Gotta agree - we share a very well equipped 172 among more than a dozen guys - it sure bites a lot less when the bill is split that many ways. And there is amazingly little scheduling conflict.
Can we quickly compare AOPA's Membership to EAA's
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pkuhns
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pkuhns
AOPA's Air Safety Institute is excellent - if you actually care about becoming a better pilot or want to learn (in great detail) from other's mistakes join AOPA or support the Air Safety Institute.
I belong to AOPA and EAA and always will because they are a powerful voice in Washington. They are doing great work holding the FAA accountable. And to all the whiny pilots on here who think AOPA is all about money-grabbing, have you actually read EAA's financial statement and seen how much they make from Airventure every single year?
I belong to AOPA and EAA and always will because they are a powerful voice in Washington. They are doing great work holding the FAA accountable. And to all the whiny pilots on here who think AOPA is all about money-grabbing, have you actually read EAA's financial statement and seen how much they make from Airventure every single year?
kyleb
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Drake the Outlaw
It isn't all about what they make. It is about what they do with the $$. Eaa delivers things like experimental avionics STC's, Autogas STC's, etc. Aopa stashes the money in over funded reserve accounts to pay its top staff members after the revinue stream dries up.
FloridaPilot
Pattern Altitude
I agree and EAA's Airventure is a huge event and in my opinion EAA deserves the revenue they get every year. I have both as well but I just paid recently and AOPA is already asking me to extend my membership. I don't know if they forgotten that I paid or is hoping that I forgot. How about AOPA making a huge event somewhere on the west coast so they can stop begging for money so much? Don't get me wrong this is not an AOPA bashing post any organization that is working to benefit GA is a blessing but I just wish they stop with the letters I get for money. There has got to be other ways to generate revenue.
EAA sent me an e-mail the other day about an event at my local airport that I didn't know about. I will definitely attend!
Mtns2Skies
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EAA is a fantastic organization, but I just let my membership lapse because they don't have much pertinent information for me. I'm about to join AOPA because of all of their resources for purchasing aircraft which will soon be useful. So I guess I'm the only one that is going from EAA to AOPA.
midcap
Pattern Altitude
I was going to refrain from getting too political in this thread but what the heck, AOPA is a lobbying group.
After the stunt Sen. Nelson pulled regarding the PBORII/Basic Med, if I were at the AOPA, I'd be funneling all the money I could toward the person running against him for reelection.
By doing that it would show one hell of a statement that the GA fleet isn't going to roll over and take it.
For what I am talking about see the Airplane Owner's Pod Cast Episode 54.
After the stunt Sen. Nelson pulled regarding the PBORII/Basic Med, if I were at the AOPA, I'd be funneling all the money I could toward the person running against him for reelection.
By doing that it would show one hell of a statement that the GA fleet isn't going to roll over and take it.
For what I am talking about see the Airplane Owner's Pod Cast Episode 54.
MichiPilot
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lol...to think they have any say in anything in DC is a fairy tale.
NoHeat
En-Route
My latest frustration with AOPA:
Months ago they broke every one of their airport webpages for flight planning, like this one, and they haven't fixed them. Specifically, it's no longer possible to download a single pdf file with multiple approach plates, to make it easier to print them before a flight. Somebody at AOPA mangled the html code so that your downloaded file has the wrong suffix, and apparently nobody at AOPA cares about it -- I emailed them and got no answer.
EAA doesn't claim to offer any flight planning aids on their website, so I'm not sure whether this failure of AOPA actually makes EAA look any better.
Months ago they broke every one of their airport webpages for flight planning, like this one, and they haven't fixed them. Specifically, it's no longer possible to download a single pdf file with multiple approach plates, to make it easier to print them before a flight. Somebody at AOPA mangled the html code so that your downloaded file has the wrong suffix, and apparently nobody at AOPA cares about it -- I emailed them and got no answer.
EAA doesn't claim to offer any flight planning aids on their website, so I'm not sure whether this failure of AOPA actually makes EAA look any better.
denverpilot
Tied Down
I've said for a long time if I could be a member and they'd guarantee every dollar I paid went to ASF, I'd be happy. Every stinking dollar.
AOPA and EAAs web offerings have always been buggy and sub-par compared to pretty much anything outside of aviation. Neither quite "gets" web software. EAA is closer to the minimum standard seen elsewhere than AOPA.
Granted at least some of this falls on their "partners" they choose to run or build some of them. Don't know the current relationships but at least some of AOPA's flight planning software pain is just flat out caused by Jeppesen. Both organizations make very bad vendor decisions in IT. Then they "fix" it by either bringing it back in-house for a while or picking another vendor. Their choices are limited, but it's not all on them directly. That said, as a customer of said products, I don't care if it's a vendor problem. Fire the vendor and do it right.
