I belonged to the 180-185 club for a few years, then dropped out because not much was going on there. I was surprised to get a letter last week from the Canadian branch of the club soliciting membership. Looks like maybe they are trying to revive their membership.

Steve

steve wrote:I belonged to the 180-185 club for a few years, then dropped out because not much was going on there. I was surprised to get a letter last week from the Canadian branch of the club soliciting membership. Looks like maybe they are trying to revive their membership.

Steve

Steve, did you know about the email listserve at the time? I was surprised at the original website's apparent cobwebs after I joined, only to find out that all the good discussions were taking place on a super-secret email chain that I didn't know about. The new website has solved that- all the emails are now memorialized on the forums for everyone to see. Much better system.

I did not know about that Mike. I guess I need to check out the website to see what is going on there now. The last time I looked, it was the dead zone. Thank you for the heads up.

Steve

steve wrote:I did not know about that Mike. I guess I need to check out the website to see what is going on there now. The last time I looked, it was the dead zone. Thank you for the heads up.

Steve

If you want to get the forum posts in email format, and be able to respond via email to forum posts (which are all now recorded in the respective forums) you can go into your forum preferences and subscribe to the ones you want to see. If someone posts on the forum, or via email to a forum, you'll get it. Before, only people on the list serve saw any of that.

I prefer to do the website forums, rather than an email list.
Am I seeing everything, or is some stuff circulated on the email list but not shown on the forums?

hotrod180 wrote:I prefer to do the website forums, rather than an email list.
Am I seeing everything, or is some stuff circulated on the email list but not shown on the forums?

If you go to the forums, you're seeing everything. The top-secret list-serve emails went away with the new website.

Big day on the skywagon club site-- six new posts! Woo hoo!

hotrod180 wrote:Big day on the skywagon club site-- six new posts! Woo hoo!

Hehehe... I'm kind of a junkie - I check about 5 different websites daily, but I have to admit I get giddy when I see that many posts in a day there.

These guys have been poking the pouch for a while......great opportunity for someone with the right skills to start a new site and run with it! Could be lucrative?
Just look what Z did with BCP........he now flys a sport cub, building a new 4 place off airport machine, lives in Lake Oswego........

...and I've got Skywagon buddies to chauffeur me around. Did you ever invoice me for this one?

Zzz wrote:

Hehehe - Terry, I bet that tin foil headliner helps protect you from the chemtrails, too...

Haha, I swapped that out for some black foam.....tired of my bald head getting burnt

Terry wrote:These guys have been poking the pouch for a while......great opportunity for someone with the right skills to start a new site and run with it! Could be lucrative?
Just look what Z did with BCP........he now flys a sport cub, building a new 4 place off airport machine, lives in Lake Oswego........

Difference here is the Club is not for profit. Is BCP for profit?

Mike

A185F wrote:

Terry wrote:These guys have been poking the pouch for a while......great opportunity for someone with the right skills to start a new site and run with it! Could be lucrative?
Just look what Z did with BCP........he now flys a sport cub, building a new 4 place off airport machine, lives in Lake Oswego........

Difference here is the Club is not for profit. Is BCP for profit?

Mike

Supercub.org is for profit and I'd take that site over 185 club any day. Same with BCP, although calling BCP "for profit" is a total joke. If Zane charged a nickel for every free hour he put into BCP than he'd have a hell of a lot of nickles...

AND both let everyone who wants to join, join.

I'm TRYING to become profitable, because profits translate into higher quality and more features, more content. So, I would answer that by saying that we're not a non-profit. Ad partnerships are for sale.

Terry was using a little tongue-in-cheek there. I'd be on skid row in a hurry if this was my only income.

Edit to add my opinion on the matter:

The reason this site is even close to being able to turn a profit is because of the large numbers here, which is a function of our all-inclusiveness. Anyone is welcome, type is irrelevant. That's pretty much the opposite philosophy of any type club, which is not necessarily bad, but the objectives and goals aren't exactly the same.

I can appreciate wanting to only have same type owners on a type club website, the same as it's nice to have people who have or are building an Experimental aircraft weighing in on topics about aircraft building. It's very possible to get noise. But sometimes the noise is fun.

