Details

Written by: Doug Pilcher

Category: Club Business

Published: 09 September 2020

Present:   Mike Karnes, Samantha McKinney, Rich Whitlow, Alex Dreiling, Primo Rivera, Toby Silhavy, Brad Davy, and Manrico Mincuzzi

Absent:  Doug Pilcher, Phil Vance, Clark Hymas, Michael Hobson, and Jorge Guzman

Guest:  Adi Kochav and Oliver Soto

Meeting began at 9:02 p.m. EST.

August Minutes – Samantha McKinney

The minutes were sent out to the BOD and posted in the forum over the weekend.  Mike asked the BOD to review and to post their vote in the forums.

Nominations – Mike Karnes

Mike reiterated that we are in the middle of nomination of officers and RDs for elections.  The NE regional director has not had a nomination yet.  Brad has been working for several months to get some interest, but has not had any luck.

As of right now, everyone nominated is running unopposed, but there is 10 more days left for nominations to be made.

2021 Sequences – Mike Karnes

Mike emailed everyone the 2021 sequences.  The Sequence Committee revised the Advanced and Alternate Advanced sequence.  It had a footprint problem with the rolling turn.

Mike called for the vote on all sequences.  Motion passed unanimously.

IMAC Forms for 20201 – Mike Karnes

Mike sent the forms and rules that were used for 2020 to the BOD.  These need to be reviewed and approved in October’s meeting.  If there are any changes, please post on the BOD forum on the website and it can be discussed before next month.

Rich said that there are a couple of AMA references that are old and he will make changes and post on the forums.

Website Update – Rich Whitlow and Doug Pilcher

Rich, Mike, and Doug have been talking with Dan Carroll on the new website.  Mike has been looking at Word Press, but Dan has been pressing use to use Juma.  We would be able to get more work done quickly.

For the immediate future, we will be setting up a server a Doug’s business, Diamond Computers.   The goal is to have something that we can manage on our own.  They are meeting with Dan tomorrow evening.

They are leaning towards keeping the existing forums and can do a member transfer.  This will save us some migration.

Adi mentioned putting a translator on the new website.  Rich will put it on the list to speak to Dan about.

Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance

No report given.

Regional Issues – All RDs

Primo asked about the 2022 Worlds and the qualification process.  Manrico informed the BOD that the World’s Committee is ready.  They have the electronic scoring system in place, so this will take an enormous load off the scoring team.

Also, Manrico informed the BOD that they have decided to move the 2022 Worlds to France.  The move was made because IMAC is not a recognized discipline by FAI.  If we were recognized, FAI would only recognize the Unlimited class.  Many of the local NAC (National Aero Clubs) are attached to FAI.  We must be recognized by FAI to get on the local area event calendar.

In France, they have found a site where there will be 4 runways going simultaneously.  Currently, there is an issue with the 4 runways at the Italy site.

The approval from the BOD was that the Worlds would be held in Italy.  Brad says that we cannot move the Worlds without the BOD’s approval.  Brad has asked why we have not been informed of anything that has been going on with the problems with the Worlds.

Mike asked Manrico to put something together and present to the BOD because everything has changed.  We are going to have a special meeting to discuss the Worlds.  The BOD can decided whether it is going to happen or not.  Manrico will have something together by the end of the week.  Mike will give the BOD a week notice before this special meeting.

Primo’s question was if each region would have qualifications for their members to go.  Mike said that will be discussed later, once this issue is discussed.

The SE region has had 3 new basic guys become IMAC members.  They had a great contest at Mocksville.  Primo said there is one more contest in Ocala.  Things are going good for the regional contest and are open to everyone.  There could be 5 basic pilots from the local club that is hosting the event.

Brad reported the NE region has had much of their normal contests.  Attendance hasn’t been real good.  The final regional contest is the first weekend in October, which currently has around 15 pilots registered.

Rich has had 2 contests in the last 2 weeks.  There was great attendance for both contests.  Rich said they will have limited awards, because it wasn’t taken real well not to have awards for the pilots who have been attending.  Rich is working with Amanda to get the judging schools and contests scheduled for next year.

They will be holding the International Judging School online this year.  Primo is still holding on a venue.  Mike asked to hold it until he speaks with everyone.

The SW region just had a contest in Northern Arizona with good attendance.  A rescheduled contest will be held in October with 41 pilots.  Alex said after that, they have 3 more contests, and they start again in January.

