St Louis Flying Club Newsletter - 18 November 1999

From The President - By Mike Piccirilli

Dear Members,

I used my AOPA membership to perform an updated valuation of the C-172 (the last one was done in April 1997). The value has increased from $40,440 to $44,727. The increase came from the analysis below.

The majority of the increase has been caused by jump in the average retail price. The AOPA valuation also values our low total time more than the valuation did in 1997. The increased time Since Major OverHaul reduced the value, as did the wear and tear on the paint and interior (exterior paint chips are more prevalent and seat upholstery is starting to show wear). The AOPA valuation has no adjustment for damage history so I used the same -5% of average retail decrement used in 1997.

The updated valuation means that each club member share is worth $6,390. It also means that the hull value of the aircraft should be increased to match the new value. ACTION: Mike Russell please call NationAir to increase the hull value. The unfortunate part is the cost of insurance will be adjusted upward accordingly.

Our new member, John Heilmann, has been very busy creating a St. Louis Flying Club website. http://www.heilmannpub.com/stlflying.html

The website has background information on the club, the club Articles of Incorporation, on-line membership application, newsletter, membership roster, and scheduling section. The website is free. John is piggybacking onto server space he wasn't utilizing. I am excited about the website as a means to more actively recruit replacement members (everything they need to know is available online). Now if someone is interested in joining the club, all we have to do is direct them to the website. I have asked John to password protect the sections containing member phone numbers and scheduling.

John is looking for feedback on the website, in particular on the scheduling section. John's vision was to have the club schedule on-line so members could immediately confirm the aircraft's status and also view the future status in order to perform trip planning. To me, this will not preclude the need to have a scheduling officer but it would reduce the scheduling officer workload as individual members will now schedule the plane themselves. If a member could not logon to schedule the aircraft they would still call up the scheduling officer. I'm not sure if the club needs it or not. We are looking for member feedback.

Happy Landings,

Pic.

Treasurer's Report - by Marlin Sipe

It's nice to see that the value of the plane has increased. I put the new value on the balance statement. The estimated share value shown on the balance statement varies month to month because it adds in the adjusted treasury, and subtracts what we would like to have saved for the Annual so far. This shows the extra money the club has. It also decreases the share value as the Annual approaches, which is what happens to the market value anyway.

With some of the maintenance items recently, the treasury is down. We're still in the black, but we're behind what we would like to have saved up for the Annual so far. Hopefully we are done with maintenance expenses for a while, and can start to build up some maintenance money.

From the Editor - from Marlin Sipe

The newsletter is a few days late getting out because I was working with John (well, I was making suggestions, and John was doing all the work) to get the web page set up. There is a "Members Only" section. When you click on that, it will ask for a password. You will then have access to the flight bill and online schedule. Also, before entering the password, the Members listing will only show the member names and email addresses. With the password, you get the addresses and phone numbers. This will let non-members get info about the club without seeing info that we might not want to be public.

I created an online version of the newsletter too. There is a link to it from the new web page. The newsletter looks about the same as the paper version. If everyone has internet access and agrees to it, we could eliminate the paper copies that I mail out, and publish it online each month. If we do that, the format of the newsletter would eventually change to be more "web friendly", since it will no longer be restricted to paper format. We could keep links to the last few months online. I would send out an email notice each month that it has been published. We would also save a buck or so a month by not mailing these out, except when there is something else that needs to be mailed. Let us know what you think about online billing.

I like the web page and the online scheduling idea. We will need to lay out some guidelines to make sure there are not conflicts. The only downside I see is when someone is not near a computer and wants to reserve the plane. We will need the scheduling officer (and maybe the other club members) to agree to logging on to the internet to check the schedule for someone who is not near a computer. We could also enter special requests on the schedule to have the plane fully fueled, or to leave it unfilled. There could also be a maintenance section with the latest status of things.

   Maintenance - from Marlin Sipe

The intermittent headset mic audio problem has been fixed! Some people seemed to have no problem, and others always had a problem. I sometimes had a problem. It always worked when Randy looked at it. I realized that it was not working if I directly plugged my David Clark headset into the plane, but it would work if I was using my intercom. Randy and I went out to the plane recently to trouble-shoot the problem. It was a broken ground wire to the headphone mic jack. When plugging in a headset (David Clark) that has separate grounds on the mic and receive audio, the mic would not work. When plugging in something with the grounds tied together, the mic would have a ground through the other jack, and would work. We fixed the broken wire, and it all seems to be working now. We need to be careful and not pull on the jack that is hanging there. In the future, we may possibly wire it in more permanently, and eliminate the 'Y' adapter.

The pitot-static and transponder checks were done this month.

The new ELT batteries were picked up locally and replaced by Randy, so we are good to go for another 2 years there.

I'm not aware of any other maintenance issues that need to be taken care of.

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