Big News!!!

[Tyler G]

It's been a fantastic four years!

Over the past year, I have been succession planning with James Elliot in the hopes that I could retire and he would be willing to take on the effort of leading this club into the future. Thankfully James was willing. James was voted unanimously by the membership at our AGM this year. James is intelligent, thoughtful, and, most of all, very diplomatic, we are lucky to have him.

I look forward to continuing to watch our club bloom under Jame's leadership.

To you, the WCSC members and volunteers, I want to express my gratitude for your kindness, support, generosity and patience. Without you, I would never have succeeded in this role. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

To the fellow board members that I served with both past and present, I want you to know that it would be impossible to imagine how grateful I am to you. Thank you so much.

Over the last four years, some of our significant accomplishments were the following:

• Reach a goal of over 200 Members. We had less than 140 just four years ago.

• Largest Repack in recent history 80+ PPL (The Factory Pack)

• Renegotiation the use of Riverside LZ to from $50 per member to $0

• We ended the reliance on the repack to generate club cash flow

• We communicated more often with better transparency

• We became the first club in Canada to accept minors ages 16+

• Redesigned the Repack format to accommodate more locations with a focus on education.

• 12 Fly-Ins: First-ever Pemberton and Mt. Benny Fly-Ins and Resurrected the Grouse Fly-In

• First on-piste fly-in at a ski resort since the late 80s (Mt. Baldy Fly-in)

• Sister Club Partnerships with SOSC and OSA

• We help the Island Soaring Society club get back on their feet

• We Invested in building launches like Benny

• We invested in making our current launches safer and better equipped. Also adding a few new outhouses

• We merged with the Grouse Mountain Flying Team

• We secured a $10k per month advertising grant (Grants through TechSoup)

• New Brand. In partnership with James Friesen, we have this awesome new logo!

• New Website. Finally, the website is live!

Yes, you read that right. We finally have a new website. We launched an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the site, which means, of course, that we are still working on it and still have some stuff to add and update, but it's still entirely usable and mobile-friendly. Please reach out if you can help us with content.

Fly high, fly far, and most of all, fly safe.

Signing off,
Tyler G.

[Martin]

We secured a $10k per month advertising grant (Grants through TechSoup)

Sounds wonderful... in a virtual reality sort of way, but what the heck is it?

Comrade Martin

[James604]

Hello everyone!

I'd like to publically commend the time, passion, and energy Tyler has contributed to the WCSC over these last years. There is a LOT of work that goes on 'behind the scenes' and Tyler's tireless advocation on behalf of all west coast pilots has benefited us all. So... Thank you Tyler! My goal is to build on the club's momentum that Tyler and previous club leaders have established.

Looking forward into 2020 we're already working on some exciting club events. The season will kick off January 31 with our first "Last Friday" social at the Baron's Manor pub where we're working on a discussion surrounding team flying. We'll also be conducting numerous reserve parachute repack clinics in Feb/March in anticipation of the first thermal flights of the year. We're also looking forward to some fun fly-in's and BBQ's once the season is in full swing!

We're also excited to announce that the WCSC 2020 regular membership has been discounted to only $40 for the year! Our fixed overhead costs (launch tenures and site maintenance etc.) were more than covered by variable membership fees in 2019. These economies of scale have allowed us to reduce barriers to our sport and current/future members without impacting the value the club can deliver for a very minimal cost. The unofficial mentorship program launched in 2019 is available to all members at no cost and has even more participants for 2020. Get involved!

To stay up to date, please make sure your email is current on the WCSC website here: https://www.westcoastsoaringclub.com/membership/

I look forward to driving growth in our sport and sharing our collective passion for free flight. We all benefit from more members in our community, sharing knowledge, and encouraging others to join our amazing club.

Hope to see you all on launch, and better yet, at cloudbase!

James Elliott
WCSC President

[Tyler G]

We secured a $10k per month advertising grant (Grants through TechSoup)

Sounds wonderful... in a virtual reality sort of way, but what the heck is it?

Comrade Martin

If you Google "Google Grants" it will explain it and should answer any additional follow up questions you have. If it doesn't feel free to email me privately. You know where to reach me.