A185F wrote:

Terry wrote:These guys have been poking the pouch for a while......great opportunity for someone with the right skills to start a new site and run with it! Could be lucrative?
Just look what Z did with BCP........he now flys a sport cub, building a new 4 place off airport machine, lives in Lake Oswego........

Difference here is the Club is not for profit. Is BCP for profit?

Mike

I was charged $25.00 by the 180/185 group for the one year I was a member.
BCP has not charged me one nickel.
I was mostly just funning, but.....

It's sad but the Skywagon club is blowing off its other foot. A member wrote in that he wanted his dues back because some of the clubs communications require Adobe Flash and this member uses an iPad, which doesn't support Adobe Flash. But instead of being gracious and just refunding the member his dues, this new webmaster went off on him, and did it in a very public way sending an email to the membership. To the webmasters credit he paid for the member's dues himself because (to paraphrase) he felt the club was not about the Internet, or any technology or device to access it, but about the plane (but only after bashing the poor member about his technology purchases). I know what he was trying to say but he is dead wrong. The Internet is how everything is accessed, unless you live in a cave in Afghanistan (and most of those are probably wired now). And the new webmasters response to the member was way beyond dead wrong.

In the club's (or any club for that matter) defense, generally they are run on very little funding, by volunteers. Which means they are very likely to make poor decisions from time to time, especially in areas that are foreign to them, in this case the Internet and technologies to do business on it.

And it's not just the 180/185 club that is going through "new forum" pains, another type club I'm a member of "upgraded" their forum software from the 1990's to sometime in this century, but they keep the old forum alive while the new forum was up, and neither shared a common database so two complete, distinct, disconnected sets of threads where being generated, while the webmaster was "alpha" testing the new forum software. This confused some of the really old farts, and pissed off some of the not quite really old farts. And there is at least one individual who can't find either version of the forum, who is asking on other "non-type" forums if anyone knows where all the type guys have gone.

I wish I had an easy answer to club's forum woes, after all doing business on the Internet is my area of expertise, but unfortunately their volunteer webmasters more often then not - don't know what they don't know. And with all sincerity in their heart they step into a world they know not (although they might think they do). In both these club's cases they had working forums, even if perhaps some of the features didn't work. I'm sure both clubs thought they were adding value for the members, a noble endeavor that so far has fallen very short. Their failures are technology choice or implementation failures, which can be remedied. Childishly lashing out at a member cannot. Membership should be looked at like a customer, because that is exactly what they are. One pissed off customer can have the same level of influence (but in a negative way) and a hundred happy customers have influence in a positive way.

I sincerely hope these clubs make it, but to do so there needs to be some house cleaning, and some business direction.

Terry wrote:I was charged $25.00 by the 180/185 group for the one year I was a member.
BCP has not charged me one nickel.
I was mostly just funning, but.....

You are expected to spare a halfway decent beer from time to time, however.

One thing is for sure: People move in and people move out. These communities are constantly in flux and you have to enjoy the good times when the room is full of the good ones.

I thought Terry only drinks Coors Light and Whiskey

Barnstormer wrote:It's sad but the Skywagon club is blowing off its other foot. A member wrote in that he wanted his dues back because some of the clubs communications require Adobe Flash and this member uses an iPad, which doesn't support Adobe Flash. But instead of being gracious and just refunding the member his dues, this new webmaster went off on him, and did it in a very public way sending an email to the membership. ......

I thought the member quitting was a bit of overkill, but the webmaster's response was way over the top.
Went off on him in at least two consecutive posts, if not three.

I guess I'm in the not quite really old farts group. I'm embarassed to admit it, but I just got my first cellphone less than a year ago. And it's a flip phone-- I refuse to have a phone that's smarter than me (although this one is, sometimes). I'm only 57, but I'm just not into high tech stuff...don't really like it and it doesn't usually work well for me. When Zane upgraded the software on this site a year or two ago, it didn't seem to agree with my old desktop computer and so I eventually just quit coming around since it was such a big PITA. It works OK with the laptop I bought later so I came back.

FWIW I think there must be a lot of C180/185 Club members who are computer / internet challenged. The Dec 2014 newsletter had 7 pages of how-to info for creating a photo album on the club website, the Feb 2015 newsletter had 3 pages of "website tricks & tips".