Maintenance Resources

[LeWayne Garrison]

Hopefully this post will be allowed to stay up for a time. ICS leadership seems to be in turmoil and this forum has become dated and not very useful OR user friendly. Try the Airworthy Comanche forum at Delphi Forums or the Comanche Facebook page.
LeWayne

[AlanBreen]

Hello LeWayne,

Yes, it would be nice to see more activity here.

I'd be keen to know by what you mean by dated and not user friendly though.

Personally I find the layout here much better than the forum you are recommending. However I'm only one user, you obviously have another point of view. Can you provide some more detailed feedback. That way it may be possible to make improvements.

Regards,
Alan Breen

[Eric Jessen]

One problem for me is that I can not open any pictures posted to this forum.

[AlanBreen]

Hi Eric,

Can you link to a post with a picture you have problems with. If you're unable to do that can you tell me where the post is, i.e.thread location and name.

Regards,
Alan

[Eric Jessen]

None of the attachments will open for me, regardless of PDF or JPEG. It always says the file is corrupt. I am using Firefox.

[Stephen Flaherty]

Alan,

I think if I used the word "dated" I would be meaning that the information has become old or stale. The lack of daily traffic to this site means that what is here isn't fresh.

I think "not user friendly" refers to needing multiple sign ons and having two separate areas that need to be accessed. Make it one bulletin board and make it easier to access and I think that phrase wouldn't apply.

I dont want to speak for LeWayne and what this might mean in his perspective...but those are mine.

Stephen

[Andrew Foster]

Alan
Ditto for me on what Stephen says
Andrew

[AlanBreen]

Thank you Stephen and Andrew for your feedback.

Getting critical mass is important and that's something that needs to be worked on. There is work happening in the background that will hopefully improve traffic to this forum.

[AlanBreen]

Hi Eric,

I see what you mean with the PDF's. When I tried it looked as if they had downloaded but it is impossible to open them.

I'll do some more digging.

Regards,
Alan

[LeWayne Garrison]

Those comments are exactly what I was referring to. By "dated" I meant that especially since this website/forum was taken over by (I think) Village Press, it has had very little traffic on it. By "not user friendly" I meant that reason this has so little traffic on it. It took multiple emails to Laverne Stroh to even be able to log on to both the website and the forum. Stroh was very helpful helpful, though, so thanks to him. There are numerous posts on the Delphi Forum and the Comanche Facebook page describing how many members can't use this website.
LeWayne

[AlanBreen]

Hello LeWayne,

I used to visit here quite often but as happens in life, other things get in the way. Fortunately I have good local technical experitse and due to the time of I have owned the PA30, nearly 18 years, I am now on the other side of the information curve whereby I don't need to ask questions very often.

I am a new member of the ICS BOD and I thought I needed to spend time here using the website and finding out what happening here.

I agree regarding the log in issues and LaVerne was very helpful. By the way LaVerne is she not he.

I visit the Delphi site from time to time but haven't posted there for over two years and before that I cannot remember when. Unfortunately some of the people there are very negative about ICS but never want to lift a finger to make things better.

I refuse to have a Facebook account so don't know what is going on there.

I don't know the background to the recent website changes and am disappointed with how some things work. I will be asking questions and suggesting changes where appropriate.

I have forwarded an example of the PDF issue to LaVerne and she has sent this information on the the appropriate person. Hopefully there will be an answer soon.

Regards,
Alan

[Michael Bryant]

Alan,

The number of problems created by the new web site and forums is large.

The original login problems, password problems, etc. Many are ongoing.

I manage log-ons with a password manager. I know of no other website designed to use multiple passwords to log-on to different parts of the same website. However, that happens here. The forums require a different log-on UserName and Password than the ICS website does. Though I can change the password, I cannot change the username to match my ICS username.

When I log-on to the Maintenance forums, it generally remembers me from day to day, as I request with the check box.

I seem to need to log-on to the Chat forum anew after any period my laptop goes to sleep or is shut down. I do not understand why the 2 forums act differently but have the same log-on.

As a result of the PITA factor logging on, I check in here maybe once a week. I rarely post anymore as the traffic is so low I feel there is little to contribute. There low traffic makes me want to come to the ICS website less and less.

