Spiney,
How can you be wandering off topic on this thread. It has taken over the function of the whole PFA Bulletin board. Unfortunately, it gets just about the same number of posts as the PFA Board did. I still want it back though.

Mike W

I do not have the accounts to hand and so have not got a clue how the financial make up of the association is divided over the various activities.

It is obviously tempting to say that the Rally needs to be self funding and if not that it should be axed but that would miss the point completely.

For an association like the PFA to work well one needs to have some joint up thinking and in that I would see a very clear role for the Rally even if it was to be a loss leader.

The number two spectator sport after football in this country is air shows. What does the Rally not have anymore? An air show! Why? Part of the reason IIRC was that it would interfere with the arrival and departure of visitors. The result may well be that a lot of enthusiasts will shun away rather than come, pay and support the event.

One of the main functions of the PFA is to support the permit aircraft and home building. For this there is an extensive network of inspectors and the technical support unit at HQs. The cost of this network and the support from the professionals is extremely inexpensive to the permit holders and it is my impression that a lot of people within the association think that this is the holy grail.

The desire to keep these costs low is noble but may well be artificial. For this it would be interesting to see what fraction of the outlay of the aircraft one pays now for permit issue and renewal compared to say 30 years ago.

The cost of the average homebuilt with the arrival of the new stuff (both kits and modern materials) has soared compared to the previous generations where people built from plans alone.

People are prepared to pay the premiums for that as it gives them the performance they are looking for. Surely a more up to date remuneration for the PFA from this angle would not be out of step.

I fear that if the Rally goes, the PFA will do itself a disservice on the PR front.

I joined the Association at the gates as it seemed good value to join, get a year's membership, 'free' admission, an interesting magazine, support the good cause and fuel my romantic notions that one day I may well build my own.

Reality dictates that the latter is unlikely to ever happen but every year I just get that value feeling reaffirmed and I suspect many 'non building' members with me.

FD

Some pilots who are PFA members might not be great on the radio, but then again neither are a lot of Club pilots. The difference that I see though, is most PFA pilots can sort themselves out without being told what to do on the radio, whereas a numbe of club pilots cant seem to cope.

I go to a lot of PFA fly-ins and cant remember many at airfields with ATC. So I'm not sure of where the original poster on this subject was thinking of. Ludwig suggested a fly-in at an airfield with full ATC and turn away those who arent great on the radio! Interesting. Last fly-in I went to where there was full ATC was so bad because ATC couldnt cope with the arrival rate of aircraft and there werent that many! So if you want an interesting fly-in dont go to somewhere with full ATC.

As for the infringements of Lyneham during the PFA rally. You will find that most of the identified aircraft were either foreign visitors, or club aircraft. So probably not many PFA members there. The one aircraft that got investigated further by the CAA was a PA-28 from somewhere up north, Teeside I think. He made an approach to Lyneham, only went around after flares were fired at him. Then flew through the South Cernay parachute drop zone before making an approach at Aston Down. He did eventually find Kemble!

Watching the rally arrivals and being involved in the brieifings for departures, we see that there are the odd idiots in PFA aircraft, but by far the majority who do stupid things like orbits on final or dont follow the procedures are in factory built club/private aircraft, of course they could be PFA members too, but maybe not. Most of the people who dont understand the departure procedures seem to be factory built aircraft pilots. Similary are the pilots who call up for joining instructions, having not read the AIC!! Including a Citation on a company flight one day at Cranfield!

Someone commented about not attracting people because of no airshow. This is not the case, in previous years when there has been an airshow, the numbers have not been any different, the airshow has not attracted any extra visitors. Most people who come, are there to see the vast array of aircraft flying in, meet up with their friends, look at the exhibits, rather than being at just another airshow.

Anyway, the good news is that despite a few rumours to the contrary, the PFA rally is definitly on this year. This has been confirmed by Steve Petter, the Rally Chairman following a PFA Executive Comittee meeting last night.
Exhibitor bookings are picking up and two major sponsors have signed up.

So see you all at Europe's best aviation event at Kemble 9,10,11 July.

Good stuff Cubflyer ... see you there

ss

A lot of what has been said about poor airmanship should certainly not be confined to PFA flyers.

Would you not agree that if someone who may be a very experienced pilot but flys locally from a farm strip and rarely visits large airports will soon loose the ability to stay sharp on the radio.

The licence revaladition system should provide for this using flights with instructors to encourage such pilots to conduct a few flights to ATC airports and around some busy airspace.

I normally fly from an international airport where everyone is used to being told what to do and where to go and most are very sharp on the radio. However such pilots when visiting a flyin or rally often expect the ATC to give onward instructions before the will make the next turn. then when they are not being "minded" by ATC they can cause just as much difficulty as those who know what to do but can't speak on the radio.

I also fly a Rallye aircraft from a farm strip so I tend to meet three types of pilots. Some who "can talk and not fly" and others who "can fly but not talk" and "some who can do both"

Inspite of all that most will find their way around the sky and most will keep out of trouble and as far as I am concerned the more who keep flying the better, PFA or other.

Tony Ringland

PS. beginning of which week will the PFA BB be back???

