Dear Critics,

David (and the rest of the board) has had a lot to deal with this past year. If he had known what he was signing up for, he probably wouldn’t have. 😆 His only goal has been to try to make AJX a better, safer place to fly and to keep it going for decades to come.

Being the Safety Director (as well as our most excellent web/weather station guy) and taking his position seriously, he’s been trying to do what he believed was the right thing to do without letting politics cloud his judgement. This “Crash vs. Outlanding” debate could have been settled, or even avoided, if everyone involved had communicated with him in a timely manner. Since his requests for more info went ignored and he witnessed the incident from start to finish from the air, he had to go by what he himself witnessed and what the student communicated to him.

Now,… maybe you think David is being overzealous here and you think he should do better. There’s nothing wrong with offering suggestions on how to handle these things, but to get verbally abusive toward him because you don’t like what he said, that is not acceptable. Who’s going to want to volunteer for any of the board positions, when they see how we treat our volunteers?

Volunteering for a Board position sounds like fun and games, until you have serious business to deal with. If you’re new to this place, you may not realize what it takes to keep AJX alive and well. It’s like herding feral cats!!! 🐅💣🐆🦁🧨😵 There’s no way you’re going to make everyone happy all the time.

I challenge any of you to sign up next time and show him how it’s done, if you think you can do better. He’s calling it quits, and two people are currently running for the Safety Director position. The other positions are going completely uncontested, and very few of our members even bothered to vote (voting ends Friday, by the way 😉).

Nobody here means any harm to the club, but if you see us doing something you feel is bad for the CSS, chime in like a civilized human being and we’ll be more than happy to consider your argument. 2020 has been hard on all of us, so please have some compassion for the volunteers. One of these days maybe you’ll be “The Man” and have to say, or do unpopular things. 😄

challenge accepted

And we’re grateful. 😉😋

Well said Jana!

I think Linda’s first post brings up a good argument of whether people running businesses at AJX should be able to hold a position. As much as I like those running their schools here and think that some have and would make great directors, there is a potential of conflict of interest.

As far as the incident goes, it seems minor but for the fact that it wasn’t the first time this happened. Hell, I’d argue it is good to learn to do an emergency landing in an unusual place (although this doesn’t appear to be what happened). I think an unsupervised student without proper membership is a problem. If there was something wrong with the facts reported, why didn’t the instructor contact David directly or come on the forum and explain it? There has been plenty of time to do so.

I also don’t understand why people find it hard to sign up for membership or short term membership before flying. Internet at the LZ is not the problem as there is plenty of time before getting up to launch to find cell service and an instructor probably should have worked that out with the student in advance.

Finally, thanks for doing all you have for the club David. I think that you have been open, fair, patient and professional. Hope you enjoy some great and safe flying this year, free of some of this extra work load.