Since you are a BOD member, I STRONGLY suggest you and the rest of the Board take a long, hard look at what is happening with the organization. It seems you need to make a difficult decision between 2 options:

1) Continue on the present path of promoting a mainly social agenda and also of protecting CFF. In the process, loosing membership that cares primarily about supporting the Comanche aircraft and not supporting the International Comanche Society or the Comanche Flyer Foundation as organizations.

It seems to me as both ICS and CFF have lost sight of their stated purposes. The ICS home page states the organization is "dedicated to the Comanche Aircraft and their owners." Many owners are members of ICS to obtain support for their Comanche. They care about the support, not where it comes from.

It appears to me the current BOD is more dedicate to itself and the CFF than the Comanche Aircraft and their owners. It is evident that I am not the only person to feel this way. I joined ICS for primarily for type support. I do enjoy occasional social interaction with other Comanche owners, but not when it comes with a huge sacrifice of my time and money.

Option 1) will most likely result in the death of the ICS and CFF.

2) The ICS seems stuck in the past and married to the status quo. Any organization needs new members to thrive and survive, especially as long time owners seem their Comanches. These new members most likely do not care about the past history of the ICS and CFF as much as you do and are really only interested in the future, mainly of their newly purchased aircraft. They want easy to obtain social media experience and websites. The more difficult, unpleasant, and expensive the BOD makes the whole process, the less relevant ICS becomes.

The Comanche Flyer is the perfect example. The Comanche type support articles are either reprints from earlier Flyer issues, or copied and pasted from the forums. There is nothing new.

The remainder of the Flyer is dedicated to owner's aircraft or the conventions. While it may be occasionally interesting to read about someone's history with their Comanche, I did not join ICS for that reason.

I did attend last years convention, but again, I did not join for primarily for social reasons.

Owner's aircraft and social gatherings are generally not enough reason to join an organization or subscribe to a magazine, which seem to be the chief benefits of ICS today.

I care about support of the Comanche. If I decide I need training, whether I attend CPPP of CPTP should be up to me, not the board.

IIRC, ICS and CFF are independent. In most organizations, if a board member (or spouse) has a position as a stake holder in another organization, he recuses himself from voting on issues that involve the other organization due to the possibility of a conflict of interest.
I do not see that happening here.

Finally, since the organizations are independent, they should be treated equally. Either both pay to advertise, or neither does.

My 2 cents on the problems with the website, forums, and organization.

Michael Bryant

[Stephen Flaherty]

Alan,

Thanks so much for taking some time to visit the Forums to experience first-hand what is going on.

You said you refuse to have a Facebook account so you have no idea what is happening there. Well, what is happening there is pretty spectacular so I would suggest you find a friend with Facebook access and sit over coffe while you read the Comanche group site. There are MANY contributors. It is VERY active and it is very SOCIAL. Facebook may be the biggest strategic threat to the maintaining ICS membership numbers.

Respectfully,

Stephen

[AlanBreen]

Micheal,

You make some very good points and ask some very relevant questions. I don't have time to answer them all in detail right now but I will cover some points briefly.

Re the website, I agree 100%. There needs to be changes and most of the concerns you raise have been noted already.

Re Comanche support and CFF etc. Some are members for camaraderie some for type support. In my experience most join for support but after a while the camaraderie becomes more of a focus. Perhaps by the time most members get to be Tribe Chief etc the Camaraderie has become the focus and type support has lost it's importance for them. Perhaps they have forgetten why they joined. I agree we need to get the balance right.

There is a lot of back story to the CFF debate. I am prepared to discuss this further but now isn't the right time.

I agree ICS needs to smarten up it's act. Having said I'll say two things, (1) that it cannot be all things to all people (2) ICS is it's members therefore it is up to members to get involved.

When I get time I will attempt to answer in more detail.

Thank you for your input.

Regards,
Alan

[AlanBreen]

Hi Stephen,

At some stage I'll take the trouble to have a look at the Comanche Facebook page.

You are right, organisations like ICS need to keep themselves relevant to the members in order to survive. About 15 years ago I was one of the members agitating for email communications to be used to communicate with the members and for the need for a ICS website. What a battle that was.

While I detest Facebook I acknowledge it is a medium ICS should be thinking about using.

Thanks for your feedback.

Regards,
Alan