Officers attending:  Gary Osoba, Dan Armstrong, Steve Arndt, Murry Rozansky, Bill Poole and Webmaster Steve Adkins.  

     The meeting was opened at 10 am by President Gary Osoba. Due to Steve Adkins being on his honeymoon, he requested permission to go first in speaking to the group. Steve reported the SHA Website was getting many more hits.   Steve needs the help of the SHA members- please send pictures, scans are ok. E-mail him if you have questions on format desired for website.  
     Steve Arndt reported on the Eastern Workshop plans for 2003. Harris Hill Corporation will not allow homebuilts or ultralights to fly.  Jeff Snyder at Ridgley AirPark, Maryland has agreed to serve as a host for the mid to late June, 2003 SHA Eastern Workshop.  An informal April Skyout (very informal) is being planned for either the beginning or end of Sun-N-Fun at Wallaby Air Ranch, near Orlando, Florida.   
     Jeff Byard, President of the VSA (and our gracious host for the meeting at Tehachapi) reported that the 2003 VSA National Rally will be held the week before Labor Day at Mountain Valley Airport in Tehachapi and, that many participants would probably stay for the SHA 2003 Western Workshop. This is the first time the national VSA meeting will be held on the West Coast. This is a great opportunity to see these beautiful ships fly and take photographs (Tell your RC SCALE Soaring friends!) 
     Cam Martin reported that the 2003 SHA Western Workshop will celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the first flight of the Woodstock. This is also the centennial of the Wright Brothers first flight. Cam left the meeting to give a ”Young Eagle “ soaring flight to a young lady. 
     June Wiberg suggested that members of clubs with 2-place ships try to offer rides once a month to young people to help attract new faces to soaring and homebuilding.  Kudos to Bruce Carmichael, who once again had an outstanding speaker selection this year. Very favorable comments were received from OSTIV meeting attendees, competition pilots from the regional meet at California City and, some first time attendees. 
     Two very special Australian soaring pilots, John Ashford and Alan Patching, came over early and helped the Armstrong’s in hosting the OSTIV meet and, continued to help on the SHA meeting setup. The SHA offered our thanks for their assistance.  John Ashford served as Minister of Transportation and Patching was the Social Minister. 
Murry Rozansky reported $6,200 in the treasury after the banquet bill was paid, not including receipts from Tehachapi merchandise sales and the auction. June Wiberg reported that the auction raised $935.  
     I reported our membership remains about the same, and that there is a requirement as an SSA Division in our bylaws that 50% of members be SSA members. This is being missed by our members on renewals and applications, some people are putting their expiration number as a membership number. If you have your SSA card, please use the number when renewing . 
     Janice Armstrong wasn't present at the meeting to hear the praise for her (and Dan's) contribution to the group through her efforts as newsletter editor. To lessen the workload on the editor, the newsletter will become a quarterly issue, probably with the first issue of 2003. Time critical information will go to the web site. The pages will be set to approximately 60/issue, depending on input, which will give approximately the same number of pages as presently in six issues, but save workload and postage. This will prevent the need for a dues increase with rising postal rates. Voted and approved by majority at meeting. 
     Greg Cole stopped by (before leaving on an 18 hour drive back to Oregon, with the goal of getting there before school starts tomorrow!) and was thanked for bringing the SparrowHawk and for serving as a speaker at the workshop  
      Discussion of youth recruitment and education: 

Brian Jacobs is retiring from teaching after 35 years, and he led off by stating four kits of the Prue Primary still exist (for now) and could be purchased for education projects, if someone wanted to step forward and lead the effort for a school/class to build one.  He stated “we need to attract the 2% to 3% who will retain their enthusiasm for life.” 

Carl Rankin’s youth group was building simple models during the Western Workshop as he made it “fun“ for them. That enjoyment should be nourished and allowed to grow. 

Cam Martin suggested tying in with universities and colleges for “National Engineering Week” and  “Centennial of Flight Week”.  Murry suggested models for education, and getting local AMA clubs or RC soarers involved at the classroom level with teachers of science.

Nominations for elections were opened, and included Steve Arndt for Eastern Vice President and Gary Osoba for President. 

NAME CHANGE?   

     Gary Osoba brought this to the group’s attention. The lecture attendees from OSTIV were astounded at the quality of presentations at the workshop. They and competition pilots from the meet at California City who attended the banquet/Barnaby Lecture were puzzled and asked “Why do you have THAT name?”  While the homebuilding core is still strong, much of the growth in our organization in the future appears to be headed in the direction of the Apis, SparrowHawk, LightHawk, Silent and further developments. Working with new discoveries about the atmosphere and techniques of flying, pilots are using the new ships (developed from the homebuilding past) to fly into the future. 
 Times change, the mission statement may need to be modified. The name suggested,  “Experimental Sailplane Association”, fits almost all homebuilts (except for Irv Prue and Dick Schreder who certified some models) and the new planes now coming on line.  Try to consider this with an open mind. Our growth is static or slightly decreasing every year as our membership gets older. We will probably retain the majority of current members and obtain many new ones (especially in the universities).  When this was mentioned last year, many members were adamant that the name stay the same, NO CHANGE. Amazingly these were mostly the early middle age members, our oldest members seemed to be the most flexible and agreeable to the change.  Is that experience yours? 

The meeting was adjourned at 1115 hrs.