Season’s Greetings! As we enter the Holiday Season, this letter is an update on past year activities and what we are anticipating for the coming year.
First, we are closing out 2016 as our most successful year yet. We had the most members and the most racers in the history of our Class. We also enjoyed a tremendous increase in sponsorship contributions which we passed along to our members as we shared the largest purse in our history. With the increase in sponsorship, we would like to make sure that everyone recognizes the contributions that both Embraer and Epic made in both donations to the Class and in providing our pace aircraft.
We would also like to thank Royco, Harco Aviation and Ladd Gardner Insurance for their sponsorship of our Class awards. And finally, we thank Raf Collado and Epic Aircraft for their sponsorship of the two hospitality tents that we shared this past year. There will be a survey sent out to our Class members in the next two weeks. This survey is meant to help us understand how the Class may better serve the needs of our members. Please set aside some time to complete it as we would appreciate as much information as possible to help us going forward. We thank Mike Steiger for taking the time to put this survey together. For the upcoming race season we have a goal to increase our sponsorship contributions in order to help reduce the expenditures for each of our Race Teams.
If anyone has any contacts or suggestions to either develop new sponsors or to provide our sponsors with a better experience we would appreciate you getting in touch with Jeff Turney, Mike Steiger, or myself. In view of the increase in sponsorship dollars, the Board of Directors has voted to reduce the full membership fee from $200 to $100 for 2017. Associate memberships will continue to be $25 each, and the Race number fee will be $50. The Board also voted to eliminate the RJI fee for rookies attending PRS. We are working on a new RJI website which will contain a membership portal with the updated fee structure so that you will be able to renew your membership and your race number electronically. We expect the new website to be online by the first of the year.
Any race number not paid for by PRS will be subject to forfeiture if someone else would like purchase the race number. As mentioned above, we will be introducing a new RJI web site that we hope will be more user friendly and informative. We would like to encourage you to your share photographs and information for posting on the RJI website.
Your materials may be forwarded to Dave Culler, i.e. Killer, at killerf18@cox.net. The Class also maintains a Facebook page and we encourage you to post photos and comments to keep it lively and active. If you need help with posting on Facebook, Tam Augostin, Kathy Cloke, or Vicky Benzing can help you as page administrators. The Class will be going through its bi-annual recertification process with the FAA in March of next year. With the renewal process, we are looking at incorporating a few rule changes as well as clarifying some of our policies.
As of this time, we are still constrained by the current course design which limits our maximum speed on the course to 515MPH. Jeff Turney will be working with Matt Setty to try to achieve some leeway in course design that might help relieve the speed limit issue. Other items that we intend to clarify or amend concern our Class qualification rule, and our Class policy concerning flying/rule infractions and the resulting Class action. Additionally, some of our members have approached the Board to consider the addition of several new aircraft types. Pete Zaccagnino has agreed to look at the safety considerations and present that information to the Board during the next meeting in January. As a Board, our number one priority is the safety of our racers, so any decision on allowing new aircraft to race will be with that in mind. Our annual Presidents meeting with RARA and the FAA will take place on February 23rd- 24th.
This is a good forum for our Class officers to meet with the RARA and FAA leadership and communicate our Class needs and issues. The three-part NBC sports special will air on March 12th, 26th and April 2nd so be sure to note it on your calendar and tune in for some fun race coverage. Other relevant dates for 2017 are:
Pre-PRS Formation Warm-up June 5th -6th Pylon Racing Seminar June 7th -10th National Championship Air Races Sep 13th -17th Please feel free to contact me or any Board member or Class officer with your comments, concerns or suggestions. Rick RJI President