Newsletter Archive/Archives du bulletin

webstertrophy.ca Newsletter #003 - 2014

Good Day Everyone.

Remember we now have a Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/webstertrophy

A New Page On The Website: Recently during a discussion with Bob Connors, while we were visiting our 2014 host school Waterloo-Wellington Flight Centre to set up initial arrangements, he mentioned that perhaps potential competitors were reluctant to enter because they perceived the national portion of the competition beyond their knowledge and/or skill level. I believe he may be absolutely right, therefore a new page has been added to our website which explains in more detail both the regional and the national levels of the competition. Once on the website click on the competition link on the left top and then onto Regional and National Tests.

Major Webster Team Meeting: Recently the various Webster team members gathered together to discuss the future of the programme. The competition has reached a stage now that it needs to be reviewed and upgraded to the next level. The issue has been something we have pondered for a few years now and beginning over the last couple of years major modifications were made to the flight test portion of the competition as phase one. We are now beginning to look at the regional competition methodology and work toward a more comprehensive away of selecting our new finalists. There have been some innovative ideas put forward which are currently being explored however they will not be put into place this year due to the time to develop then full and put them in place at a national level. Hopefully they regional portion of the competition will be an upgraded product by 2015.

ATAC 2013: Each year Amy and I attend the AIr Transport Association of Canada (ATAC) AGM and Trade Show which this year was held in Montreal from Nov. 16 – 19th. This is a very important event for us for it is one stop shopping in that we can access a very large majority of the Flight Training Units (FTU) in Canada there plus potential supporters and other contacts. It is also the venue where we announce the winner and runner-up to the aviation industry and also presented the annual Webster/Sennheiser Scholarship to the FTU which produced the greatest number of entrants to the competition. Moncton Flight College won it again this year. We also presented the new Webster/Flight Safety International Scholarship as well that goes to the winner's training organization which this year is Algonquin College. Scholarships are applied toward the further training of Webster competitors.

Each year we do a short presentation to the participating FTUs during one of their workshops and this year was no exception however with a difference. Normally we review Webster history and reveal new plans for the future. This year as practically all of the operators are totally familiar with the programme now, emphasis was placed on new concepts to be introduced into the programme over the next couple of years. This year however we also had three of our Webster finalists attend and have an informal "panel discussion" where they were asked questions concerning their Webster Week experiences and the impact on their future career opportunities. Webster finalists are the customers of the FTUs and we thought it beneficial for the operators to hear from those customers how important the programme is to them. Hopefully this will encourage more owners and operators to encourage their pilots to enter.

As mentioned above we have now fine-tuned the national portion of the competition and although it will always be tweaked each year, the team is quite satisfied with the way it is running. The regional portion however needs an extensive makeover which may take two or three years to complete. Once again ATAC was an excellent place to assemble some of the top FTU owners, managers and CFIs and get their input on how this should be done. A meeting was held with a selected number of them and extremely worthwhile input was received which will assist us to develop the project along very achievable lines.

It is likely that this will be the last update prior to the new year so to one and all have a very merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a great New Year.

Wayne

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