Admin

As Australia woke to news of school closures, Anzac Day cancellations and new coronavirus cases, a pilot in Austria took to the skies to deliver an important message to the world. Within 24 minutes, the flight radar pattern created by light aircraft Diamond DA40 revealed the words “Stay home”. The message spread across the eastern Austrian state of Burgenland after the pilot took off from Wiener Neustadt Airport, landing at Graz airport around 1.26pm local time. alt=It took the pilot 24 minutes to complete the route on March 16.https://images.7news.com.au/publication/C-748422/cefeffe3bf4887852556084b03e86b62591d6719.png?imwidth=650&impolicy=sevennews_v2[/img] It took the pilot 24 minutes to complete the route on March 16. Credit: FligthRadar24

I have installed a new Chat Room feature for registered users. At the moment it is still in test mode to see what is needed and what's not needed so any comments you can make about it then please post here to help create a fantastic feature here on Recreational Flying. Have a play, start chatting and above all, have fun...comments are appreciated. Access the Chat room by clicking Chat in the main menu In due course and after taking into consideration any comments you make, the Chat Rooms will be integrated better into the site functionality for example each Group will end up with their OWN private Chat Room for the Group's users and much more

I have found the best Chat solution for both the overall site and for the Groups feature. Coming soon

This is to advise that the new Recreational Flying Groups feature has now been added to the site. I have created a demo test group for you to see what you can have and how you could make use of for perhaps your own Club and/or School and any other type of Group. You can access Groups by clicking "Groups" menu item in the main menu. Please note that I am also looking at adding an instant Chat Room facility for your group and I will advise when that is done. You can create a group for anything you like such as: A Club or School A specific Aircraft type A Special Interest Group etc You can also set your Group to be either: Public - anyone can see the group's content and any registered site user can post content in the group Private - a group that has all its content hidden to everyone except those that are a member of the group. Registered site users can request group membership from the Group Owner Unlisted Hidden Group - you can have an unlisted and hidden private group where membership is through Invitation Only. If you require this type of Group you will need to request it to be created by sending a message to site Admin Within your Group you can have: Your very own Forum Your very own Photo Gallery Your very own Event Calendar - when creating an event you can make it Public so everyone knows about it or Group Members Only I hope you find the Recreational Flying Groups Feature a great tool to enable you to create your very own presence with the ability to control and moderate yourself.

Admin has created a new group called Test Demo Group. This group was created to give users the chance to see what is available within the Recreational Flying (.com) Groups feature. You can create a group for anything you like such as: A Club or School A specific Aircraft type A Special Interest Group etc You can also set your Group to be either: Public - anyone can see the group's content and any registered site user can post content in the group Private - a group that has all its content hidden to everyone except those that are a member of the group. Registered site users can request group membership from the Group Owner Unlisted Hidden Group - you can have an unlisted and hidden private group where membership is through Invitation Only. If you require this type of Group you will need to request it to be created by sending a message to site Admin Within your Group you can have: Your very own Forum Your very own Photo Gallery Your very own Event Calendar - when creating an event you can make it Public so everyone knows about it or Group Members Only I hope you find the Recreational Flying Groups Feature a great tool to enable you to create your very own presence with the ability to control and moderate yourself.

Personally I think this is very very dangerous for RAAus. I can run this site as being independent and not representing anything however they are representing RAAus and RAAus will be judged on anything that is said and done in this manner. Unlike just standing up in front of a handful of people, the digital world has a footprint that is continually used in a negative way across the globe...just look at how Social Media can be so destructive to the innocent. People will take screen shots word for word and distribute them to other places on the internet where they can complain on what was said and they will have the proof. They can only have it at specific times otherwise you can imagine people saying "I asked this question and they didn't even bother to reply for x days" compared to using the phone etc. There are many more experiences that I have had right here on Recreational Flying over 18 years and have become very experienced in the digital world and have seen how things can go terribly wrong...this is why I have always said RAAus would be insane to enter this world...they would be amateurs and could, I say could end up being so very destructive to the RAAus function in the aviation community...just look at how I have been judged by so many over the years including by RAAus themselves taking screen shots and throwing things at me that people have said in the digital world

I have worked out a solution for this now however it will take much of the day to set it all up properly. Each Group (Club etc) will have its own Forum/Discussion, its own Permissions system so the Group/Club owner can set it to be Public, Private, Invite only etc, Photo Gallery and Event Calendar...I am also hoping that I can incorporate a Chat function within each group for the members of the group to chat to each other.

