November 1, 2005
President’s Message
Well guys, another month has come and gone, and the
weather is finally turning a little colder.
The leaves are quickly changing colour and are falling to the
ground. Old man winter is just around
the corner. I know it’s depressing to
talk about the arrival of the colder weather, but the weather is always one of
the easiest things to talk about. This
season has been good to us as far as the weather is concerned. The only thing we could complain about this
year is that it was too hot for too long.
Now, every morning I look outside to see if the winds are calm, the sun
is shining and the thermometer is at least nearing the double digits
(Fahrenheit that is) so that I can still go flying. That’s what us retired guys do. The only problem lately is that the weekdays
have been terrible. Oh well, there’s
always tomorrow, although the perfect tomorrows are becoming fewer and fewer.
If you get this message in time, you will still be able
to catch the Hobby Show at the International Centre this weekend, November 4,5
& 6. And this year, for the first
time in many, many years, our November club meeting does not happen to fall on
the same Friday as the Hobby Show. All
you guys that attend the show on Friday evening can now attend the November
meeting the following Friday, November 11th. I know that date is Remembrance Day, but the
school is open, and our meeting is scheduled for that date.
In case you have forgotten, our agenda for this meeting
will be to elect a new executive for the next season. As most of you already know, all of the
positions become available for any club member to fill. Now is your chance to step up to the plate
and help run the club. The following are
the executive positions: President, Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Officer,
Field Officer and Wings Officer.
Non-executive positions are: Program Director, Flypaper Editor, Fun Fly
Director and Refreshments Manager.
Curt Jones said that he wants a break from doing the Wings
job and Gord Schindler has stated that he is going to be too busy to do the
Membership duties, so we are definitely looking for replacement personnel for
those two jobs. The rest of the
executive have stated that they will continue to perform their same duties if
necessary, but as always, someone else can step up and volunteer or nominate
someone if they wish. We also need
someone to do the Flypaper as well as someone to help with the Fun Flys and the
program/entertainment at the meetings.
Guests
During this past season there have been several
complaints concerning guests at our field.
It is the opinion of this executive that the term “guest” be properly
defined to eliminate any confusion.
A guest would normally be a fellow modeller that a paid‑up
member of our club brings to the field to fly his or her aircraft on one or two
occasions during a flying season.
(Depending on circumstances, this might be extended to three or possibly
four times during the whole season, but this should be the exception, not the
rule.) A guest could also be a modeller
visiting from another city, province or country, who wants to fly his aircraft
while in Toronto. In this case, he would
be anyone's guest if he just happens to show up at our field. He might be a member of a nearby club wanting
to socialize for the day, or perhaps he wants to try out a new aircraft at our
field because his field is inadequate.
The term, guest would also apply to a member or members of another club invited
to our field to participate in an event or fun fly.
Each guest must provide proof of MAAC or AMA.
The host, (any current paid‑up member of our club)
must be present during the time that his guest is at the field. The host is
responsible for all actions of his guest.
It would not be in good taste for a member to bring a guest to the field
on a busy day or at certain busy times on the weekend, unless his guest flies
instead of him. Also, the guest should not be flying at the same time as the
host if there are other club members waiting to fly.
I hope this clarifies things for the future.
Frequency Board
At the last meeting we discussed making some changes to
the way the frequency board was laid out.
We were thinking of using the same system as the Seaton Valley
club. This method is to keep your
membership card and MAAC card in a small plastic card holder and hang it on a
cup hook underneath your frequency. This
way everyone knows that you are a paid-up member of the club and MAAC. The board would have to be modified by using
it in a horizontal manner instead of vertically. We have run into some difficulties with
finding a plastic card holder suitable for our needs. Because of this, we are going to leave the
frequency board as is for the time being.
I know that some of you will be happy knowing that you don’t have to
change the way you have been doing things.
We are not going to bother issuing decals this year. It seems that very few of you are using them
as they are supposed to be. It seems
that with gas and electric models becoming more popular, the need for flight
boxes is becoming less. Without flight
boxes, there is nowhere to stick them.
If someone has a better idea, let me know.
That’s all for this month. Keep your nose up, your wheels down, and your
wings level. Boy, is that ever
boring? See ya next time.
Paul Battenberg
President