Sport Pilot, has the rot set in ?

[Guest Andys@coffs]

My argument is economic1. the removal of the printed mag reduced cost of production of the mag significantly ... and yet our membership remained unreduced ... effectively a MASSIVE membership increase.

Yep we went from loosing heaps per year to loosing much less per year......No argument that it was in effect an increase in membership because you paid the same but got less, tangible in the hand.

 

2. the printed mag is STILL not covering its print and distribution costs so MEMBERSHIP fees are STILL being used to subsidize the magazine print and distribution we are not even getting.

I would agree in principle except to say that the editorial costs (those costs associated with producing the content) were being fully met by only the subscribers....(hence my earlier comment about being personally unhappy) and if the costs for printing and distribution aren't fully being met by the consumers of the paper version Im guessing that the editorial content proportion that probably should be met by the non subscribers is probably now being paid for by the nonsubscribers......

 

Economics ... we are getting far less and paying far more ... sounds just like GA really.

Which is easy to say but understand when you weren't paying for it you still were, the associations reserves were being consumed to meet day to day obligations.....Getting far less??? Really?? you still get the magazine content, you still get to fly......I accept that not every (any?) interaction you've had might be a "joy to behold" but for the vast majority of us we can still do what we want to do which is fly.....and there appears to be no on the horizon threat to the continuing ability to do that.....In the last decade that has not been the case for the majority of the time

 

Andy

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Kasper:It is the modern reality and it isn't unique to our organisation and magazine. Every day we get less for more and we see the overpaid execs at the top getting fatter and fatter paychecks.

Hmmm, is there a connection there?

 

Wasn't "Trickle-down economics" supposed to be the magic pudding, the tide that "lifted all boats"???

 

Andy:

 

Your logic makes no sense at all; When consumption goes down, put the price up! Yep that will encourage more people to buy the item! Is there another way? Yep, there are plenty, starting with finding out what the consumers want, then maybe putting the production UP instead of down so that you get economies of scale ... and there are many others. These are not NEW innovations, but it seems they are beyond a lot of business people these days who seem obsessed with costs and profits rather than product quality.

I believe you have misinterpreted my comments.....we RAAus live within a larger economy ,and within the print/magazine world we represent probably less than 0.01% of that economy......It is shrinking daily and there is nothing we can do to affect that despite your suggestion to the contrary......Ok so within RAAus lets double our production and damn the costs....we now control 0.02% (or thereabouts don't shoot me because of loose mathematics, its the concept Im trying to show) of the economy...... which despite us bucking the trend is still shrinking and correctly (cause there isn't anything else financially the suppliers can do) the suppliers of that economy have to recoup their fixed costs from a smaller production run (in total not just RAAus) which therefore means that the costs of production increase for those that remain.....In your scenario you seem to make an assumption that the economy Im talking of is purely an RAAus issue...if we shrink our costs per unit go up if we grow production they go down....and while that is correct in an instantaneous measure of the state of play it is irrelevant in the long run by virtue that we are such a small fish in that pond. To provide an example if we were to double our production run would that suddenly mean that Australia post would provide a cheaper distribution costs (Hint.....Hell no!) would it mean that the next price rise of significance (and there will be one and soon) by Australia post wouldn't be passed on to us? (hint..... Hell no!) and on it goes......

 

It is a fact that there are alternates available, and in the short term they might/might not have been attractive...in the longer term print magazines are going to do a tyrannosaurus rex and become extinct, in many cases the cost of producing and distributing them is now at a level that exceeds what a consumer is prepared to pay for it. That is a statement of undeniable fact, if it were pure BS then all the newsagents that were alive a decade ago would still be alive and the same size.......most are dead and gone those that remain are a shadow of themselves in general. I just cant understand why people cant accept that reality? If we go back 20 years the newspapers were in effect rivers of advertising gold. Those that own and manage them would have, if it was in any way within their power, not allowed the reality that I talk of turn their pipeline of money into a bleeding wound that if not cauterised will surely kill them due blood loss shortly......If the Ruperts and his ilk of the world couldn't change that then what hope for the board of RAAus?

 

Andy

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Why not raise the price of the printed to cover costs, say $25 per edition? Everyone is happy then

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Boards are elected to make decisions. General meetings are for questioning those decisions. Sniping at directors and former directors outside of a general meeting is unproductive and tiresome. Move on.

 

 

[rankamateur]

Why not raise the price of the printed to cover costs, say $25 per edition? Everyone is happy then

Then print it quarterly and the cost increase would be just $10 per year per subscriber and production and distribution cost should reduce to a quarter what it is at the moment. And the rest of us who don't subscribe still won't read it. Everyone should be happier then.

 

 

[kasper]

much clipped ...Which is easy to say but understand when you weren't paying for it you still were, the associations reserves were being consumed to meet day to day obligations.....Getting far less??? Really?? you still get the magazine content, you still get to fly......I accept that not every (any?) interaction you've had might be a "joy to behold" but for the vast majority of us we can still do what we want to do which is fly.....and there appears to be no on the horizon threat to the continuing ability to do that.....In the last decade that has not been the case for the majority of the time

Andy

I have been a member for over 25 years ... those member reserves are mine just as much as they are any other members - we were paying for it and still are.

And when we DO hear from the CEO on the magazine - like at Tamworth - we find that printed mag is being subsidised by member funds, sales are well short of expectations and they keep pushing circulation is up on the online mag ... without saying if its circulation by unique URL or circulation by access ... If I log in and read the mag at Issu 4-5 times a month and read a back issue in a month and download the .pdf from the RAA website I am actually only 1 reader ... but I'll bet RAAus are counting me as 6-7.