I can do that today...it is called Groups...stay tuned

Posts regarding the RAAus face-to-face member forum replacement have been moved to their own thread in the Governing Bodies forum

Current Status... I would like to publicly thank everyone that has so generously donated so far to the costs of running this site, they are noted as being First Class members and their username in GOLD. So far there has been a total of $2,300 donated including one donation of $1,000. I just want to say that this is only because whilst I have been paying to keep the site available for everyone over the last 18 years I am currently not in a position to continue to do so but hopefully the day will come when I again can. This amount of donated funds will ensure the site hosting and software costs are covered till Christmas, subject to the AUD/USD exchange rate. However I am also looking into a potential solution to reduce the hosting costs as long as there is no negative site performance impacts to you, the user, in conjunction with advice from the user @BirdDog but more on that later. I am also looking at segregating some components and further enhancements of the site that will contain special benefits to those good people, First Class users, that have been so generous in donating to ensure the site's future for everyone but in doing so trying not to compromise the overall site's intent of help and support to ALL recreational aviators. Now, speaking of the site's intent I respectfully ask if everyone can do whatever is possible to assist in building up the site user numbers. The greater number of users means the greater amount of helpful information exchange we have for everyone to benefit...this is a community, it is a tool to help each other through telling our own stories of our own experiences, good, bad, happy, fun etc and from those, you never know but what you write may just save the life of another fellow recreational aviator. However, this can only be achieved if we post and post and post, and get many others to join in here to post and post and post. For example here is one of my experiences that I posted here 13 years ago that I am sure has helped many others: https://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/a-great-trip-a-lesson-learnt-and-experience-gained.1626/ Please...post and post and post and get many others to join in here at Recreational Flying (.com)...everyone has something to offer

I will send you a PM...sounds good

Thanks mate but when you add NVMe (needed for disk driven Database sites for performance), add gst, not sign up for a 1 or 2 year paid upfront contract it costs $290 a month and you still get a lower specd processor and only half the connection capacity

Thanks mate, my dedicated server in the US is spec'd: CPU: Intel’s Fastest Xeon E, 2288G 8 Core 3.8Ghz >20,000 Passmark Memory: 64GB DDR4 ECC Ram Disk Set: 1.2TB NVMe IP's: /29 5x usable ip's 100Tb over 1gbps connection Price: $150USD The server is setup using CentOS7 and nginx Domains are handled by Cloudflare 1. www.recreationalflying.com (the main site) 2. www.clearprop.com.au (a small shopping cart site) 3. www.recfly.com.au (an empty site that I use for testing development) 4. www.jackaroo.com.au (an empty site but has email mx to gmail) Current server load is about 0.3 Current traffic is around 250gb Disk space currently used is around 7gb for Recreational Flying files and 1gb for MySQL databases And the whole server has been optimised for high performance using centminmod by one of the Moderators there You will see the cost for such a high spec'd server is very cheap (no GST) in the scheme of things but the exchange rate is what is hurting, last month was $280AUD but a server like this in Australia would be around $600 a month

To ensure transparency with donations, any suggestions on how to do this...like, do I list each donation and the amount but then maybe some will not want to have it displayed, I could just put "Anon" with initials for those that wish not to be listed...I also need to show the outgoings that use donated money (for example the date and amount hosting is paid etc) and keep a running balance. Any thoughts

The only reservations I have with a type of subscription is that the current users that don't care about the site will just go thus reducing the number of contributors. Perhaps the site gets divided in half, just general forums for non subscribers and other forums for subscribers...have to be careful with this whole idea however I think it is possible

