I, like many others have said, don’t ever use the different forums, unless making a new thread. I just look at the main pages. I check the main page often enough that if something is of interest, I see it there, before it’s gone off the end, so never need to check the “Active threads” link.
So the number of forums to me, makes not a bit of difference. However on principle, I’d not like to see a divide between VFR & IFR. There is no need for it. Just look at the many wonderful trip reports we’ve read this year. Some have been IFR and some VFR, and many a mix of both. Some you couldn’t tell from the report, under which rules the flights took place. Yet they were all wonderful reading. Why start to split these up, just when the VFR content on the site is starting to improve 
Maybe it would be an idea to have a thread where people could report where they left the flyers? It might be interesting to see if there is a correlation between those reports and new signups.
Peter wrote:
I would like to make sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that you could hand out some EuroGA leaflets at Norwegian aeroclubs, if we implement the following new sections
What I’m saying is that I will have difficulties building enthusiasm spreading information about a web site that predominantly is about flying IFR (in expensive certified machines) across Europe. I don’t do those things, and have no intentions of doing it. It doesn’t interest me. I’m more of a “grass root” kind of dude, and I spend more time building than flying. The only thing might be IFR in homebuilts. Not because I will some day do it, but more because it will create more homebuilders (a lot more than those who would actually IFR in a homebuilt). IFR in homebuilds is done all over Norway/Sweden/Finland + France and Italy. It would be nice if in particular Germany and the UK would apply some common sense in this matter.
The other aspect of this site is discussions about EASA regulations, which I do find very interesting for various reasons.
I have seen there are several local and specialized Facebook groups. It’s just that I’m not very active on Facebook, but it looks like a lot is going on there, so maybe I should take a closer look.
Regarding clubs, I have only visited 3 other clubs this summer, and only one of those have a few PPL pilots (Tynset). The others are Oppdal, but except one person there (who really do fly IFR all over Europe, in a beautifully restored twin nowadays, he used to have a Cirrus), it’s all gliders and microlight (I also tow gliders). Besides that I have been to some 10 places where there are no clubs (or no one at home). My own club here at ENVA is by far the largest until you reach Oslo/Kjeller with several clubs, but I never travel in the Oslo area, it’s just too far, it takes too much time cruising for ours straight and level. I’d rather take the Cub to some small strips in the mountain/coast, because I like that kind of flying. Which brings me back to the first paragraph. I do know that several at my club likes to travel, but as far as I’m concerned I see much more action going on in other things like aerobatics, microlight, homebuits, bush flying, things that widens the horizon and is much more viable because it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to do it.
Anyway, send me some leaflets, and I promise to hand them out. My club alone will reach most PPL pilots within a radius of 80-100 NM at least (the central Scandinavia geographically). A whole bunch of commercial pilots (airline, not GA) also come by our club, and most students continue with CPL in the US (and come back having nothing to do, but that’s another matter. Lots of time for EuroGA ). We aren’t that many though, it’s scarcely populated here, 2-3 hundred PPL pilots all in all I would guess in this area at most.
Lucius wrote:
Just add a few predefined tags, and allow each post to be tagged with one or more predefined tag. Search takes care of everything else.
If you are a robot, these tags work fine. For humans it is a waste of time compared with a flat menu system.
What I’m saying is that I will have difficulties building enthusiasm spreading information about a web site that predominantly is about flying IFR (in expensive certified machines) across Europe. I don’t do those things, and have no intentions of doing it. It doesn’t interest me. I’m more of a “grass root” kind of dude, and I spend more time building than flying. The only thing might be IFR in homebuilts
At the risk of over-stating this point, @LeSving, and please don’t take this the wrong way… EuroGA is a user community. It is what the contributors make it, no more and no less. It is not a free aviation newspaper with its own editorial team – despite the fact that hundreds of readers use it like that, every day, and I can see them in the admin activity pages, all day long, but that’s the way the internet is
So if someone wants more VFR (or any other) content, or more homebuilt content, they need to contribute it. And we are really keen to have more VFR content!