 

Oh and I am really interested to hear more from the CEO of the intention to reinstate the printed mag 'free' to all members ASAP ... I am not certain what world he lives in but I do not recognise it

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

I have been a member for over 25 years ... those member reserves are mine just as much as they are any other members - we were paying for it and still are.

I agree you either pay more for the same services or pay the same for less services...either way the real cost for what remains has gone up. That'e exactly what happened in RAAus and it had to, reserves were being eroded at an unsustainable rate prior to the decision.

 

And when we DO hear from the CEO on the magazine - like at Tamworth - we find that printed mag is being subsidised by member funds, sales are well short of expectations and they keep pushing circulation is up on the online mag ... without saying if its circulation by unique URL or circulation by access ... If I log in and read the mag at Issu 4-5 times a month and read a back issue in a month and download the .pdf from the RAA website I am actually only 1 reader ... but I'll bet RAAus are counting me as 6-7..

I agree that if they aren't selling what they expected of the paper copy's then the fixed costs for the magazine must be met from somewhere and the only somewhere available to take up an overspend, or sales lower than budget is reserves...longer term if nothing else changes the cost of a paper subscription will increase....or we'll simply increase membership costs because there isn't any other services that we can cut back on, that CASA or the membership would accept a degradation in. It is likely in future years that aircraft registration services will be costed on a cost recovery basis. If you are re-registering a factory built Airborne trike, as an example, then the real time costs associated with that service are minimal, however first time registration of an LSA aircraft that is first of type in Australia costs orders of magnitude more than a single years rego costs. Similarly I expect that the costs to the organisation of running a new never seen before MARAP process end to end wont be cheap either.... The board and employees just need to work out whether the passing on of the real costs of those things will stifle change and therefore might be best subsidised by the membership as it is today....

 

Oh and I am really interested to hear more from the CEO of the intention to reinstate the printed mag 'free' to all members ASAP ... I am not certain what world he lives in but I do not recognise it

Look to me the original decision was about buying time for the system changes to be implemented and early bugs to be solved before the reserves dwindled to nothing. The completed system change introduced efficiencies and the ability to trim our cost base. If the current team want for what ever reason to revisit the magazine now that the pressures on the reserves have been relaxed either some or in total then so be it, however if they do turn back the clock then we will get to play groundhog day again a bit further down track...

 

 

[kasper]

Andy - mag revisit and groundhog day are exactly why I think the universe of the CEO and mine are just occasionally bumping into each other

 

 

[turboplanner]

This is a dead argument.

 

While I outlined on a few occasions that paper magazines were being costed out of existence as costs went up exponentially, and newsagencies were going out of business, the decision to change belonged to the members.

 

At that time, RAA was an incorprated association and the "board members" were representatives of the members.

 

They were plain and simply wrong in hijacking the decision from the members; they didn't understand then, they don't understand now, and it seems they never will.

 

That should have been warning enough, but then the oprganisation was changed, and these days the executive board can make all those decisions by themselves.

 

It's now history, and you'll see more of the same; this will suit the people happy to go with the top end of recreational aircraft, and who only want to fly.

 

 

[jetjr]

Even if you held a poll and acted on results, the decision would be made by a tiny number of members. Very few vote on important things

 

Then there would still be a group , maybe even of non members, here criticising outcomes and results

 

 

[Admin]

That's not the point...2 things:

 

1. A sample is better than no sample, and

 

2. Someone may come up with a better option that no one has thought of...use the membership, not abuse it!

 

To think that their own solution is better that any 1 single person in 8,500 can come up with is just shear arrogance

 

 

[Downunder]

As we are getting about one email a week from the RAA, it would not be hard to put a survey question in each.

 

Survey monkey or something. It's not hard, unless ofcourse you don't want to know what the membership wants.

 

"Ignorance is a tool" as they say.....

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The implications about the decision the board has made with the magazine is the money being wasted propping up the magazine could be used to produce a very nice blog with some interesting articles that people want to read. Articles that, properly promoted, will have a life beyond a single month in a magazine.

 

Even though 80% dropped their subscription the board was still unwilling to make the right decision because a small vocal minority still want the magazine.

 

By the the time the decision is made to ditch the magazine, there won't be any money left to produce a nice blog.

 

Talk about typical RAA management.

 

 

[Downunder]

So you're saying the RAA trying to please everybody has ended up pleasing nobody and effectively failed to save the money the whole effort was in aid of?

 

I might go along with that.....

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Modern publishing is now done via forums/blogs/social media sites, hot linking and sharing of article, this current publishing model the RAA implemented is designed to protect the printers revenues more so than promote the RAA. Its good for the publishers because the magazine is tied to the 2 page publishing format of magazines and it makes it a bit harder to rip off the intellectual property and artistic elements.

 

Holding on to the PDF/magazine format is bad for the RAA in the long run as google doesn't like linking to PDFs, after you downloaded and opened the PDF, you still have to search through the PDF. There are also increasing numbers of people using mobile phones and big image laden PDFs tend to grind most phones to a halt and you are lucky if you can read the text on smaller screens once you've waited for it too download.

 

Issuu is terrible choice as a publishing platform. I hate using, its very sluggish inside a browser, the interface is pretty basic and they are forever spamming me. It just smacks of no one on the board being prepared to say anything once a bad decision has been made.

 

 

[adshedsyd]

Is there a facility to 'ferry' an unlicensed aircraft to a Lame work shop? With a car you can simply book in with a garage for a bule slip and are covered so long as you go directly to the nearest workshop.

 

 

[-Rod-]

Is there a facility to 'ferry' an unlicensed aircraft to a Lame work shop? With a car you can simply book in with a garage for a bule slip and are covered so long as you go directly to the nearest workshop.

A little off topic however a 'permit to fly' is available on application to fly to a point of repair. With conditions of course. This can be completed directly with approved CASA/RAAus officers, contact the RAAus Tech Department for specific advice.