Identifying PRA Areas for Improvement and Other Problems

[gyroplanes]

The "GIRL" was Patricia Thomas, she earned her CFI at Farrington's under the PRA scholarship program.
As far as I know, she did one 90 day signoff for a guy in our club, moved to the east coast to work for an airline and never said thanks or looked back.

Tim, We also had FAA Wings Program safety seminars at Mentone every year. The attendance was good, but the WINGS participation was very very poor.

We also developed and used a Powerpoint "Introduction to gyros" that was taken on the road to many EAA chapters in the Midwest.

[barnstorm2]

Originally Posted by barnstorm2

A point the people that can only speak in negitives interestingly always leave out.

As well as.

Ten years ago the PRA had no way to JOIN OR RENEW on line.
No Gyro Sport Pilot Ground School
No CFI Program
No Electronic subscription services...ect...

Originally Posted by JimLogan

Tim, you must do better research. You must know the rear from the front right?

I said 10 years ago not 26+ years ago. Perhaps some reading glasses would help Jim? I use them and it makes comprehension much better. You can see it again in the text you quoted of mine. Thanks! LOVE the positive, supportive attitude, really makes the hard working people want to just do more! Were you a cheerleader in a former life?

I don't see you on any volenteer lists for the past 10+ years, do you want to put some effort outside of your keyboard and offer up 5-10 hours of training for a NEW CFI for free?

Originally Posted by MrGrey

I have a kind of "nut up or shut up" mentality and if we spent a sliver of the time some take to craft lengthy responses and rhetorical arguements and directed it towards helping the PRA we might have that organization everyone thinks it should be.

"research indicates":

NO CFI program was in existence after C.B finished the program.

Nor have there been WINGS programs in the past 10 years, now the program is running with great success.

Originally Posted by gyroplanes

We also developed and used a Powerpoint "Introduction to gyros" that was taken on the road to many EAA chapters in the Midwest.

An Intro to Gyros and other presentations are downloadable from the PRA website and these presenations have been given to EAA chapters 8 times in the past 3 years and at Oshkosh last year and will be given again this year.

http://www.pra.org/publicdl/Presentations/

.

[barnstorm2]

Originally Posted by StanFoster

Hey, I have an idea. Lets all go fly, build, talk about flying, or all the above! Go rotorcraft! Stan

Right with ya Stan.

.

[Vance]

I don't know how to say it with fewer words.

My income is primarily from a software company that does business as Counterman. We license business systems for motorcycle stores.

More than half of our customers have gone out of business in the last three years.

This means our resources are more limited and I have to make decisions on how to allocate them.

I have almost stopped advertising because very few people are going into our corner of the motorcycle business. We would probably have more customers if we advertised more.

I spend more than $20,000 on programming each year and the software would do more if I spent three times that much. We would also have more challenges with bugs.

We charge for onsite training and in my opinion all of our customers would be more profitable if they had training once a year. Many of the customers feel the same way but they simply cannot afford what we charge. They too are allocating their resources.

Our software is expensive to license. Probably more people would rent the license it if it was less expensive.

A software company is a funny thing, there is a lot of investment in the program and updating the price books often. Doubling the number of customers does not double the cost of doing business. In other words more customers increase the profits disproportionately to the increase in revenues.

Our support is there twenty four hours per day and is very good. It is a rare thing for us to lose a customer because they find better support elsewhere. This is where I have chosen to allocate the majority of Counterman’s resources. Everyone has challenges with business software from time to time and we are there for them.

We have a booth at the convention for our corner of the motorcycle market every year even though it costs a lot and has produced very few sales leads. Spending that money on advertising might work better. This may be one of my mistakes.

I still use a CPA to do my taxes even though my taxes are less complicated because she keeps me out of trouble and helps me to make business decisions that increases the likelihood that we will remain in business.

My role in the company is figuring out how to allocate the resources to take care of the customers and make a profit.

If I had more customers I could do more to make them happy.

If I did more to make them happy they might be able to stay in business and I would have more customers.

If I did more advertising I might have more customers.

If I spent more on things to make the customers happy and advertising I might not be able to make payroll every two weeks or manage the other necessary expenses.

When I ask our customers what I should do to be successful they tell me to do more for them, charge less money and I should probably advertise more.