The Donation box has been reactivated. I believe through the help of everyone here that we can do it through these times and come out the other end. I am also looking at ways that the First Class Member is done to the amount of donation and many other ideas that you good folk have suggested in this thread. This is an important comment for the site in the long term and that is to try and get as many recreational aviators to come on to the site, post questions and comments, help each other out, get the word out there as this is the only thing that is going to kill any thought of going to Facebook which even I don't want...thanks

I remember that however I recall they went broke and closed...could be wrong Edited: they are still going Lentil As Anything

Firstly, thank you to those that have supported this site by posting comments in this thread. I have read every one of your posts and taken onboard your suggestions and I think there is potential for the site to weather the storm over the coming times and come out on top even if I can't get a job so I am working on a plan that includes both short and long term strategies...for example: Site donations (could there be different levels like Gold Class, Silver Class etc but how would that work...Benefits?????) Google ads in side column (highly unlikely to be much benefit as most users just go to the Whats New page and flick between new posts) ClearProp current stock item specials Site management board First Class Member benefits (not sure what more could be done here) ClearProp to list prices as simply "Cost + $x" as cost prices can change daily due to the exchange rate Site user supplied services (example a user is an insurance agent so what deals can be offered to other users by them...win/win) Any other wild and weird ideas?

You can't really host a web server needed for say this site at home

Hosting for the next month has been paid. There was almost $200AUD in the First Class Member kitty (a good month with 4 First Class Members) and the total needed was $280 with the exchange rate so all good for another month while we try and come up with a longer term solution...just hope the exchange rate doesn't drop more

I am surprised at the amount of support that is being shown and I am extremely grateful but please understand that I am so very reluctant to take donations if that level of support, forever reason, can not be maintained...I would feel a fraud and especially to those that are struggling themselves now or will be in the near future as we go through these turbulent times. I think the best solution is if I can find a contract job in the Project, Program, Portfolio and PMO Management area for some corporate anywhere in Australia, or even overseas and if I can, then I can be responsible for ensuring the site continues without any risk to its valued users. So please, if you are working in a corporate (or Fed, State or Local Gov) anywhere and there may be an opportunity then please let me know and I can send you my CV. I have project managed small and large business and ICT programs, established many PMOs (Project Management Office), bring with me a proven PM framework, governance and methodology that I developed, and Ernst & Young endorsed, and have uplifted PM maturity in Gov and corporate entities using the world renowned P3M3 standards. Naturally I can also project manage simple small projects and have controlled projects/programs from $200k to $253m, I can work as a hands on 1 man band to many direct reports, largest was a program where I had 55 people reporting directly to me. So please, ask around and if you know of any opportunity that could benefit from my skills then ask me for a copy of my CV. I would feel far more comfortable doing this than to ask for any kind of handout to ensure this great resource continues for all recreational aviators...thanks

Understand where you are coming from @Cooko but unfortunately RAAus has had issues with this site which go way back for 18 years. This site gives what were previously members of an Association of happy like minded people and now just clients in a RAAus corporate monopoly, a voice which RAAus has never liked and even at times have gone out of their way to try and close the site down...unfortunately. At one stage a then RAAus President tried to kick me out of RAAus, I have had numerous legal threat letters from RAAus executives and another time this site created a rally of members that forced a special meeting of members when the then RAAus Board of Representatives were destroying our beloved Association. This site represents the collective of recreational aviators who have many differing views but still, and most importantly, an opportunity for them to have those views, be independent and be free to voice them in hopefully a professional and decent manner. So to put it simply, RAAus would say "When hell freezes over"...which I have always considered to be a real pity that desire for "control" overrides the great potential of people who have a common interest working and helping each other for an even greater outcome...together!

In an attempt to help everyone in our recreational aviation industry in Australia and NZ during the current COVID 19 times, commercial posts promoting your products and/or services are completely allowed and welcomed until further notice. If you are a supplier to the Australian and/or New Zealand recreational aviation industry feel free to start a thread promoting your business. I hope all site users will not only support you if they can but also that they will let any suppliers know.