SAFA Skysailor Magazine

4 SKY SAILOR March | April 2022 New Board In January, following the regular two-yearly renewal process, the SAFA Board welcomed new Directors. Phil Robinson and Jim Astley from the ACT, Chad Silver (WA), Lynelle Williams (SA) and John Williams (NQ) have joined Mark Rossi (NSW), Alistair Dickie (ACT), Carl Haynes (TAS), Mark Pike (VIC), Phillip de la Hunty (NSW), Rick Williams (WA), and myself to form the new Board which will manage SAFA for the next two years. Nearly half our Board has changed in this renewal cycle and this is healthy. Change brings new ideas, energy and enthusiasm and this can only auger well for our sport. At the first meeting, Directors elected Mark Rossi as Company Secretary, Alistair Dickie as Treasurer and myself again as President. Our focus will continue to be on improving our governance, modernising our sport and its administration, pursuing different projects outlined in the SAFA Strategic Plan and generally working to improve the services we provide to our members and the manner in which they’re provided. On behalf of all SAFA members, I thank all of these volunteers for their important contribution to their fellow pilots and our sport in general. Return to Normality As the COVID threat lessens, life appears to be returning to some semblance of normality in many parts of Australia, Pleasingly, many of our flight schools are experiencing a decided upturn in new pilot enquiries – great for our sport and all involved in it. However, this also adds to the workload of our site volunteers to increasingly provide supervision for low hour pilots. It also places greater responsibility on SAFA to ensure our training and skilling standards are of the highest order so pilots are able to gain the maximum enjoyment from every flight experience in the safest possible way. This is something we are taking a closer look at. We want our pilots to be free to fly and be well equipped with the skills, knowledge and competence to safely do so. At the same time, we don’t want to overload our volunteers. Further, our regulatory regime needs to be easily understood and focused on desired outcomes as opposed to prescriptive inputs. Electric Flight Members who attended our 2021 AGM will recall a motion was approved to establish a working group to essentially appraise SAFA of developments in electric aviation. SAFA member Peter Fries was appointed to head this group. The project is taking shape and the next edition of Skysailor will feature this emerging technology in greater depth. For anyone interested, a visit to YouTube is worthwhile to gain insight into this fast developing area. CASA Safety Forum 2022 SAFA staff Brett Coupland and Iain Clarke along with Board member Mark Pike attended the recent CASA Safety Forum event in Sydney. This event is primarily conducted for the benefit of Self Administering Organisations and is an ex- cellent platform to interact with CASA and hear of the latest developments affecting our forms of aviation. Whilst there, Mark Pike accepted, on behalf of SAFA, the FAI Group Diploma of Honour, awarded in 2021 for services rendered to our sport over many years. President’s Update by Paul Green FAI award presented by CASA Chairman, Air Chief Marshal (Ret’d) Mark Binskin AC