Hi all, Mike said;
I guess you'll save on LAME labour costs at the price of the towplane being at the > mercy of gliding club maintenance. It won't take too many unavailabilities to negate this. Frankly Mike I would rather have a gliding person maintain our tow plane. The only downtime's we have had In the last 5 years were immediately after LAME's worked on it. The cause was VERY poor workmanship. (For example, in one case a condenser mounting bracket had broken. The LAME had cable tied it on. The condensor touched the outer metal jacket of a cable cover and shorted the mag to deck..) I am sure none of our people would have done such a poor repair. GFA ETC It is most refreshing to read the HGFA reports in this months Soaring OZ, they seem to inform their membership of everything important that goes on, what a pity the GFA can't be more open like the HGFA in terms of telling their members what is REALLY going on in the organization. Our own CEO's s report this month was hillarious reading. John Welsh tried to explain the electoral model, but left me more confused than before I read the article. Laughter ensued when I read the electoral collegiate system "Ensures review of the executives actions" (Or similar). This must have been a misprint, leaving the words "no" and "effective" out from between "ensures" and "review". The laughter rolled on, when John went further to compliment the federal collegiate electoral system, as used by the US to elect its president. Hasn't that THAT worked out well for everyone in the last few years eh? Populism NEVER occurs in US elections does it? In Australian Federal politics, we don't use a collegiate system and our governments seem to muddle thru OK, why should a US model be used for the GFA? It seems we, the great uninformed are not wise or worthy enough to vote for GFA office holders. The "Wrong people" might be elected. A bit later on John addresses the concerns about the electoral model. It is in fact fine apparently, as we wouldnt want "Populous or single issue candidates" getting elected. Heaven forbid someone would actually garner the approval of members before putting policy in place! Even worse, policy should not be popular. This was made blindingly obvious by the outrageous recent passenger flying money grab. By this stage I had to stop reading for a while or die laughing. And to think, for just $65 (5% of my annual gliding budget, or a full hour of flying) I could have attended the Gliding seminar and GFA AGM, so my views could be listened to and ignored in person! $200/year and they want me to PAY to attend the only GFA event that imparts any value. I always wondered why Mr Keating, some years ago described gliders pilots as "Elitist silvertails"........We are not there yet, but in a few years the way we are going........ Dave _________________________________________________________________ Take a summer road trip with Windows Live Hotmail. Multiple prizes and the ultimate dream beach house! http://www.ninemsn.com.au/hotmailroadtrip _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