The NC region just had the first contest of the year at Toby’s.  There were 14 pilots.  They have a set of rules with Covid restrictions.  Regionals are in 2 weeks and that will be the second contest of the year.

Oliver Soto presented the report for the Latin American region.  They are limited right now due to the quarantines.  They had a successful online judging schools.  The region is currently quiet.  There are contests in September and October in Mexico; it will be limited to 18-20 pilots.  They will also be having precision camps.  Mike enjoyed sitting in on his judging school the other day.

Manrico reported on the European region.  One of the contests, they were expecting several pilots from different countries.  The pilots are concerned about traveling due to the Covid.  The U.K has announced a second lockdown.  Covid has not gone away as we had hoped.  It will affect the Europeans next year if this does not pass.  The region is in a very unstable situation due to Covid.

Toby and some members of the NC region has created a 3-page document for guidelines on holding a contest during the pandemic.  This criterion was used at Toby’s contest.  They published this to the region and knew what to expect.  The pilots also understood that they were keeping the event as safe as possible to all participants and staff.  Toby said he would be glad to share this with the BOD.

Adi believes that we should stay driven towards the 2021 season.

Meeting adjourned 10:16 p.m. EST.

Details

Written by: Doug Pilcher

Category: Club Business

Published: 26 August 2020

Present:  Mike Karnes, Doug Pilcher, Phil Vance, Samantha McKinney, Primo Rivera, Rich Whitlow, Alex Dreiling, Toby Silhavy, Clark Hymas, and Michael Hobson

Absent:  Brad Davy, Manrico Mincuzzi, and Jorge Guzman

Guest:  Adi Kochav and Oliver Soto

Meeting began 9:04 p.m. EST.

Nominations Open September – Mike Karnes

Mike reminded the BOD that nominations fro the IMAC BOD will be opened in September.  We need to decide is how we will hold the elections.  The new forums will not be handle the elections; the website will host the elections.  Our webmaster will host the elections.  The nominations will open first of September and run through September 30.  Those that are running opposed will need to have a bio to be posted on the website, along with Executive officers will need a bio.

There must be a 30-day notice for elections.  Election will be held October 1st and will be held for 14 days.

Website Update – Doug Pilcher and Rich Whitlow

Doug and Rich have been corresponding with Dan Carroll in Australia.  Dan has taken over the score program.  He is currently writing a new website for IMAC Australia.  We had a meeting with him on Saturday and showed him what we have on the current website.  There will be another meeting on Wednesday evening with our current webmaster and Mike.  Doug will post an overview to the BOD after this meeting.

Dan Carroll has volunteered his services.  He says he will write the back-end free of charge.  Dan will write modules where someone can take over; he will not guarantee his time frame in helping us.  There will always be an open source provider.

The biggest question is what to do with the current website, until we get another website built.  Our current website is built around the .net, which is a dying entity.  Our current website has a deadline of March/April 2021.

Doug and Rich have a list together of the features we have now and the features we would like to have brought over to the new site.

Right now, we are at a stand-still until our current webmaster can speak with Dan Carroll.  We are just starting on the ground work.  Once we get everything together, we will get bids.  Just we need to remember, we have to teach them IMAC and the points system, before they can build something to handle our website needs.

Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance

At the end of July, the General Operating account is as follows:

Checking              $  2,488.30

PayPal                  $37,178.07

Total                      $39,666.37

As of tonight, August 17, the General Operating account is as follows:

Checking              $  2,460.32

PayPal                  $37,632.23

Total                     $40,092.55

Regional Issues – All RDs

The NW region has a couple of contests happening.  The Canadian border is closed, but they are holding contests up there.  Clarks says that they might get 4 contests in the states and 4 contests in Canada.

The SW region has a contest in two weeks.

The NC region has their first contest at Toby’s house this weekend.  After that, there is going to be an end-of-year contest at Walter RC park in Michigan.  They are also working on another primer.

The SC region had one contest, August 8th, in Kansas.  Abilene is going up this weekend.  It will be pretty well attended.  Louisiana is still locked down.  There are 2 contests in September.  The year will finish in Sherman.  They will host RPS finish and regional awards.  The region should have 8 contests total.  Rich is getting a lot of good responses from sending emails to expiring members and welcome emails to new members.

The SE region has 2 more contests scheduled, one in Mocksville and Ocala.  They will be hosting regionals.  There will be 3 pretty good contests this year.

