Amazing things happen when we reach out!
Seaplane people are incredible networker’s. Thats the conclusion and result of the first week of reaching out to global organizations in the seaplane industry. The Seaplane Pilots Associations Field Director for Maine, Mary Build, joined our forum yesterday as the first SPA Field Director. With her,she brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, as a Designated Pilot Examiner, Flight Instructor and well known FAA Safety Team Representative, but also as the owner of an active Seaplane Training Facility in Naples, Maine. Within a short period of time my email inbox had filled with a few documents, and interesting topics, such as the upcoming Seaplane Safety Expo, which will take place this year on June 12th. Again, the event will be jam-packed with safety related briefings, seminars and a raffle and another opportunity for seaplane pilots to meet and shake hands. The Kathadin Wings 99’s will be active and involved and many of us up here in the cold north, cannot wait to be there. Mary will be the first user and facilitator of the SPA Field Directors corner, a section of our forum that enables free and quick sharing of news and hopefully proves beneficial to the network.
The Aviateurs Et Pilotes De Brousse Du Quebec, or short APBQ has decided to give our community a closer look and its President and VP-Member Services, Mr. Gilles Lapierre, and Bernard Gervais are new members on the forum. In total the forum grew to it’s 85th member this friday, with more people being invited everyday. The forum now has a “For Sale & Want To Buy” Section available to it’s signed up users as well and once a visitor decides to sign up a multitude of other features become visible and useable.
However, growth and expansion also yielded some little technical issues, which are currently dealt with. The forum software is accessed by visiting two domains, one of which is its main home http://www.jasonjamesbaker.com/Seaplane/ and one under its easy to find name http://www.seaplaneforum.com . The hosting company made a small mistake in proper redirection which may have caused some confusion with newly signed up members. This became apparent when ‘yours truly’ attempted to log into his own forum repeatedly and found two different “versions”, one showing more up to date information than the other! Fixing the issue requires installation of a modification to the boards script. To avoid further issues the boards “remember password feature” was temporarily disabled. The request to new members, for using easy to remember usernames and passwords came about during my past activity on behalf of Seaplane Pilots Associations Forum which required a double login and the fact that too many characters were required to create a password. During this time it will prove helpful to keep longer documents available outside of the forum (notepad, word or other document management tools will help). Many members did not report any issues and ease of access remains to be a non-challenge for them. However, it is my desire to offer this feature in the future to keep it easy and simple – so it is being fixed while the message board is young. Thanks to the 2 members who reported the issue, this uncritical issue will soon be attacked and solved. If you experience any issues simply try to use a different link to access the forum. If you are not successful on http://www.jasonjamesbaker.com/Seaplane/ simply swing to http://www.seaplaneforum.com and vice versa, or contact me per email or this blog.
The other and final point of this article is the new feature on SPA’s blog, that now includes a “Destinations Directory” which can be found here: http://seaplanes.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/the-secret-%e2%80%99s-out-about-seaplane-destinations/ and is an interesting document for seaplane pilots.
Fly Safe!