Some of my competitors allocate their resources in a different way and have more customers.

Some charge less and some more.

Most don’t have the customer satisfaction that we do.

Most of our customers have selected us to manage their business software because they feel I have made the best decisions on how to allocate resources. Some are not entirely happy and are ready to tell me how to do a better job of allocating resources.

Someone somewhere needs to make the decisions on how to allocate resources. I have more information than my customers about the details of the company resources. This is not because I hide the resources but rather because I am more interested in the company’s longevity than they are.

I learned a lot about business when I was the President of the American Federation of Motorcycles because I was elected for my ability to allocate resources. Both the club membership and the treasury grew so it seemed to work out. Many in the club wanted the club to charge less and do more for them.

On a race day we typically took in 5% more than we paid out. Over two years our treasury grew 2% of our gross revenues.

We published a treasury’s report and yet people still asked for lower entry fees because they were not as interested in the report as I was and did not take the time to understand the compromises involved in the decisions.

When I moved out of the San Francisco Bay area to run my Harley Davidson agency in Santa Maria I charged the club about half of what it cost me to drive to Oakland for the meetings.

A group of people who were not satisfied with my allocation of resources used this expense to campaign against me and I was defeated two years later. The treasury shrank a little and the entry fees did not go down. The club is still in business more than twenty years later so my way was not the only way to make it work.

In business I am pleased if I can make the right decision 75% of the time and in my opinion I will make a profit, somewhere between 5% and 10% of the gross revenues.

This means I will likely be wrong 25% of the time and people can point at my wrong decisions to show what a poor businessman I am. It may even motivate them to start their own company to compete with someone who is wrong so often.

My customers can vote me out of business by going with this new competitor.

I have a job and I don’t have the time or desire to learn everything about the PRA so I elect people who have the skill and desire to manage the resources. I try to support their allocation of resources and help where I can.

When I don’t like the decisions being made by the board of the PRA I can vote for a different person assuming I can find someone better qualified or decide to start a competing organization to support gyroplanes.

I prefer to support the people making the decisions for the PRA and am grateful that they are motivated enough to take on this challenging task.

Scott Lewis and most of the members of the PRA board of directors are friends of mine so please understand that this probably affects my thought process and tolerance for the decisions I do not agree with.

Thank you, Vance

[StanFoster]

Tim- Your post #217 says a lot. Here you are trying to better the PRA, I know of no one that works harder at it than you by the way, and still people sit and try to sift through everything thing you say.....then find some negative nugget to bring to the attention here......instead of joining you with support. Some of the problems in the PRA are so freakin obvious..if they have to be spoken, or written about to see it....then no amount of words will make it any clearer.

Stan

[barnstorm2]

Originally Posted by StanFoster

Tim- Your post #217 says a lot. Here you are trying to better the PRA, I know of no one that works harder at it than you by the way, and still people sit and try to sift through everything thing you say.....then find some negative nugget to bring to the attention here......instead of joining you with support.....

Thank you Stan! and Vance!

Haters going to Hate!

I find it interesting that there is a ratio between how much the usual suspects complain vs how much they actually do.

Example, someone complains that not enough was planned for the convention but does not mention that they received six invites to the planning meetings, showed up for none and had access to aid in the planning for the past 4 years and did nothing. Goodness forbid they actually talk about the improvements and actions that have been taken or be bothered to do something themselves.

Don't get me wrong, input is GOOD but to launch a complaint rant and not have, nor be willing to, lift a finger to solve the rant problems gets no respect from me.

Like Matt posted.. Put up..

[Steve McGowan]

[QUOTE=barnstorm2;484063]Thank you Stan! and Vance!

Haters going to Hate!

I find it interesting that there is a ratio between how much the usual suspects complain vs how much they actually do.

Example, someone complains that not enough was planned for the convention but does not mention that they received six invites to the planning meetings, showed up for none and had access to aid in the planning for the past 4 years and did nothing. Goodness forbid they actually talk about the improvements and actions that have been taken or be bothered to do something themselves.

Don't get me wrong, input is GOOD but to launch a complaint rant and not have, nor be willing to, lift a finger to solve the rant problems gets no respect from me.

Like Matt posted.. Put up..

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I think we'be already spoken about this Tim...