coljones

It all depends on your business model. The advertising pays for the editorial stuff, the pre-print material and layouts - just like the electronic copy. The $400,000 paid for the printing and distribution - $40 a year per head - what a bargain. The magazine was never losing money and depending on the funding model used - let's say $6 value a copy printed and posted - meant that RAA was making a cool $260,000 notional profit on the magazine each year. Of course scrapping the magazine meant that the magazine notional profit increased to $400,000. At least Honest John and Big Pete gave us some of our taxes back (too bad about the revenue base though). If we didn't have the advertisers that part of the revenue would go down, potentially requiring a subsidy from RAA which would cut into that notional $400,000 magazine profit.

Camel suggested that he had asked the right questions via FoI and got some right questions. It appears that RAA hasn't pursued the FoI route, asked the right questions of the wrong people and got fobbed off. FoI does work quite a lot of the time, which is why pollies are getting cunning and claiming Cabinet paper, working paper, never wrote it down, commercial in confidence or some such.

And as I recall, CASA was taken to the AAT who ordered a change in how CASA AVMED handled diabetes.

Democracy can be a bitch can't it. Based on other elections, you can in on year be dished up a pile of drongos, deadbeats and d1ckheads and in another election a dream team. The difficulty with a seven member board is that in a bad year you don't have the other 6 (in a 13 member board) picking up the slack. If we could asses the amount of work to be done divided by the effort reasonably provide by a good director. You would arrive at the size of a good board. Double that for the vagaries of democracy and you have the unique size of a FAQ board. Too strong and they harass the CEO, too weak and the CEO becomes the puppet master. Corporate boards work, not because of democracy, but through nepotism and patronage, where cliques has control over a large bundle of shares, usually trustee companies and superfunds associated with the current board and a swag of proxies controlled by the chair. Or in the case of NewsCorp by a division between A shares and nonvoting B shares. But don't expect Corporate Boards to be pure and lilywhite as they are just as likely to be of the opinion that what is good for the company and board is good for the shareholders and staff. One can tinker with the voting system all you like but the major game changer is not the size of the board or its mode of election but the degree of transparency about board activity and director and candidate quality.

You are looking petty good there in your new plane. Keep well.

The old board turned a profit because, being clueless they knew no what they were doing. A bit like the Health Services Union building big fat wads of cash in a variety of hollow logs just waiting for some day when the hollow log would get cleaned out by some smarty. No financial controls, no financial management, no clues! In the case of RAA the cluelessness was to employ the people they employed who wouldn't do the work they were supposed to and ignore all the warning signs. CASA Audits come and go and threw RAA into an administrative nightmare requiring buckets of cash to fix - paying off staff no longer with us and employing high priced lawyers and consultants to keep CASA away from the door. The erosion of the surplus was because older boards did not do their job. The new board is still filling all the bullet holes and bomb craters and repairing and rebuilding the materiel run down due to the lack of foresight be the old boards. Yes we do have buckets of cash in the bank and we do own a building but you can't eat bricks. RAA never had a financial management plan nor an asset plan or a reserves plan. RAA does not need huge unallocated reserves but it does require well considered reserves against genuine prudential targets. "Just because we can" never has and never will satisfy me that the board is doing it fiscal job properly. "Trust us" is equally hollow. Steve Runciman was having a go, so was Don and now Jim is on the case but you could drown the other past treasurers and a lot of former board members and they wouldn't be missed. We are very lucky that most of the old guard have left. I am waiting for some program management info to turn up - what projects we had, how much money was allocated, how it is being spent and what progress was made. Think Opsman's department, think Techman's department. Me'thinks, Keith, that you rush a little too quickly to the defence of the indefensible.

Don, stop being such a NIMBY. You could always move to Quirindi, Gunnedah, Orange, Bathurst, Cootamundra. Williamtown was there before you were born. Now if RAA would just revise the Ops Manual and put CTA back in (and they got CASA to agree) there might be fewer problems everywhere. Coffs, Tamworth, Albury, Gold Coast. It is not just a RAAF, Navy or Army problem it is an Airspace issue.

Blame the RAAF? Are you suggesting that they closed down Broadmeadow?

