Meeting Notes

Sunday May 3rd 2015 Meeting:

For those that couldn't make it we had a great first meeting. The attendees were Asia, Chuck, Michael J, Michael, N, and myself. We talked about the kind of flying we would like to do. Some of us just want to fly locally to have fun, others also want to go on several day cross countries. One or two want an IFR certified plane.

The general consensus on an acceptable plane is that a two seater could work but a four seater was safer and more useful. A constant speed prop was fairly desirable, though not required. It had to be IFR certifiable unless it was very inexpensive. We realized that there were some attractive planes we would have to rule out because they were harder to manage and therefor would be less safe for the average pilot, which would also raise our insurance rates. Some logical choices that were talked about were Cessna 172s 182s, 210s, and Piper Tri-Pacers.

We also talked about things to watch out for when buying used planes.

We agreed that whatever the fractional ownership or club structure, we would require it to be a corporation to protect the members. We talked about starting out with a simple shared ownership agreement, with the possibility of converting it to full on club if there was more interest in that later.

We agreed that an upper limit of $10k for a buy in cost was reasonable.

• The Action items were to start looking more seriously for possible planes, and to start collecting bylaws boilerplate samples, that we felt good about.
• Chuck and Clif will make a visit to a Van's dealership to talk about leasing options.
• The next meeting will be Wednesday the 13th. After 5 PM so what works? 5:30? 6:00?

Wednesday May 6th 2015 Field Trip:

Well Chuck and I went out to Synergy air today: http://synergyair.com

and talked to Kaitlyn about prices and leasing options. Of course the prices are north of 100k and they didn't have a leasing option themselves, however they did suggest that you could do a leaseback arrangement with a flight school like LCC (which already has two RVs btw). We also got a great tour of their factory which is so cool. I wish our maker space was more like that.

Then we dropped by LCC but it was lunch time so no one was around, oh well...

On anther note, I've been keeping in touch with other pilot buddies of mine and just got off the phone with one. I could tell he was interested when he wanted to see one of the planes on TaP. That was after I told him the buy in price range. He's a personal friend of mine, i've known him many years and he has about a thousand hours with multi / commercial / IFR. He's going to talk to his wife about it. We'll see...

Sunday May 24th 2015 Meeting:

Here's a quick report from yesterdays meeting.

It was at Saul's house, attending were SW (Our host CC, and MN. Yes it was a bit lite in attendance, but we had fun anyway. I and others had wondered if we had any choices as to how we incorporate in Oregon. I had recently learned that the state non-profit status exempts you from state taxes and surcharges, and the 501c status exempts you from the federal taxes. You could have one without the other but you would only be half covered, so why not go all the way?

Then I mentioned that I was researching whether OR nonprofits could issue shares of stock or not. I hope to get a definitive answer early this week. It's not that big a deal, because the would be share holders can enter a loan contract with the club and be first in line to be paid back... if that ever happens.

Oh, AN had emailed a question to the list wondering if the Eugene airport would allow us to lease a plane, because they have something in there about having to own them. It turns out that the FAA is pretty clear in one of their documents that leasing is the same as owning in their eyes if you have full control of of the aircraft.

Oh and by the way, I did some sysadmin last week and had to stop all python based processes, but I forgot to start mailman again. Opps! So some posts were delayed a few days. Sorry about that. :-}

MN also had an interesting idea. He said that sometimes a group of owners incorporate just to buy an aircraft and have that corp lease it to the club. Then all the relationships concerning the aircraft are with this other corp and not with the actual buyers. This makes all members of the club appear more equal on paper.

Other questions I had brought to the meeting were:

• What kind of officer hierarchy do we want? Should it be flat?
  • Should there be fewer board members than officers?
• Do we want to limit members? For example If we ever grow to 10 or more, we might want to chose to limit future growth rather than buy another plane. That might not be my personal choice but it's worth thinking about.

Oh and the usual hanger talk. Saul mentioned that he read about a legal flight sim based on X-Plane where you could stay IFR current without using a CFI! Which is pretty amazing. However there is one catch... It's $4000.

Caio!
Clif

-- ClifCox - 10 May 2015