Any Squadron's doing just a monthly meeting?

[RickFranz]

With over half our squadron living 30 to 40 miles out of town, we are starting to talk about going to a monthly meeting, where all the weekly activities where done.  With the gas prices continuing to rise with no end in site, we think it might be the best way to help save our members some gas/cash!

I think I remember seeing a Squadron in Texas that uses this type of meeting.

[RiverAux]

As part of another thread I opened up the capwatch database which does have info on the meeting dates and times for CAP squadrons and there were only a very few indicating monthly meetings.  However, personally I don't trust that database very much as it doesn't seem to really be able to easily handle anything other than weekly meetings.  So, I suspect that there are more units out there meeting twice a month or monthly than indicated there. 

Personally, I'm a little leery of monthly meetings since the only practical way to do them is on a weekend, and we already ask CAP members to give up a lot of weekends for SAREXs, FTXs, etc. 

[addo1]

  The problem I find with this is (especially if there are cadets in the squadron) that most squadrons have a set 1 time a month testing date.  Most squadrons have a Aerospace night, an Moral Leadership night, a Testing night and a Emergency Services night.  If you only meet once a month that does not give a chance for routine testing or other things.   Physical Training and Testing take up one full night of meeting by itself. I guess it really depends on the squadron.

[Eclipse]

I can't see how you could possibly maintain any sense of coherency or qualification meeting once a month unless you're talking about an all-day UTA type situation.

[RiverAux]

Well, with seniors I think you could, but not with cadets.

[cnitas]

Other than our 'core' 4 or 5 seniors, most of our officers only attend once a month anyway.

[davedove]

Other than our 'core' 4 or 5 seniors, most of our officers only attend once a month anyway.

Oh man, I'm part of the core.  I don't know if I can take that much pressure.

[MIKE]

There is an old thread of mine in the CP section with this idea as it relates units with cadets.  I think it would be appealing for some units... It competes with 2.5-3 hours a week for 4-5 weeks a month... usually on a school night, with all that that entails...

Think of it this way... If you meet once a week for a 4 week month you just spent 1 hour and 40 minutes standing in formation.

[cnitas]

I don't know if I can take that much pressure.

Pressure? Just wait till Sgt Kest has us all falling into formation  

[kpetersen]

We don't have any squadrons meeting once a month, but we do have 2 of them that meet twice a month.  One of them meets the first and third sunday of the month in the afternoon.  The other meets one Thursday a month, and then one Saturday a month.  The Thursday meeting takes care of moral leadership, testing, safety, etc (with the mandatory items), while the Saturday they generally do an ES related mission (flying club).  If a squadron meets for 2 hours a week (norm here for your northern neighbor), then 4 hours every other weekend wouldn't be bad.  2 and 6 is doable also.  I'm just worried trying to get 8 hours in one day from an entire squadron every month. 

That, and it wouldn't be as beneficial to recruiting, i think.  As to national, you should have people visit the squadron 3 times prior to joining.  That's 3 months in your case.  By that time, most cadets will have forgotten about it with their short attention span.

[Gunner C]

I think that for cadets it would be a really bad idea.  As stated before, if you give them more than a ten minute break, they need to be retrained. [/exaggeration]

Teenagers need continuity to the extreme.

Has anyone thought of starting more localized flights?  That would work if you have clusters of members, then have a squadron meeting once a month at the central location. Gas is getting scary and there's unit across the US that need to find alternatives.

GC

[DNall]

I used to be at Pegasus in Austin about ten years ago. They did two Sats a month, one full wknd a quarter. They've more recently added a seperate Thursday night flight.

This is primarily a cadet unit, and the format works VERY well. While I understand the concerns others may have about how long a kid can go between meetings. The shear amount of time all at once allows you to get SO much more done. We had a VERY squared away cadet unit while I was there. One of the best I've ever seen.

One full wknd a month is actually more meeting time (14-16hrs) than 3hrs a week (avg 12.5/mo).

Doing it all in one day might be VERY hard to manage. Two days is much more workable. One full wknd is generally going to be better than two Sats, cause it just screws one wknd rather than two. The format does come its own problems, but it's got a lot of benefits as well.

[isuhawkeye]

Iowa's 91st "All Iowa" squadron use to hold its meetings on the third saturday of the month.  This allowed for isolated members form all across the state together, and learn about CAP until such time as they had enough experience to charter their own local squadron. 

[Tater]

One consideration of meeting once a month is that you are limiting the access to CAP for many members to only once a month.  If they travel for work or have any issues preventing them from attending on that one opportunity, they get to wait another 4 weeks.  Now the member has 8 weeks without attending or plugging in (other activities notwithstanding, of course).  If you provide 4 opportunities to plug in, I believe pretty strongly that you will have a better program.  My opinion.

[Gunner C]

One consideration of meeting once a month is that you are limiting the access to CAP for many members to only once a month.  If they travel for work or have any issues preventing them from attending on that one opportunity, they get to wait another 4 weeks.  Now the member has 8 weeks without attending or plugging in (other activities notwithstanding, of course).  If you provide 4 opportunities to plug in, I believe pretty strongly that you will have a better program.  My opinion.

Good point.