Present: Mike Karnes, Doug Pilcher, Samantha McKinney, Phil Vance, Alex Dreiling, Brad Davy, Toby Silhavy, Manrico Mincuzzi, Rich Whitlow, and Primo Rivera
Absent: Clark Hymas, Jorge Guzman, and Michael Hobson
Meeting began 9:01 p.m. EST.
June Minutes – Samantha McKinney
The BOD received their June 2020 BOD meeting minutes. Mike called for the vote. Motion was approved unanimously.
Regional Reports – All RDs
Alex reported that the SW region has its next contest in Arizona at the end of August. Contests in California are currently cancelled, due to the state being shut down to the pandemic. The rest of the region’s contest are in the fall.
Rich cancelled his contest in the SC at the end of the month. Kansas has a contest on August 8th and Abilene at the end of August. School starts the first week of August and several schools are having in-person learning. Louisiana is currently in the middle of a spike in Covid. Rich reported that they aren’t going to have enough contests to justify Regional awards.
The NC region was supposed to have their contest this last weekend. Due to low attendance and a spike in Covid cases, they ended up having a primer instead. Will and Marion are having their contest in August, along with Toby. The Covid cases are spiking in Ohio and the state might possibly shut down. The Canadians are closed down and can’t cross the border. Toby also can’t justify spending the money on regional awards.
The NE region has had 3 successful contests. There is a contest in Maine that has been held for the last 25 years; Brad believes this is the longest standing contest in IMAC. Plum Island is planning on proceeding with their contest, as well as the Maryland contest. Brad has been getting questions from club members on hosting their contests. Brad told them not to cancel til at least a few weeks before the contest due to guidelines constantly changing. Attendance is definitely down at contests.
Brad has only been to one contest and hasn’t heard any issues on social distancing. The only concern is the food concessions. Some of the clubs are asking pilots to wear masks while waiting on food. His region is allowing the pilot and caller to make the decision on wearing masks at the flight line. There really hasn’t been any concerns about being exposed. Brad hasn’t heard of anyone getting sick after a contest. The rural contests don’t seem to be too concerned. The pilots who are concerned about the pandemic have been staying away.
The SE region has Mocksville and Ocala coming up. A lot of pilots are interested in going to Mocksville. Primo had 7 basic pilots at one contest and are pretty sure they will sign up to be IMAC members. Everything has been kept clean at the contests. The restrooms were cleaned every hour. The judges were 6 feet apart, along with the pilot/callers were kept away from the judges. Primo believes the guidelines can be done at contests. Many clubs are giving them options on eating. Primo suggests spacing out the parking area and letting the pilots know about the food and leave it up to the pilots to choose.
Manrico reported the contests listed on the European region website are what is still scheduled to proceed. The only International contest is in the Czech Republic. There are some contests in Italy. The 2020 season came to a halt due to the Covid pandemic.
Adi reported that there is a PanAmerica contest being discussed, with North and South America. They have been working on judging schools. Every Thursday is online judging school. Oliver Soto is coming to IMAC Europe judging school. Many of the questions are on break and break-in-sequence. They are also working with Primo on converting the Red Book into Spanish. Currently, the IMAC criteria is now published in Spanish. Chile has now joined IMAC.
Oliver Soto was invited to report on the Latin America region. He has been helping out for the RD for 10 months now. There are several updates on the region on the forums. They are getting a good response from the Latin American pilots.
They are using a different approach to judging. They are using slides to explain the maneuvers in excruciating details with no grey areas. The Red Book is pretty clear; but there are some points in the grey areas. They want to make sure there are no mistakes in judging and how pilots practice at the field. In March of 2021, we will be hosting our first International camp.
For the PanAmerica contest, they are recruiting as many pilots as possible; getting sponsors to donate flights with their own planes. They want to have pilots come from abroad and then lend the pilots planes. This will save the pilots some money.
Currently, the Latin American region is not having any contests. Contests should start around September as long as everything is okay with the pandemic.
