AEFA

(From AEFA Annual General Meeting 30 April 2013)

LAST YEAR REVIEW 

Newsletter

We produced a great newsletter – the team consisted of Gary Andrews as Coordinator, Erica Pike as layout artist and myself as proof reader. The newsletter was well received by some members, but it cost us just over $1,500 per year to produce and was a lot of work each month. Erica wanted to be relieved of her duties and we decided to move on to e-mail networks (as most of you are aware) and will not produce a newsletter as such in the near future.

Web site

We must give a great vote of thanks to Laurie Baldwin for his work on the AEFA web site at www.aefanet.com. Laurie managed to move to a new hosting service and an upgrade of the site, which cost us some $400-500. He has also initiated many improvements to the site, and it will now fill some of the gap left by the cessation of the newsletter. The Glossary of electric flight terms, Best Practice suggestions, Solutions for Novices and Rules of Thumb were all initiated by Laurie. A recent innovation is a Google Events Calendar, so now please send all event notifications to Laurie for inclusion. Check the site often to keep yourself up to date.

E-mail networks

We launched e-mail networks this month with Gary Andrews coordinating the electric glider network, Mike Colston the EOT network and myself the General News network. They seem to have been well received as it targets your particular interest. We are going to ask you to confirm your involvement in these networks.

F5J an EOT

F5J and EOT events have been a special part of the past year. The promotion of F5J has been successful with multiple events run in Sydney and Melbourne, and one in Brisbane. Our decision to run the electric glider and EOT Nats was a strategic one and has attracted substantial funding for these events, which has directly affected this Easter rally. You will notice the level of funding in Rob’s report. These are certainly the burgeoning classes in our domain, and it is fitting that they are the focus of two of our e-mail networks.

Purchase of resources

The purchase of data loggers for F5J has proved to be successful, and effectively adds to the promotion of that event. The wireless PA was in action over at the NEFR has proved to be effective, and we have added an ink-jet printer to our equipment for use in the field.

Rallies and events

The NEFR last year at Albury was a success, and this year we ordered great weather despite the low numbers. The Swan Hill Rally organized by Bill Hamilton and promoted by the AEFA was the biggest yet and also enjoyed great weather. The F5J and EOT events organized by the AEFA have been successful, even though the EOT days have been plagued with wind.

The future

Last year I announced that there needed to be a change of executive this time, but it has not eventuated. Some of us have agreed to continue if we restructure, so the new executive is:

President – myself

Secretary – Lou Amadio

Treasurer – Rob Watson

Executive member – Peter Everitt

Executive member – Mike Colston

Executive member – Brian Lockett

Thank you to those members for agreeing to help with executive.

I conferred with executive members and other key members and asked ourselves, “What are the key activities of the AEFA?” What would we continue if at all possible?”

The answers were:

• The NEFR and Swan Hill Rallies
• The postal competitions
• The web site
• Member communication

Our proposal to reduce work-load and restructure is:

• Abolish membership fees
• Replace the newsletter with e-mail networks
• Keep the event calendar on our web site
• Use the web site more to replace other communication
• Reduce the need for many executive meetings

Our funds would be raised by event fees only, so we would have to charge more at each event to keep our fees up – but at least this is a users-pays principle.

The membership at the NEFR meeting agreed with these changes. I moved that the changes be accepted. Seconders were Peter Henderson and Paul Osmond – discussion took place – the vote was unanimously in favour.

NEFR 2014

We have for-shadowed that the 2014 NEFR will be held at Easter at the Barossa Valley – the dates are 18-21 April, so it is early again. See you in the Barossa Valley!

 Peter Pine