And, as I wrote earlier, I don’t think that supplying yet another Vans forum (for example) or yet another Lancair forum, etc, would magically fill up such type specific sections. I have many times visited the Vans forum (because it gets google hits on various specialised GA components) and I think homebuilders make heavy use of very specialised information while they are building and for that they use the US forums which have critical mass which will never exist in Europe. Then they vanish, possibly (if they are significantly flying at the end of their project) reappearing to talk about flying generally. The type specific forums such as Vans AF will do a great job of the support of the building phase, while EuroGA does a great job of the flying phase. And flying a homebuilt is just like flying a factory built.
As I said before, type specific forums have a very narrow applicability and are full of people asking questions and there are just very few very dedicated people answering the questions.
I also think the same applies to the microlight community, which is pretty well supplied with forums full of banter. But if anyone believes otherwise, please do say because David and I are always listening.
Finally, I don’t agree that flying an IFR aircraft (SR22 or any other) is elitist. The build time of the average “genuine homebuilt” (say an RV from a kit, not a Kitfox which arrives nearly built) is of the order of 1000-2000 hours. Many homebuilders never finish. And I bet you that those who do finish have sacrificed a lot of their personal life, relationships, etc sitting in their shed for months or years. So the “investment” in these very different aircraft categories is really quite similar because the builder who sunk say 1000 hours into building something has spent tens of thousands of euros on his time sitting in the shed. That’s one reason why say a built RV is anything but cheap to buy, and costs a similar amount to a used IFR aircraft.
LeSving wrote:
If you are a robot, these tags work fine. For humans it is a waste of time compared with a flat menu system.
@Peter: The Reddit compares is flawed. Reddit deals with different forces due to many magnitudes larger scale, like fraud.
At the end of the day, what works and does not work remains all speculation. I don’t know if my suggestions will work. Even large companies don’t know. I work in engineering for the largest software company on the planet and we don’t know many times, neither do our competitors. Fast experimentation in combination with telemetry is the strategy to follow, not speculation. If manual leaflet distribution works, great, problem solved. If not, re-read what I wrote above.
Peter wrote:
EuroGA is a user community. It is what the contributors make it, no more and no less.
A bit less than more I would say. It’s not like I can create my own subsection named experimental aircraft for instance. Shape and form is a big part of this.
What I mean is that this place is no place to discuss the merits and details of internal priming for instance. A typical topic with no correct answer, yet something every builder has to relate to. It’s completely uninteresting for everybody else. There are other places to do that, but it also means this will never be a place for these kind of things, or anything related to homebuilding. A builder will look at the sections and see “bizjets” and move on. The only reason I am here is because I googled UL91 and europe to try to find out a bit more about the fuel situation in Europe.
LeSving wrote:
It’s not like I can create my own subsection named experimental aircraft for instance.
Yes you can. Actually even I can do it for you. It’s called a “thread”!
LeSving wrote:
A builder will look at the sections and see “bizjets” and move on.
There’s an easy solution for this: ask moderators to open such section and commit yourself to build the community; if you don’t succeed in reasonable time that will be the proof that either general public hasn’t recognized this place as homebuilders friendly or there hasn’t been sufficient interesting content; and section will be closed.
In what way are the existing homebuilding forums insufficient?
If it is a stated objective to increase the amount of “VFR” content on this site (even though on the other hand we apparently don’t want to make an IFR/VFR distinction anyway), then all of LeSving’s points are very valid and reflect a type of audience that is not well represented here.
Since we don’t want to talk about IFR vs VFR let’s call them “grass roots/sport” pilots vs “going places” pilots.
We can make a sophisticated financial argument that IFR flying in certified aircraft is not eliteist, but at the end of the day if it is perceived as eliteist (or boring), by a group that this site wants to attract, then that is what counts.
Personally I would rather read about LeSving hopping around remote Norwegian areas in his Cub, than read about someone flying their SR22 to Cannes :)
Personally I would rather read about LeSving hopping around remote Norwegian areas in his Cub
Of course, but why could that not be posted under the existing Trips and Airports section? We have plenty of VFR trip writeups there.
And if you had a section like “Grass Roots Trips and Airports” how would one define that? The classification would be very much in the contributor’s mind – especially as there is a significant aspirational factor in GA.
