My chapter has some tunnel vision going on

[Ron Blum]

I think that this topic is true with all Chapters. We now have 3 EAA chapters in the Wichita, KS area. One is focused on flying ... with Young Eagles as a second. Another is focused on Young Eagles ... with some technical. And the third, which just went through some major problems at the Board level, is going to go toward technical and projects ... unless the remaining members convince me otherwise. We are the only Chapter in the area that owns our own building. We also have an RV group in the area that started 2+ decades ago ... which hurt the Chapter.

So my question then becomes, with only 9 monthly meetings a year (the others are: 2 for fly-outs and 1 Christmas Party), how do you cover all the bases? I'm going to suggest that other members run other events ... like visiting projects, seeing aviation businesses in town, visiting local MakerSpaces (we have a $2M+ one called "Go Create" on the campus of Wichita State University) on non-regularly scheduled meeting days.

The main thing I think that we are missing is participation! I personally think our dues are too high at $36/year. My suggestion (in January ... when I become president again) is going to be to give members a $3 credit for each month that they volunteer during for next year's membership dues. Thoughts?

[Kyle Boatright]

The main thing I think that we are missing is participation! I personally think our dues are too high at $36/year. My suggestion (in January ... when I become president again) is going to be to give members a $3 credit for each month that they volunteer during for next year's membership dues. Thoughts?

I never worried about dues. $36 is pennies for the airplane crowd.

My reality (and why I haven't been to an EAA meeting in a decade) is that I sit in meetings all day long. I don't want to go to meetings on my free time. I want to participate in activities, demonstrations, fly-outs, etc., and my chapter (I was president for a while and am culpable) tended to have relatively boring meetings where we talked about the bank balance, scared up the volunteers for the next burger flip, etc. We didn't "airplane" enough. Sure, there was a guest speaker pretty often, but that wasn't enough to overcome the monotony of living through the same administrative meeting again and again...