The mailing to airports (I did 30, mainly in Germany and Austria) is producing a steady stream of new signups. So that clearly works.
There is a very kind bizjet pilot dropping our leaflets around Europe and elsewhere and it does show up in the new signups.
However I will get a new leaflet design done for 2018 and I wonder if anyone here would like to put forward ideas for it.
First, ideas for the flyer:
The airplane flying snake-style is pretty eye-catching.
An idea would be to show a map with all the places we had meetups last year and some total count of people who attended.
Include figures or charts or something that show the growth of the community over the last couple years.
If the flightpath somehow goes through them, great :)
The simple design is great.
I’d change the text from “SIGN UP TODAY” to “JOIN TODAY” though. (makes it feel more like a community than a website, which is what I think we are…)
Second, I know this doesn’t exactly apply to this conversation, but it is kind of related…
I think it would add a lot of value to have a curated knowledge section of the website.
As it is, I often don’t find what I’m looking for, and I can imagine that is similar for others who may be new to the forum.
The practical idea would be to have another section of the website which is static (no updates unless the curator does it) and organizes the gold nuggets.
One gold nugget would be Avionics, with subsections; Theory, Regulations, Practical, and Products, where products would include reviews and questions.
The point is, that a lot of people signing up are probably looking for valuable information, that, if collated or curated, would make the site more appealing, and people would be more likely to chime in to conversations.
The big drawing point I saw at the beginning was the Meetups Section. There isn’t a lot of international communication in Europe that I’ve seen, and this site seems to try to pull people together.
Many thanks AF. In fact, having got no other responses, I found somebody on freelancer.com who is doing a new design. So far it looks good. Yes; the “join up” instead of “sign up” has already been suggested by a few people who I asked directly. It is a good idea about the trips but I think it is too much detail for an airport literature rack flyer. We could however have a QR code which points somewhere useful… these seem quite trendy these days.
Good point about the knowledge collection. Unfortunately, and I really don’t like to sound negative, it is too much of a moving target. The stuff keeps changing. A while ago I tried to get this done and nobody was interested, despite it being such an obviously useful resource. Another, probably simpler but still hard to maintain, one was a map of airfields and which ones have customs/immigration and perhaps avgas… again, no offers; one of the attempts was here and here is another. The view on mainland Europe seems to be that this doesn’t affect them and it is only Brits (Switzerland and Norway seem to be forgotten?) who suffer and will suffer more later on 
So I think one would have to pay somebody 
Peter wrote:
Good point about the knowledge collection. Unfortunately, and I really don’t like to sound negative, it is too much of a moving target
No worries, I know it is the work of a retiree, or someone with time on their hands, because it is definitely not an automatic task.
When I was down in Namibia, I met a cool guy working at a flight school who’s a programmer and working on OpenAIP.
Maybe the OpenAIP Map would be a great place to include the customs/no customs info, and if we let them know what we’re doing, they’d probably be glad to help us visualize or otherwise filter the airports on the map according to those features if we contribute the data.
Pilots on our side will need to input the data, but I don’t think that would be too hard, if enough of us pitch in…
The same thing should hold true for AvGas availability and prices…
Maybe I should make a post about openAIP…
Peter wrote:
A while ago I tried to get this done and nobody was interested, despite it being such an obviously useful resource.
I’d like to repeat what I wrote then: “[Peter] hinted that [my] post [about EASA regs] would need some additional work to make it into an article. If you tell me what you think is needed, I’ll be happy to do it.”
I’m still willing to do this if someone tells me what is lacking.
I think what is needed is a structure (a fixed table, which I can edit subsequently) which lists common questions and contains links to the reg, any AMC, etc.
So for example there would be a section on equipment carriage, which would deal with questions like “when do I need to carry a DME”.
Another one on the perpetual journey log, where even one “famous” guy got it wrong – see here.
The list of common questions (FAQ) would be expanded over time. So if one day we get someone asking if you can have an IR despite being deaf in one ear, one could add that (would point to somewhere in Part-MED about a functional hearing test).
I wonder whether maintaining an excel spreadsheet and then printing it out into either a PDF or an HTML table (EuroGA supports HTML tables) would be the best way. I don’t think we can have an online editable table without a fair bit of work.
Regarding the leaflets, the very best thing is to distribute them at Aero Friedrichshafen. And if anyone else can drop a little pile at their local airport that would be great – as always. I am happy to airmail them to anyone. Airport literature racks/shelves/tables are the most effective by far. Just send me a PM. I still have a load of the old design left over. It is your opportunity to give something back to EuroGA and unlike say a Donate button it doesn’t cost anything
This isn’t a hate message, but I find it difficult not to be honest:
It looks like it is from 2002.
The original is 16x better.
Again, no hate… (sorry man!)
It’s a tradeoff between looking cluttered and getting the main points across. Nowadays, everybody who might come to EuroGA has already been on other pilot forums, often been disappointed with stuff that goes on on them (bad behaviour and a high dross % being the main ones) and many don’t participate for these reasons. EuroGA does stand out among the pilot forums on the points mentioned.
Also looking at the pilot demographic, 2002 might be too modern
I am not a graphic designer and have not been able to find anything better. One could of course just get multiple people to do designs and pick the best one, but that works out expensive.
Any suggestions appreciated, before I get these printed.