CF,

Good news that the Rally is definitely on.

I will enjoy coming along and having a look.

Have to say that the (apparent) rumours were yet another hiccough which made me wonder whether all is well with the PFA.

FD

Cubflyer / Flying Dutch -

Good news indeed that the rally is on. Lets hope for good weather and a big turn-out. Hopefully, the Association can put some of the recent acrimony behind it and start to look forwards again. A Pprune meet-up perhaps?

Mr. W

PS. TonyR - re the BB - don't you know - Tommorrow never comes!

A good general purpose answer, on the basis that "next week" is clearly a temporal state that we never reach.:p

If it were "We hope to re-open the bulletin on the 29th" (of February) we would, in the fullness of time, eventually get there.

Mike

The membership are being treated like Mushrooms

ie. kept in the dark and fed loads of s..t

PFA Bb
 

Still no sign of it back on line

Any news????

R.I.P. pfa bb
 

I think we must say goodbye to the PFA BB, even with the new head of engineering in place they cannot seem to fix the problem.

At least free speach is still available on this forum.

Pfa BB RIP

I think you may find most of the pfa BB users use this forum anyway

The passing of the PFA BB is no great loss. Most of it consisted of petty bickering amongst members about useless trivia. I resigned from the PFA years ago because of that very reason.

At least Ppruners bicker about interesting things!:{

Did the previous Head of Engineering not make the move to Turweston?

Is the new one an existing member of staff?

"Did the previous Head of Engineering not make the move to Turweston?"

There was no such post at Shoreham. The Director of Engineering was appointed so to allow the Chief Engineer and Deputy Chief Engineer to concentrate upon their day jobs, ie approving aircraft and mods for flight.

The Dir of Engineering has a broader role and it encompasses such things as governance, CAA liason and liason with the plethora of associated bodies and parties that were preventing the CE and DCE from turning around work packages with the speed that was desired of them.

Hope that this helps,

Stik

PFA emails and spam
 

I've suddenly started getting loads of spam to my .ukpilots.net email address. This is a pfa email account and has always been very spam free. Am I the only one or has somebody now managed to harvest the PFA's email account holders list?

SS

PFA email adress and spam???
 

I've suddenly started getting loads of spam to my .ukpilots.net email address. This is a pfa email account and has always been very spam free. Am I the only one or has somebody now managed to harvest the PFA's email account holders list?

SS

They'll probably claim it as a membership benefit :(

Do you subscribe to any mailing list with that address? I've got an email address that is used only for the Flyer list, and that's now getting spammed frequently - at some point an email with my address on must have been copied elsewhere and harvested...

Nothing new mailing list wise. I thought about it after and looked at a message "properties" it looks like it is a .ukpilots.net problem as the spams are going to loads of other pfa email addresses too.

b:mad:y shame as it was my one spam free address :(

SS

I registered on the Flyer Forum last week using my "best" spam-free email address (stupid, yes, I know) and it as received about 5 spams a day since.

Could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.

TallGuy.

I wouldn't necessarily blame Flyer, PFA or any other service you subscribe to. These B:mad: d spammers 'sniff' the world-wide information superweb for email addresses. The main way to stay spam-free(ish) is never subscribe to these services and never inlcude the email address in a form being submitted unencrypted.

Was working for me until Mrs bcfc ordered some flowers using my mail address and now the spam flood gates are well and truly open.

Topical understatement of the year...

Spam Beeb article

Tall guy, did you elect to make your e-mail address public on the FLYER Forum?

The option to make your e-mail address public on the forum is turned off by default when you sign up. If you have switched it on, any robot out there on the web can harvest e-mails addresses of a website. FLYER do NOT use the registered e-mail addresses from the forum for marketing purposes or give them out to anyone else



BR
FLYER Forum moderator.

Blue Robin
I set "show your email address" to No.

I did add a link to my www page though (I just removed it). Maybe the email harvester is clever enough to work out an email address from the home-page?:uhoh: It was a major UK ISP.

Do you think it is worth a post on the FF to see if there is a pattern developing?

TallGuy.

p.s. I wasn't blaming the Forum, just commenting.

Wel I'm registered for FF using my work address and don't get any spam period. :ok:

Mike

No inconvenience at all.

BlueRobin,
I am guessing that work has a decent spam filter on their email server. Many ISPs have a similar thing. Check out their homepage, and they may have something like [email protected]. You forward the spam email to the address and it adds the email characteristics to the filter. Not 100% effective, but helps...:ok:

From PFA

We hope to re-open the Bulletin Board on Wednesday 7th April and apologise for the inconvenience caused. 2.4.04

Was Tue 6th

"If tomorrow never comes" should be the PFA theme song

JB

7th April came and went, and, guess what?

:(

Definition from Dictionary.com
The final sentence appears to have hit the nail on the head.

<World-Wide Web> (Sometimes "webmistress") The alias or role
of the person(s) responsible for the development and
maintenance of one or more web servers and/or some or all of
the web pages at a web site. The term does not imply any
particular level of skill or mastery (see "webmonkey").

