September 2007 Board Meeting

I attended my first RA-Aus board meeting on 14-16 September in Canberra. John Gardon was elected the new President, Myles Breitkreutz stayed on as Secretary and David Caban was elected Treasurer. Following are some items that may be of interest.

It was agreed all Board discussions except those “In Camera” or sensitive financial dealings with third party organisations would be available to the general membership.

I expressed concern at both the wording of changes to the Constitution and the vote itself. I stated (in my view) the vote was poorly handled in that there was no mention in the magazine that a vote was to be taken at the AGM, and no ballot papers were included in the magazine for the general membership. Changes to the constitution were passed with only 17 votes for and 1 against.

Lee Ungermann was confirmed as our new Executive Director, and Mick Poole was promoted to Operations Manager

The contract with Zebra publishing was renewed for another three years and there was discussion on how to keep improving the magazine.

Mick Poole showed draft copies of new aircraft and engine logbooks. They will not be compulsory for the general membership. Mick discussed the reason for the separate book for engines as some engines are moved from plane to plane and you can’t keep track of where they are or their status. I mentioned the same should apply to trike wings as some trike pilots have two or more wings.

A motion was passed that in future All Board candidate profiles will be published even if they are the only candidate, and all candidates must list their position on the executive of other aviation related bodies.

There was a motion passed to divide Queensland into three areas, Southern, Central, and Northern. Legal advice is to be taken if this can be done without changes to the Constitution. The total number of board members will remain the same.

There was discussion about Rego labels similar to motor cars. This was held over to a future date.

Rod Stiff was inducted as an RA-Aus Pioneer

There was discussion about having a Member Forum on our web site and how and where we could get staff to moderate this Forum.

We will now have new plastic Pilot Certificate cards instead official certificate cards.

There was discussion about our long term future and the possibility of our own airfield in the future.

John McKeown