We had a great day on Saturday at LMAC, 13 pilots attended and flew which is probably a record for aerobatics in recent years.
A little late starting due to the fog however the larger aerobatic models handled the conditions with ease and we had a great day’s flying.
Kev – 1st place & Terry – 2nd place in Advanced both flew very well and for the next contest they will be joined by Peter Allen & Mike Rutledge who have now been promoted to the Advanced category.
CD Andrew McEntyre offered his sincere thanks and appreciation to LMAC for hosting the event and providing the superb lunch.
Photos attached (hopefully no problem this time)

Best regards,
Will

The photos from Will are shown below –

Update – June 23. Andrew McEntyre sent the following email.

Morning George and Geoff,
George, my thanks to the committee and Kevin and Terry for hosting the Pattern event and as I said to Geoff on Saturday the field layout and setup is a credit to your club and members. I hope we may be able to have another event at your field next year. Regards Andrew………….

Andrew’s report can be read here – Pattern Report June 17th

Saturday, June 10 – We get clearance to 1000ft!

This was the first day that the club exercised it’s option to seek clearance to fly to 1000′. Kevin and Terry reported it all went smoothly and it seems the control tower were learning the ropes too. Hopefully the same will apply on the 17th when the Pattern event will take place. There is a register in the clubhouse and all the protocols are available on the web site under [Member Info] (you need to be logged in). Of course, if you are at the field this can also be accessed from your smartphone, which was where I pointed Kevin to on the day.

Forum Support

For Sale, Wanted or Swap

A few members are active on the For Sale forum but I suspect not everyone is familiar with some of the setup so I’ll try and explain a few things that you may consider.

• Did you know you can subscribe to the For Sale forum (or any other forum for that matter) and this will provide you with an email if someone posts on those pages? All you need to do is is click on the [Subscribe] option on the right hand side of the forum page. Then if someone posts an item For Sale, Wanted or Swap or makes a post on a forum you have subscribed to, you will receive an email immediately after they post.
• If you posted an advert and decide you want to modify it, you can now edit that post. Simply go to your advert post and on the right hand side on the same line as the date, there should be an option to [Edit] or [Reply]. You need to be logged in to do this.

Membership

It’s that time of the year again – membership renewal. Looking at our club membership we see that over recent years they have remained relatively static at around 30 (excluding Social members), I therefore thought it may be interesting to revisit National and State numbers to see how those numbers have varied in the past year. The table below shows the break up of club numbers for the state.

As you can see, LMAC has remained static as have HMAC and RFAM. We anticipate some growth in 2017/18. However the remainder, with the exception of SEAT who have grown 8.3%, all the others show a decline in members. Some key numbers –

• Overall the State numbers are down 8.1% (Last Year -5.2% so continued decline)
• National Numbers are down 5.3% (Last Year -1.9% again continued decline)
• 64% of Tasmanian members are over 60 (Nationally 49%)
• 40% of Tasmanian members are over 70 (Nationally 26.4%) Demonstrating the older demographic in Tasmania.
• 1.9% are under 30 (Nationally 7.9%)
• Tasmanian members represent only 2.2% of the national membership.
• Interestingly the NSW Free Flight Society has more members than Tasmania (255).
• Victoria has the highest representation (2596 or 26.9%)
• Northern Territory is the lowest (96).

Put a Spark in your life and fly electric…