Frankly it's one of the reasons a place like PoA even exists. If either entity could run a forum as well on as decent a software platform...
kyleb
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Drake the Outlaw
Other than oddball outages and a surplus of over the top personalities, I never had problems with AOPA's forum. EAA's forum architecture is pretty weak, though. They could make a lot more productive use of that space...
Depends what you want, but you can go even cheaper than that. If you just want to go putz around the local area, get a 6 guys to go in on an experimental, like Dana's FP-404: http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27006
http://www.barnstormers.com/classified_1219080_Fisher+FP-404.html
With 6 guys, the purchase price would be $1,600/person. Hangar cost, even at $600/month would be $100/year. And 2 gal/hr. Being experimental, even if there are issues, the parts don't have to have an FAA stamp on them. Can't be that for cheap flying.
Ventucky Red
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This right here is worth my $65 a year...
Tampico Trauma
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Mauled Formerly known as Tampico Trauma
I'm a proud member of PoA and will likely join AoA once I watch a few more informational videos and find the green donut.
Mmmm donuts.
Although they should make it with a blue waffle instead.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mmmm donuts.
Although they should make it with a blue waffle instead.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Mtns2Skies
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I thought its worth noting... they advertise lifetime membership for 1800. At $69/year as advertised it takes 26 years to pay off. That'll pay off for me at 48... I'll keep paying annually. Surely that membership doesn't make much sense for most of AOPA's member base as I doubt many have 26 years left...
midcap
Pattern Altitude
Did you see my post? That's how you get a say
MichiPilot
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Did you see my post? You assume that aopa has any say.
SixPapaCharlie
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EAAs magazine is on more hefty stock. I feel like it is higher quality.
UngaWunga
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Its content is better as well.
denverpilot
Tied Down
I think you've just learned how to price "lifetime" memberships. Hehehe. Welcome to Marketing. Three drink minimum. Tip your server.
kyleb
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Drake the Outlaw
Yeah, but with a lifetime membership, you probably get a free lapel pin and invitations to exclusive $100/head dinners at sponsored events.
midcap
Pattern Altitude
I think you missed the gist of my post and how DC works.
Right now AOPA has little clout when compared to ALPA.
There was one guy that altered the outcome of PBORII/Basic Med, if AOPA tries to get him out of office next election, people will start to listen to AOPA.
That's how it works in politics.
MichiPilot
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AOPA has little clout when compared to ALPA because GA is a flea on the ass of commercial aviation.
TheTraveler
Line Up and Wait
I'm a member of both. I think the mains have been discussed very well above, most of which I agree with, but I will share a different experience with EAA on the local chapter level.
I lived down south for a while, and joined the local EAA Chapter at LZU. As Eppy knows, it's a great chapter, good people, active, good community for a lot of things.
When I moved to where I live now, I checked out the local EAA Chapter, and had quite a different experience. Went to 2 meetings, and pretty much couldn't do it. It's very similar to just a long-ago retirement social club. Sure there are a few events, but they are not worth the weekly meetings discussing things that I certainly cannot relate to.
Still an EAA member, but my local chapter isn't for me.
I lived down south for a while, and joined the local EAA Chapter at LZU. As Eppy knows, it's a great chapter, good people, active, good community for a lot of things.
When I moved to where I live now, I checked out the local EAA Chapter, and had quite a different experience. Went to 2 meetings, and pretty much couldn't do it. It's very similar to just a long-ago retirement social club. Sure there are a few events, but they are not worth the weekly meetings discussing things that I certainly cannot relate to.
Still an EAA member, but my local chapter isn't for me.
About the only handy thing AOPA provides me is access to the medication list. I don't need them to provide "faa" links or their disinformation about what they say. I've found that AOPAs medical phone support is so counter productive to be not worth it. AOPA-recommended providers are generally a good deal for nobody but AOPA.
EAA doesn't promise much, but does well on what they do provide. They even wrangled a STUDENT discount for SOLIDWORKS for people who want to get into that. And Jack Pelton does seem to personally answer his emails.
EAA doesn't promise much, but does well on what they do provide. They even wrangled a STUDENT discount for SOLIDWORKS for people who want to get into that. And Jack Pelton does seem to personally answer his emails.
midcap
Pattern Altitude
while that is true....it doesn't mean you can't tactically do somthing that is effective. It only took 1 person to derail Basic Med, that means it only takes one person to derail anything the Airlines wants passed.
What ALPA did with their magic wand should be considered a direct slap in the face to us GA folks. No one seems to care or wants to do anything about it.
TomHaines
Pre-takeoff checklist
I checked with AOPA's IT staff on this and here is their response:
There isn't anything broken with the Airports directory and the process works the same as it has for several years. What happens is members overlook the two words next to the "Single PDF" link. Those words are: "Download Checked". The way this is designed is you simply place a check mark next to any or all of the individual PDF approach plates/diagrams you want to download. Then when you click the "Single PDF" link, we create a single PDF with all the plates the person selected. This allows the selection of any quantity of procedures, not just all at once. We have also provide a "Check All" link in that same area that allows someone to select all of them at once and then download the entire packet to make it easier. If it didn't work like this, then you would either have to select one at a time or all of them. The way we did it, you have more flexibility and can select a custom group to download.