That is pretty much the reason we have had cockups in the past. The board implying that the membership was unfit to know the truth about the organisation and the executive saying much the same thing about the board. Saying "it is my turn to play silly buggers with the ship, you willhave to wait for your turn" just does not cut it with me.People are not saying that you are not doing a good job, or not even an OK one, but you don't have a system in place that provides any sort of transparency. To say you have started reviewing a draft of a constitution indicates that you have moved beyond the concept stage and, to me, suggests that you have not shared that concept with the great unwashed.

Yes, a bit like football and cricket, isn't it.

Before I see the draft constitution I would like to see a list of principles that we can comment on. 1. The Ops Manual was just dumped on the table, not even a take it or leave it. 2. Part 64 was also dumped on the table with bits and pieces chucked on later. Take it or leave it. There is still confusion out there. I haven't seen the draft of the draft let alone the draft of the draft of the draft but there will be things there that will bite us on the bum. Perhaps the process should be to investigate democratic models of advocacy and service organisation and test those against our organisational constraints FX being a incorporated association under Canberra law doesn't allow us to have postal ballots to change the constitution. Maybe we should move ourselves, with our current constitution, over to NSW (where incorporation permits postal ballots) and use those rules to ensure that the maximum number of people get to bite the cherry about change. Someone appears to be off crafting words to reduce the size of the board as we speak but we don't have a clear view about what the organisation should look like and how it is governed. Incorporation under ASIC doesn't excite me as the level of bullshit the lawyers bury into those Articles of Association are quite stupid. (I am one the board of one now). Talking about lawyers, has anyone managed to get the advise Runciman was waving around, that we, apparently, paid for, but was kept in a black box, inside a lead barrel down in one of the reactors at Fukushima. Am I being treated like a mushroom? Don't know. Am I whelmed by the board and CEO? Don't know. Perhaps the election will bring a little clarity. Cheers

If only we had more professional engineers rather than bakers assistants!!

You will need an OTG (on the go) cable which converts from Micro USB (male) to Standard USB female so you can plug in standard USB devices like memory sticks, keyboards, USB HDD etc. and in this case a TV Tuner dongle. (with the right app you might even be able to watch TV as well on your Android) Erik seems to have received an OTG cable as part of his Android Kit (I didn't) but you should be able to pick one up at Dick Smiths, JCar or JB HiFi for about $10. They are very handy to have and great for plugging in memory sticks and portable HDD with all your movies. To use in this mode there are a number apps you can use such as ES File or search for others using OTG as search criteria.

Adam, in your case, because you were flying J160s and J170s most of the time, the brakes were ineffective because you were floating ...and... floating ..and .. floating ... and floating ...and ... floating and you were trying every trick under the sun to get the bugger to land so you could exit the strip before Tower Road or the trotting track. LSA55s are a tad different and can trick you and land, with a bounce, when you really want them to float a bit so you can wash off height gently.

Ah!! No Professional Engineers there.

Will you be releasing the FOI to the world? You could refer the CASA spokesperson to the Institution of Engineers who could set up a disciplinary panel to test the assertions of the Professional Engineers in CASA and ATSB.

Are you referring to post #1. It has all the hallmarks of being a Jab LSA55 + actually a great little plane to fly. John Carlo must have muscles like a gorrilla to get it to lock up. Gentleness in all is the success of life.

Is this a presumptuous statement?

Ah, found it http://www.sfcaero.com.au/cmsfiles/150731%20Night%20Circuits.pdf

Where are you doing this. Sounds like a great idea.

1. I rather like the Jabiru LSA55 - or any other Jab 2. Foxbat a22 25. I would like to love the Lightwing but there is a problem (will this ever end?) with the propellor on all that I would like to train on. Maybe I should just go to Orange and train on a C-140 I have only ever seen a real storch in action. Looks like a fun machine and the votes for the Slescev version make me want to hunt one down

A readily identifiable pissoir near the bowser would help rather than blundering into an onsite business. But thanks fellers.

"Appropriation" is value free. It covers both legal and illegal appropriation. There is also expropriation. But we digress - as usual.

Not always - "misappropriation" is to appropriate something without legal right. Canberra appropriates money all the the time via appropriation bills. I think you misapprehend.

RPC is also a way of CASA giving Controlled access. "If you wanna play on my beach you gotta play by my rules".