Oliver gave the BOD a presentation on how the Covid-19 virus can be spread through contests and how to keep guidelines at the contests.
Regional Awards – Should We Spend the Money – Mike Karnes
Many of the regions are still having contests. There hasn’t been enough contests and attendance to have regional awards for 2020. Due to the Covid, there have been several pilots who have not been able to participate, and the RDs feel it wouldn’t be fair to have regional awards for 2020.
Membership Renewals – Mike Karnes
Mike has been reviewing the membership list, and several members have let their membership lapse. Mike will send the list out to each RD. Mike suggested that each RD talk with the members to remind them to renew their membership.
Website Future – Doug Pilcher
An agreement was made with our current webmaster until early 2021 to keep the current website going, as long as we moved the forums to a different site. Forums are currently hosted on V Bulletin. V Bulletin doesn’t keep up with expired members.
Doug will talk with the webmaster to see if the website can be moved to another server that can host it.
Rick recommended in the forums about starting a committee on how to proceed with the website in 2021. Rich suggested Manrico to be on this committee. Manrico says that all the website providers are American. Brad nominated Doug to be the head of the committee, due to the understanding of what goes on with the back end of the website. Rich volunteered to be on this committee. Adi suggested Dan Carroll to be on the committee.
Mike has been working with the Wix website builder. It is a little hard to work with. It has been working with it for the past year, and have taken it as far as he can without paying money to proceed further. He had duplicated a majority of the website. There is a fee to work with the contests and listings. With Wix, you must pay for upgraded modules. It is around $800 to upgrade the modules for 2 years. This fee only allows for Mike to work further on the website, than what he already has.
Brad says that the problem we are having is that we are using our website more than what most companies use them for. Our website is used to integrate scoring, membership, regional listings, etc; we are running the “company” on this website. Before, many members complained about the price we were charged to upgrade the website back in 2014. We were given quite a discounted price for our current website. Brad suggests either we drop some functionality from the website, or spend the money for a website to do what we need it to do. Adi believes that we should keep our current functions of the website.
Manrico created the European and Italian websites. They were both created in a few weeks. The cost is about $300 Euros per year, which includes PayPal feature, which is most expense. The websites are pretty simple. They are only used to share information and collect registrations for the competitions. Manrico says that Wix is the best choice.
Adi believes we need to do regional points on the website. We don’t want to use Facebook to post the contests results. We need to look professional, with the website being IMAC’s best presentation for this.
Toby suggested that we get a list together of exactly what we are wanting in a new website. Also, we need to let the companies know what we currently have and ask them the cost level to keep what we got.
Brad says that he will not support any approach that doesn’t offer options and pricing on a website. We need to have a comparative list of pros and cons that shows the best direction to go.
2020 Known Sequences – Mike Karnes
The Sequence committee has been talking about the 2021 Known sequences. Their opinion is to repeat the 2020 Known sequences for 2021, since there hasn’t been a committee to create Known sequences for 2021.
Brad suggested that there be a second look at the 2020 Advance Known sequence. One of the maneuvers drives the plane way down on one end of the field. Primo also suggested that Unlimited has a maneuver with the same issue.
Adi mentioned doing a poll to see about keeping the 2020 Known sequences for 2021 season. The U.S. RDs doesn’t see an issue with keeping the same sequences and to “tweak” them if necessary. Mike will have the Sequence committee look at the Unlimited and Advance sequences.
Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance
At the end of June, the balance in the General Operating account was:
Checking $ 2,755.28
PayPal $35,483.42
Total $38,238.70
The balance in the General Operating account as of tonight, July 20, 2020 is:
Checking $ 2,488.30
PayPal $36,642.32
Total $39,130.62
Phil reported that there have been several International memberships, especially from the Czech Republic.
2020 Nominations in September – Mike Karnes
Nominations for the 2021-2022 BOD will open up in September. Mike said to keep your region informed if you would like to run again, or would like for someone else to run.
Meeting adjourned 10: 52 p.m. EST.