Dimme wrote:
Also, without clubs GA in Sweden would be dead.
Some figures… Sweden, with about 3600 active PPL/LAPL/UL-licence holders, has about 110 clubs for powered flight associated with the national aeroclub. There are also a couple of non-associated clubs.
I think the club philosophy is set by the people who fly there.
At my club there are many IR holders and I can get a C172 G1000 for 140 eur per hour or a Cirrus SR20 for 185 eur per hour.
Most of the FIs are serving or retired airline pilots, and we even have a former general and test pilot in the French air force.
Pilots are always encouraged to try new things.
Many people do long trips and pilots are actively encouraged to do so.
I’ve been a payed-up member of UK AeroClubs for 2 years from 1964, and continuously since 1986. None of them were/are a club in what I see as the normal English meaning of the word – more like my holding a Tesco Club Card, except I pay a lot for membership. This payment is just a contribution to the FBO.
I am a member of the LAA, and the local Strut (branch), which are Club like, as is the Flying Group ( 6 of us) which owns the plane I fly.
The Clubs which were independent of the FBO acted to destroy him, and destroyed themselves as well. (Two FBOs, same Club name but different people.)
It really saddens me to read things like requirements for a checkride after 28 days of not flying, flying with an instructor the first time you visit any other airfield, not being allowed to be away from base overnight…
None of that make any sense in my opinion, neither from a safety nor an administrative viewpoint. It only serves to cripple people.
In my club, a member can do anything (s)he want with the aircraft as long as it is legal and covered by the insurance. (And I believe the only insurance restrictions are geographical.) Except for one aircraft primary intended for training, you can book an aircraft for a period of up to 7 days. (And more than that with special permission.) Such long trips are unusual, but 2-3 day trips are quite common.
And of course flying abroad and/or IFR is perfectly fine.
The boys on tour
Peter you should consider that your negative experiences with clubs might be an anomaly or at least atypical for clubs outside the UK.
Apart from hanging out at patronising schools during my PPL training, I was never in a “club” so what prompts me in these thoughts is not my own experience 
Please also note that it is very common on EuroGA, when someone disagrees with me, to say “this exists only in the UK” In fact in many cases it exists elsewhere also.
I do live here but apart from local trips for currency, and the odd flight to scenic places like Alderney, most of my historical airborne time was done outside the UK. I also don’t hang out on the UK GA scene at all and never have done. I turn up, fly, land, drive home. Very rarely do I attend events but, like e.g. Sywell, usually prefer to drive to them because it’s less hassle and probably safer…
On a funny note, I was handed the running of an online flying club on the MeetUp site, after the previous guy got too busy. Then Meetup wanted £15/month so it was abandoned and moved to Facebook, where it collapsed. It was mostly a lunching club with nobody flying anywhere, and when I looked at the membership of nearly 100, most of it was women looking for a date Maybe this is an idea for a new section on EuroGA? However I very much doubt they were looking for pilots… well not GA pilots 
Naturally, I expect aeroclub members to defend aeroclubs
What kind of statement is that?
Why would aeroclubs need to be defended?
Without aeroclubs I do not think there would be much recreational certified aviation at all. As far as I am concerned they represent most of recreational GA.
Peter, you keep insisting that nothing happens in aeroclubs, but that is not true. You once singled out French aeroclubs and I demonstrated that they are vibrant and frequently organise trips both to Scandinavia, Africa and other places in a thread you ended up deleting.
Creating conflicts between the aeroclub and private owners is not productive. It’s sad.
I am sorry your experience at British clubs was bad, but you should not generalise.
Peter wrote:
I think the club structure is great for getting people started but then keeps people “in their place”
It’s certainly nothing like that LOL. For one, anyone can start a club. It is after all just a gathering of people who like to fly.
in a thread you ended up deleting.
That is a gross misrepresentation. I never delete anything where somebody disagrees with me. Disagreement with a mod/admin is an instant ban on most forums (for obvious operational reasons) but not here on EuroGA.
The problem is that some threads go off the rails as people spot a chance to post stuff which is offensive, partly because historically we had a policy whereby offensive stuff against a mod was allowed. Also, on forums, you get a mentality establishing itself whereby the mod is to be whipped at every opportunity, everybody who succeeds is a hero, and everybody who succeeds and gets banned for offensive posting (the slightly more clever ones make sure they are offensive only to the mod and to nobody else) becomes a martyr. When this is done skilfully, often involving a call for “free speech”, the mod has no option but to end up looking like a bastard. And he gets accused of deleting technical disagreements, which is a complete misrepresentation, but it is easy to make the accusation (and spread in around behind the scenes in an attempt to further damage the forum) because the original thread was deleted. We have a very small group on EuroGA which does this; thankfully they are mostly away. The only threads which have been deleted were ones which basically ended up with one offensive post after another. However if there are posts of value then I just clean up the rest.
EDIT: that thread was deleted while I was away from a PC / short of time. Later when I had time to throw at it, I cleaned it up and it is where it was – here.
Airborne_Again wrote:
It really saddens me to read things like requirements for a checkride after 28 days of not flying
The hardest thing that I have to do in job is to say to a pilot who wants to self fly hire that they can’t because they are not safe. I have to do it maybe 2 or 3 times a year.I’ve even had to say it to a freshly minted CPL holder whose parents were sat in the clubhouse. Who after paying 100K in flight training wanted to go for a flight with their son.
Its horrible but its the right think to do. And it might be a bind and a rip off for many but for some its a life saver.