People just see the "Single PDF" link and don't read the two words right before it. I can see how it might be easy to miss but it has worked like this for a long time and lots of members are using it. We do get this question a couple times a year but it's not a frequent question. Since we are re-building the Airports directory, this is something we can re-examine and see if we can make it more obvious but we still want to allow people to select only the plates the want so the new process will still be similar. See the attachment for more details.
Attachments
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NoHeat
En-Route
Thank you for checking, Tom.
Tom, I respectfully submit that you are mistaken.
What you have have described is the intended function of the website, and indeed it worked that way for years (I know, because I used it often!), but for many months it no longer works that way for me. Instead of getting a single PDF file, I now get a single file with the WRONG SUFFIX, which is .PL The correct suffix would be .PDF
The attached screenshot clearly indicates that I have checked two approach plates, and after following your directions the resulting downloaded file has the incorrect suffix .PL which will not open with Acrobat Reader.
Attachments
TomHaines
Pre-takeoff checklist
Hmmm... I just follwed your same steps at KOSH for the same procedures and on my Mac desktop using Safari it worked perfectly. Same thing on a PC with Windows 10 and Chrome. I see the .pl file, but it opened just fine and is ready to print the two procedures, which are in one file. Is your Acrobat current?
dmspilot
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If a "mistake" by the client results in a nonsense response, such as a PL file being transmitted, your server/application is broken.
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SkyDog58
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Canis Non Grata
Might have to associate .pl with acrobat.
dmspilot
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No, do NOT do that.
3 in the green
Line Up and Wait
I am a member of both. I prefer EAA's rag to AOPA's though - except if you're a student pilot the "Flight Training" mag from AOPA is pretty good.
denverpilot
Tied Down
This is the likely problem with the script and the download.
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/pdf-files-dont-display-some.html
Or similar.
What version and flavor of browser are you on and version and flavor of PDF viewer installed?
All sorts of bugs around using a stream and a MIME type to concatenate multiple files together without creating a temp file on the server disk and sending as an attachment, about 8 years ago in browsers. Especially MSIE.
Possible:
- Patches to the webserver changed the MIME type and added UTF-8 support.
- Changes to the perl script switched the method from concatenation of files on disk to in memory and sending as a stream instead of an attachment.
- Browser is seriously ancient. These bugs with streams were common eight years ago.
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/pdf-files-dont-display-some.html
Or similar.
What version and flavor of browser are you on and version and flavor of PDF viewer installed?
All sorts of bugs around using a stream and a MIME type to concatenate multiple files together without creating a temp file on the server disk and sending as an attachment, about 8 years ago in browsers. Especially MSIE.
Possible:
- Patches to the webserver changed the MIME type and added UTF-8 support.
- Changes to the perl script switched the method from concatenation of files on disk to in memory and sending as a stream instead of an attachment.
- Browser is seriously ancient. These bugs with streams were common eight years ago.
Checkout_my_Six
Touchdown! Greaser!
I'm a member of both....EAA's rag is much better IMHO. And from where I sit (gummint job) EAA is much more effective at getting GA moving and real policies changed.
Airik7777
Filing Flight Plan
I can jump in here. Full disclosure, I am a member of the AOPA IT team and happy to assist with the issue in downloading PDF files from the Airports directory. I verified using three different browsers (Chrome, Firefox and IE) that the resulting file is a PDF file and when I download it to my desktop and has the proper PDF extension. The .pl extension you are seeing is for the Perl script which is the script that collects all the individual PDF's and combines them together in the browser session. I will be happy to check with our dev team in the morning and see if we can isolate the issue you are seeing but it will be really important for us to know your browser type and version as well as what version of Acrobat or other PDF software you have that is being used as the browser plugin. We can try to replicate the issue on our side which is always very helpful to find the root cause. If you are using legacy, outdated browsers or an older version of a PDF plugin, you can try updating to the most recent version(s) and see if that resolves it. Beyond this issue, there are many other important reasons for running the most current web browsers and plugins (i.e. security vulnerabilities).
More than happy to assist.
Eric R.
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GLMS_NC
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Rick
Aopa flight planner? Who cares. Use ForeFlight. Way better tool...
avongil
Pre-takeoff checklist
This months Flight Training magazine was a huge Cirrus advertisement. I don't think I will renew.
Scrabo
Pattern Altitude
Flight Training magazine used to be good, now it seems to be on a 18 month recycle of stories - P&P were the same. Happily dropped AOPA today after 19 years.
dell30rb
Final Approach
I pay them both money. Glance at the magazines when they come in. A lot of the content is repetitive. I don't need renter's insurance. Occasionally I get good news about 3rd class medical reform, experimental avionics in certified aircraft, or perhaps another pilot's bill of rights.
This has been my experience.
This has been my experience.