The Latin America region report was given by Oliver Soto.  Oliver said that online judging schools have been going well.  Oliver presented to the BOD some of the materials that they are presenting at the schools.  They have had support from Knife Edge Software to help with the presentations.  They have been focusing on Basic and Sportsman sequences for judging.  There is a precision camp next March, and so far there are 6 countries coming.

Michael Hobson said there was a contest at Queensland with about 22-23 pilots.  In the Southern States, they are in Stage 4 lock down, where you can’t leave your house.  The ASAA has pretty much gone into hibernation for this year; they have extended everyone’s membership for 12 months.  Australian pilots will be signed up next year for IMAC, when everything returns back to normal.  Michael is going to work on a judging video.

Michael wondered about the IMAC membership/affiliation fees on where we stand.  Michael will speak with Mike and Doug later.  He had some questions on some rules changes, specifically on centering.

Mike reported that the centering changes were dropped, due to a significant change in the sequences.  It was also believed it would be too hard to teach the pilots to judge centering maneuvers.  Michael believes that this would be a good thing to revisit and pursue.  Primo spoke with Ty about this topic and this would also correspond with ACS.  Ty believes the ACS isn’t being judged correctly.

The Czech Republic had a very good contest, with several pilots.  A lot of them were IMAC members.  The U.K. has had 2 contests.  There has been discussion for the Europeans; the facilities are in place and the funding.  Electronic scoring will be using.  They are using HI and Low Mac.  They are trying to get the younger kids/generation interested in coming to an IMAC contest.  It has 3 IMAC maneuvers and 3 3-D maneuvers.  It is restricted to 30 cc airplanes, electrics, and foamies.  Adi is working with Facebook and Instagram.

July Minutes – Samantha McKinney

The July BOD meeting minutes was sent to the BOD for approval.  Mike called for the vote.  Motion passed unanimously.

Meeting adjourned 9:57 p.m. EST.

Details

Written by: Doug Pilcher

Category: Club Business

Published: 31 July 2020

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.

Details

Written by: Doug Pilcher

Category: Club Business

Published: 30 June 2020

Present:  Mike Karnes, Doug Pilcher, Samantha McKinney, Phil Vance, Primo Rivera, Brad Davy, Toby Silhavy, Rich Whitlow, Alex Dreiling, Clark Hymas, Jorge Guzman, Michael Hobson, and Manrico Mincuzzi

Meeting was opened on the IMAC BOD forum on June 12, 2020

Approval of May 2020 BOD Meeting Minutes – Doug Pilcher

A motion was made to approve the May 2020 BOD meeting minutes by Doug Pilcher.  Seconded by Rich Whitlow.  With no objections, the motion passed.

IMAC Website – Doug Pilcher

Doug informed the BOD that we have until February/March 2021 until we lose our current website.  Doug has floated around several ideas.  One idea is migrating the current website over to Diamond Computers’ servers.  Diamond would have 330 Down and 30 Up.  Rich does not like this idea unless we pay Diamond for fair market.  Doug has also mentioned looking into leasing a virtual server, such as Amazon Cloud.

Doug would like to see the forums possibly back to the main site.  V Bulletin is more time consuming with matching members to membership status automatically instead of manually.  If the forums are moved back to the main site, IMAC members would then get upgraded and removed from Members Only forums as determined by their membership status.  Also, an accurate accounting of voting without verifying each vote as they came in manually.

Rich recommended getting a committee formed to look at costs for potential ideas.

Treasurer’s Report – Phil Vance

At the end of May, the general operating account is as follows;

Checking             $  3,047.26

PayPal                 $34,173.82

Total                    $37,221.08

As of June 25, the general operating account is as follows:

Checking          $  2,755.28

PayPal              $35,984.23

Total                $38,739.51

Regions Report – All RDs

Rich reported that South Central has their first contest, Broken Arrow, in Tulsa, OK.  The event ran smoothly.

The NC held a virtual judging seminar, hosted by Mike Karnes.  It went over fantastic.  Our first contest is KRAM in July.  There are still several cancellations.  The border between the States and Canada is still closed.  Our region is still selling T-shirts.  Toby is asking about RPS trophies; he doesn’t see that the cost is worth for the number of contests that we have.

The SW will hopefully start up at the end of August.

THE NE has had 2 contests.  There have been several cancellations, but the clubs are hoping to have their contests rescheduled later in the year.  The attendance is low.  The upside, the intermediate and advances classes have an increase in participation.

Meeting was adjourned on June 30, 2020.