One week before our February meeting date, Ken advised me that I have to write the “From the Cockpit” column! Oops… I have to do what?? Write a column in our Skywriter newsletter. Hum this is the first time I heard about this task, but it is okay; I can put something together in a few days. Then he advised that it is a monthly task! A little bigger Oops! Monthly? Yes monthly! I should write a monthly column. Despite that writing is not one of my strengths, I decided to take the challenge; like any pilot who likes to be challenged.

Accepting the challenge started with setting myself mentally, on what to talk about. Hmm, Ken suggested introducing myself and then talking about the big picture of what we are planning to do in our beloved club. Ken always comes with great Ideas.

I am a flight enthusiast who first dreamed about becoming a fighter pilot about 36 years ago when I was 10 years old. Fast forward to before my seventeenth birthday I graduated from secondary school (I entered elementary school when I turned four). So after graduating secondary school I proudly submitted my application to the Iraqi Air Force college and started the medical tests, but before I finished the first day in medical tests, I was informed that I am not admissible to Iraqi Air force because of my age. I was supposed to be not less than 17 years old before I can submit my application. I was shocked and disappointed, however my parents cheered in happiness! Yes, they were very happy because they were scared of me getting killed in the war. That was during Iraq and Iran eight years war in the eighties of the last century. Full of disappointment from failing to achieve my lifelong dream I became an engineer and temporarily parked my flying dream.

Fast forward to 2008, I immigrated to Canada and started my new life dream of living in such a beautiful county. After settling in Calgary and nurturing my roots in western Canada, I realized that I could live my flying dream, not as a fighter pilot this time, but through the joy of the flying and the ownership of the finest machine a human may own, an airplane.

Fast forward again to 2013, I find myself realizing the best two dreams of my life, first is becoming a Canadian citizen and second owning my first aircraft, Zenair CH-750 STOL. On top of that I flew the plane from Ottawa to Calgary, with help of a ferry pilot and then I was elected president of Calgary Recreational and Ultralight Flying Club; with a mandate of improving the fly club, expanding the membership basis and increasing the members’ engagement.

Oh my God, here we have one of the finest flying club in Canada and we see a drop in membership, decreasing member engagement, diminishing in the major functions that the club members enjoyed in the past and, as any other Canadian flying community, suffering from an increase in the average age of the members and lack of new members joining the club. However from the other side, we have in the club some of the best and most enthusiastic pilots I have ever met. Age reflects experience, and then staying engaged, by attending the monthly meeting reflects how the members are keen to support the club and enjoy mingling with likeminded people.

We have to step up our game. We have to stand up, all of us, and bring up the CRUFC back to become the best in Western Canada and then in Canada.

I hereby call on all of the members to step up their game, to come up with suggestions and ideas in what we need to do to make the club better and stronger. Make the club functions informative and joyful. We need you to stand up and point to the person that you feel he is the best in making the club better. I hope that each one of you is pointing out to himself… yes himself, because we cannot achieve our goals without your engagement.

The directors of the club had their first meeting and thought about, who we are, what is our mission and what we should do to increase the membership basis, strengthen the commandment of safe flying and increase the current members’ engagement. We mutually agreed on the club mission. Great, so what is our mission?

The mission of the Calgary Recreational and Ultralight Flying Club is to promote safety and camaraderie amongst aviation enthusiasts.

It’s a great but simple mission. One that requires our members’ understanding and support. So are you ready to promote the safety and the camaraderie amongst yourself?

We agreed about improving the club website and we will talk to the website administrator, who is doing great work, and engage him in improving the website both context and content.

We thought about creating a Club Membership Directory comprising a brief resume and perhaps a picture of each club member, his current aircraft(s) and any information the member feel appropriate to include in the directory. Such collection of the information will be voluntary and according to the applicable privacy and personal information acts. The directory will help us in bonding the club members together, introduce the new members to others, put face to the names and preserve the club history.

We discussed various prior years’ club activities like annual winter dinner and auction, annual rust remover, club raffle, COPA for Kids, Poker run, Fly-inbreakfasts, club air adventure summer trip as well as working with other clubs. We understand that we may not be able to carry all the mentioned functions but we are confident that with proper scheduling and strong member support we can conduct many of the mentioned function and even more in the future.

We are looking forward to see all of you in February meeting and discuss how you can make CRUFC better.