No problem.
The suspense (ok, idle curiosity) of wondering when the PFA BB will reopen is the most interesting thing that's ever happened to it in its boring history by a long way.
If Pprune would allow it, a running 'PFA' thread on this forum would be much better IMHO.
Ordinary members could discuss things freely AND not have the committee types and their awestruck groupies wading in whenever someone has the audacity to dare suggest the top brass are doing something wrong.

AM - is this a hook? If so, you can start reeling in, now!

"not have the committee types and their awestruck groupies wading in whenever someone has the audacity to dare suggest the top brass are doing something wrong."

The PFA as an organisation does have a curious system of governance. Permanent staff (some technically qualified, the majority clerical) are led by a committee of unsalaried volunteers. Those volunteers are there for a variety of reasons, generally the only thing that they have in common is a genuine love of grass-roots flying. A more disparate and eclectic cross-section of society would be hard to find.

Love it or hate it, the PFA has a very important role to play in private aviation today.

Some years ago, so disillusioned was I with the state of affairs that I felt that something positive had to be done for the Association, I went to PFA HQ and expressed my concerns. Some months later I was approached by the Chairman and persuaded to put myself forward for EC candidature as my comments and criticisms were deemed useful and valid.

I had never been on a committee but had built an aeroplane and I had been a succesful MD of a company with a turnover in excess of $14m, pa. I rather naively assumed that committee work would be a rather refreshing challenge.

As with all non-cohesive units, in-fighting and empire building is prevalent. During the tenure of the previous chairman, all out guerilla-like faction fighting occured on many occasions!

I am no longer on the EC as I was not able to make the difference that I had hoped. In general most of the EC members that I have met over the years, have been there for the right reasons, the constituition of the PFA as it currently stands does not lend itself to easy governance and occasionally personalities and egos do rather get in the way, too.

What also does not help the smooth running of an Association for amateurs run by amateurs is the constant sniping from afar and behind the safety of a computer by members and sometimes non-members on the BB. I admit that even today the EC, the Chief Exec et al, do not seem terribly good at disseminating information to the membership via the website and for historic reasons seem to prefer PF for any missives.

PFA members have voted for the Executive. If you do not feel that the organisation is going the way you want it, then vote them out or even stand yourselves. It is the easiest thing in the world to bitch about something, especially when not in possession of all of the facts, it is far harder to actually do something about it.

I remain passionate about the PFA. I own 2 PFA types, one that I built from drawings and am currently making good progress with my new build project.

Stik

It's a fair bet that whoever is trying to get the PFA BB up and running is an unpaid volunteer who is not professionally qualified for the task and has a full time job to do as well. I admit that it does the PFA no favours at all but that's the way it is. If you could do better, go and do it. If you couldn't, or are not prepared to, Shut up.

Mike W

S,

Happily agree with the first part of your statement, however can not do the same with the latter.

Those in office of any organisation or club have the duty to discharge themselves of their responsibilities in the best way possible.

If the membership of the club has founded concerns they should be able to vent them in a constructive manner, stating that you can just 'do it yourself if you know better' holds no water.

FD

Look the PFA is being run by a group of idoits who have created handy we numbers for themselves.

If any other company was run by such it would go bust in a few months

JB

JB,

To write potentially libelous statements on here is neither very clever nor very helpful when trying to have a meaningful discussion.

Just my opinion of course.

FD

Thankfully, we haven't yet reached the state where describing a group of people as idiots is libellous. :D

Dutch,
Sorry, I see nothing wrong with my put up or shut up call. As far as I know, the PFA has no DUTY to provide a BB. I don't think the membership has ever voted on whether or not we should have a presence in the WWWeb. I think we should and I wish it was a hell of a lot better than it is. I have neither the skills nor the time to help (but have done my bit in other directions in the past and, hopefully will in the future).
How do we know that the people doing all the complaining are members?
The easiest way to stop the complaints is to abandon the service. Just close it down altogether.
If you can't help, don't hinder.
Or, as someone has as a tag line to his posts:-
Lead, follow or get out of the bluddy way.

Mike W

Obviously there may well be/have been folks that were complaining on the PFA BB but ISTR that most people on there were posting under their real name rather than an alias.

It is clear that a lot of people are a more thoughtful and careful when they are posting under their real name.

You can take the view that the PFA does not have to provide a BB but that would be pretty shortsighted. There can be no doubt that the internet and BB have their limitations and can be misused by people to whip up negative sentiments.

It can however also be a very efficient thermometer to gauge what is happening out there and be a fond of knowledge for its membership.

How you view these benefits/risks may well depend on how you stand in life as an individual/organisation.

As you so eloquently state you can live by slogans. On the whole more the domain of despots.

Nowt wrong with some constructive debate and positive criticism. Or do the people you work and live with get treated to a healthy dose of rhetoric when they raise an issue?

FD

So the PFA board is down! So Bl@@dy what? Plenty more BB's including this one isn’t there? If I was with the PFA hierarchy I would chuck out the BB for keeps. With all the bitching going on, I think that the PFA and mankind is better off without BB's judging by the total kiddy cr@p posted on them. Why should the PFA spend money for the benefit of those intent on bringing it into disrepute?