Eavesdropping on 3rd Feb 2008.

A fair number of topics were discussed at this committee meeting, and here I'll comment on some of them.

In their search for a trailer for th eK13s, the club was looking as far afield as Holland, but unfortunately we missed it. So we're still looking. Fitting an electric vario to EED was also discussed, as was the EASA transition and whether the club would pay for it, subsidise it or what. Hopefully that will be decided by the next meeting.

speaking of EASA transitions, we now have a timetable for the club gliders' transitions.

Posters to encourage members to bring groups along for our Flight and Bite events will be made availoabel online as a PDF.

It was suggested that we try doing something special for the longest day of the year, so keep your eyes open for more news on this, when we hope to attract more new members.

Although we've done a bit of work on teh MT recently, we are still having to replace clutches with three due. hopefully we will have more of the vehicles online soon. Ken would like to thank Mario for a lot of help with the MT recently, as well as a few other volunteers. You could volunteer to help as well.

The prospect of self-insuring the club gliders to reduce our outgoings was also considered and will be investigated further, including collecting feedback from a few other clubs who have gone down this route.

The committee hopes some of you might go out and enjoy yourselfs, and also learn something, by attending the BGA conference.

Posting the newsletter was considered, but when the sums were done it was quite clear that PDF placed files on the web site represented a substantial savings in both money and time - as I've done some envelop stuffing for money in the past, I can tell you it is really boring, time-consoming and not worth the pay I got. Alan reported on an interesting marketing seminar he attended, and how we also now own the domain name bicestergliding.co.uk, while teh CFI reported on th erecent CFI meeting he had attended

. Duty instructors should be encouraged to make sure that EED and DFR are brought out.

The club has to dispose of its own rubbish but now it seems that some of you think it should also pay to dispose of your rubbish! It's forcing undue extra work on several committee members who have to get rid of fridges and dozens of old batteries, so please, stop treating parts of the airfield as a dumping ground.

Now for one of the most important things affecting all club members - Maria has managed to find another helper for the bus after a long search, to reduce the number of times she has to stand in at short notice to feed you lot. Unfortunately some possible full-time replacements who were suggested as hopefulls eventually declined the offer however. So the current regular team is now Maria, Liz and newcomer Jan. Perhaps some of you would like to join in as well to spread the workload? Or do you just like eating all day instead.

The next newsletter is due in March, the next committee meeting agenda will appear on the web to enable members to comment on it or ask questions, and the next committee meeting will be on 2nd March.