About the RGSA Forum

[Bob Kuczewski]

Hello RGSA Members!!

Thanks to Bill, Hadley, and the RGSA leadership for your interest in the US Hawks forum. The US Hawks is an experiment to see if we can use on-line tools (like this forum) to do a better job of connecting our pilots and our chapters and a national association. We'll see how it works.   

The forum is divided into national and local sections. The national sections are controlled by the national association (currently that's me until we can form a national Board of Directors). The local sections are controlled by each local Chapter. I want to emphasize this, because it's important. Local Chapters MUST have the final say regarding their forums. They decide themes and color schemes (check out Torrey Hawks and Tooele Hawks for example). They decide posting policies (club members or all US Hawks members). They decide discipline issues like banning. They pretty much decide everything. My only role with regard to Chapter forums is to carry out the will of the Chapter's elected officers. So I work for your Board with regard to your club's forum.

As I said above, the US Hawks is an experiment to see if integrating national and local clubs can benefit our sport. I believe it can, and my goal with the US Hawks is to do what I can to make that happen. I hope the RGSA leadership will give it a try, and I look forward to seeing an active forum for your club.

Best wishes, and fly safe!!
Bob Kuczewski

[Bill Cummings]

Thanks Bob for inviting the Rio Grande Soaring Association, (RGSA), on board with the US Hawks Hang Gliding Association.

This forum is soooo much easier to maneuver around than the new and improved ( give me a break) yahoo mail and yahoo groups.

I just got on my Bing search engine and typed in, “Did yahoo get bought out?”

People from two years back were asking the same question. I had to click the button that indicated that I didn’t find the answers helpful. I left a post that I was finding yahoo mail and groups difficult to work with.

I wanted to invite the Sandia Soaring Association (SSA) based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to check out this forum (THE US HAWKS) since I can only assume that they too are now having trouble with, “the new way,” yahoo groups forum and mail. --- But----I can no longer find my way back to our sister club‘s message board which is supported ( That’s a laugh!) by yahoo groups.

I talked with Robin Hastings a computer savvy pilot and he too is having trouble with our new and improved ( guffaw) yahoo groups.

I guess I’ll have to email or call pilots at the SSA for them to check out the US HAWKS HANG GLIDING ASSOCIATION, as the user friendly forum that I, over the last twenty seven months, have found it to be.
YOU HAVE A GREAT FORUM HERE BOB!

[Bob Kuczewski]

YOU HAVE A GREAT FORUM HERE BOB!

Thanks, Bill!!

Here are a few of our features:

• Separate Forums for each Chapter
• Custom styles for each Chapter (ex: Torrey Hawks and Tooele Hawks)
• Ability to search within a Chapter forum or across the entire Board
• Email updates for forums that you're following
• Embedded photos and embedded YouTube videos
• Each Chapter controls the policy decisions for their Chapter's forum

If you want to see a list of styles, you can go to:
Board index / U.S. Hawks Association / Building the US Hawks / Forum Help and "How To's"

There's a post there (Choosing a Forum Style for YOUR Club) with links to dozens of styles that you can choose for your forum.

We're also currently coming up as #2 when searching Google for "Hang Gliding Association" (right behind USHPA). So that's pretty good visibility.

And if we ever take the next step of offering ratings and insurance, we will finally provide some healthy competition in national associations.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Styles are one of those "personal taste" issues.

On the US Hawks forum, we allow each chapter to make those decisions. There are many "standard" styles to choose from, and those can be further customized for each Chapter. Changing themes does take a little work, so it's not something we want to be changing every day. But with a little investment we should be able to come up with a theme that most people will like.

So far, we've tried out three different themes for the RGSA Demo. The first one is the "default" ProSilver style that you see on lots of forums. It's been minimally customized with a different logo, title, and description:

RGSA_prosilver_example_small.png (132.51 KiB) Viewed 6653 times

This second style is based on the "actif" style with a few customizations (blue background rather than black, and the RGSA logos at the top). Since the RGSA is a desert site, I tried to choose desert-like colors (tan and orange). It's also close to Halloween, and the orange brings that to mind.

RGSA_actif_example_small.png (567.07 KiB) Viewed 6653 times

This third style is a lightened version of the previous one using more of a sky blue than dark blue. I think the light blue "sky" color works well with the tan "desert" colors for your club, but it will be up to you and your officers to make the final decision:

RGSA_003_small.png (511.54 KiB) Viewed 6644 times

Of course, there are many more styles that we can experiment with, and you can look at some of the other US Hawks forums to get ideas (I may be experimenting, so don't be surprised if you see it changing while you're browsing). The point here is that you can give your forum its own look so there's no question when your members are in your forum, the national forum, or any other club's forum.

[Bob Kuczewski]

This forum uses a style that I hadn't used before, and I noticed that the way it distinguishes between topics which have been read and topics which haven't been read was with a subtle color difference in the greenish-bluish range. I found it very hard to tell them apart. I also noticed that they didn't have a very clear way of showing "Hot" topics.

So I've changed the icons to use a reddish color for topics that haven't been read, and I also added a little "flame" to the "Hot" topics. Here's how that currently looks in your forum:

Topic_Icon_Examples.png (45.29 KiB) Viewed 6555 times

In this example, the red color on the "Lockout" topic tells me that I haven't read that topic yet. Similarly the "flame" shows which topics are considered "hot" by the forum software.

I hope this change makes it easier to see what you haven't read and what's "hot".

[Bob Kuczewski]

RGSA/Hawks,
Robin has started to hold to one thread where he posts his “Weekend Weather,” updates.

What I have done on that particular thread is to scroll down to the bottom and select “Descending” and then click “GO.”

What that does is stack Robin’s most recent post on top of the last one.
This has me looking at his latest post without paging or scrolling down.
You might want to select that feature.

Remember too that you can subscribe to a thread and you will receive an email alerting you to a new post that you haven’t read yet.
One other thing.
When you submit a post make sure that the next thing you see happening is the notice that your post or edit was successful.
If it returns you to the page you replied from then you have to hit the back page arrow at the top left and submit again. (then again look for the notice that your post or edit was successful.)
Their seems to be a small glitch like that from time to time so keep an eye on it.

Wow Bill!!!      I've been using this forum since 2010 and even I didn't know you could reverse individual topics!! I thought that would reverse all topics ... but it doesn't!!

My hat is tipped out of respect to you!!

This brings up another point worth discussion (or decision). When this was a demonstration forum, I had originally locked the "RGSA Forum Help and Information" topic so only I could post there. But now that the club has adopted the forum, I've just unlocked that topic so posts like yours (which are helpful to everyone ... including me!!) can be posted there. Please feel free to repost that last post there and to post future helpful hints there as well.

As time goes on, your club may develop policies about who can post to certain topics. You might, for example, have a "Safety Officer" topic where only the Safety Officer can post critical information. It's all up to what your club has to present and how you want to present it. My primary role is to try to implement whatever your club wants to do within the limitations of the forum software.

But to get back to the main point, it really makes me feel good to see you and your members finding out (and sharing) ways to use this forum to meet your needs. Thanks very much Bill!!!