Condor Club

[Tonyh]

Do you want quality racing and competitions all year round ? Will you miss the thrill of SBC this winter ?

If so please have a look at this thread http://forum.condorsoaring.com/viewtopic.php?t=9213

Here is a first draft of how such a club might run. Please post your comments and opinions here and feel free to poke holes, crticise, chop and change as much as you want. If this is going to work it has to be something that everybody is happy with.

Here goes.

Condor Competition Club (first draft).

Club aims.

To provide professional hardware and bandwidth resource for use by the community / competition organisers / tasksetters / scenery and download developers etc for:

Major competitions year round.
24/7 tasks with online scoring and benchmarking.
Free hosting resource for members own tasks / competitions.
Teamspeak server
Repository for downloads, eg sceneries etc.
Webhosting for the club and competitions.

Club funds to be used primarily to provide the above resources, any surplus can be used to contribute towards competition prizes, software requirements for competitions eg database, scoring etc, or other any other purposes decided and agreed by the membership.

Club membership

Membership will be open to any person who holds a legal Condor licence.
Membership fees will be payable annually and be determined by the funds necessary to run the club’s resources.
Members will be entitled to:

Participate in all competitions hosted on the club’s servers free of charge.

Use the club’s servers to run their own tasks when the capacity is not being used for competitions. A system will be established to manage server time and allow booking of capacity.

Use the club teamspeak server at any time.

Download any files in the download section free of charge.

For newcomers and the undecided a limited period of trial membership will be offered at minimal cost. After the trial period trial members will be able to upgrade to full membership on payment of the balance of the annual subscription.

The club will endeavour to keep the membership fee as low as possible, sufficient only to cover the resources described plus a small reserve for contingencies. The annual membership will be determined by the number of members and resources to be provided by the club. Refund of membership fees paid will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Use of club resources.

Servers will be open to all and free to join by all, including non-members. The club and / or competition organisers may decide to charge a nominal entry fee to non-members to enable them to be scored and ranked and eligible for prizes in the competitions. It is envisaged that 24/7 tasks, including scoring and ranking, should be free to all including non-members.

Any free server capacity not used by members will be offered to non-members on a rent a server basis.

Club committee

The club committee will be nominated by the members and elected by the members. The committee will consist of the following members.

Chairman
Treasurer
Membership secretary
Hardware secretary
Competition secretary
At least a further 6 committee members to assist with the running and administration of the club.

Club funds

Club accounts to be maintained by the Treasurer and publicised to all members. The club will be a non-profit organisation.

Committee members, competition organisers, scenery developers and anyone else connected with the club will receive no remuneration from the club or members. However legitimate expenses incurred may be reimbursed by the club.

The committee will decide on allocation of club funds, items of major expense to be submitted to members for consideration and agreement prior to purchase.

[JJJ]

So there will be 24/7 server like SB and there will be serveral competition WITH Start fee ?

I agree for that .. just maybe change teamspeak to ventrilo

www.ventrilo.com, U can ask www.bouncer4you.de to sponsor so u put a banner at some site..

Regards JJJ

[Tonyh]

So there will be 24/7 server like SB and there will be serveral competition WITH Start fee ?

I agree for that .. just maybe change teamspeak to ventrilo

www.ventrilo.com, U can ask www.bouncer4you.de to sponsor so u put a banner at some site..

Regards JJJ

Not exactly,the idea is you join the club and pay your membership fee and then the club pays for servers, prizes etc for ALL the comps run on those servers. We might want to ask non-members to pay an entrance fee for the comps.

24/7 should be free and then if people like what they see they can join the club instead of donating, and take part in the comps too.

[OXO]

[UrosM]

Hey, OXO! That must be a falsificate! There's a missing zero. Don't be so cheap

[Tima (TSD)]

OXO, for such fee there is a risk to get screenshot of serverlist instead of password to join the server.

[Polewka]

Tonyh

Yesterday night, after 5 days without i-net at home, I was hungry for a flight. And what happened? Serverlist was out, forum and the whole condorsoaring.com site. For at least 2-3 hours.

That said, I think another thing that should be included (if possible, and after an agreement with the Condor Dev. Team) is a backup of the serverlist on a reliable server. Something like the Hitzi's alternative serverlist, but with the official data.

I know condorsoaring.com has a mirror: soaringsim.com. The problem is that both are on the same provider (in Nederland I think) and probably on the same physical server...

what do you think?

Cya

[Strider69]

I have my server set to run on Hitzi's list, Not sure if it will pick it up when the main server is down, Any idea Rene.

[Tonyh]

Tonyh

Yesterday night, after 5 days without i-net at home, I was hungry for a flight. And what happened? Serverlist was out, forum and the whole condorsoaring.com site. For at least 2-3 hours.

That said, I think another thing that should be included (if possible, and after an agreement with the Condor Dev. Team) is a backup of the serverlist on a reliable server. Something like the Hitzi's alternative serverlist, but with the official data.

I know condorsoaring.com has a mirror: soaringsim.com. The problem is that both are on the same provider (in Nederland I think) and probably on the same physical server...

what do you think?

Cya

That would be good if we could accomplish it.

[Polewka]

I have my server set to run on Hitzi's list, Not sure if it will pick it up when the main server is down, Any idea Rene.

I think yes, yesterday were 3 or 4 servers showing on Hitzi's list when the official was out. The problem is that this only happens when you are using the DSHelper... When you don't use it (newbie or so), then it sends the data only to the main server (condorsoaring/soaringsim). I don't know if this is such a big secret (or security hole) on the code so that the Dev. Team hasn't already opened this info for a few chosen webmasters...

This would also stop the problem we already had a few times (on SBC inclusive) where on main race time the serverlist was down.

Well, let's hope...

Cya

[thermal]

@Polewka:
While condorsoaring.com was unavailable, soaringsim.com for both the forum and serverlist were up.
The fact that both sites seem to be hosted in the Netherlands may have historical reasons, where some Dutch guys were involved in testing the earliest Condor release.
That, and the fact that it's next to the Amsterdam Internet Exchange which is practically sitting on the Internet backbone, gives some guarantee of stability and speed, if such thing exists on the Internet...
I think last night's problem was DNS related.

@Tony:
It would indeed be great if this club-thing would come true.
Maybe the Condor developers can be invited to become members and bring their expertise.

[Polewka]

Hi thermal

Now I understand that about Nederlands, thank you But at least for me (in Brazil, other side of the Atlantic) both were unavailable yesterday. When it happens, I always test both to be sure and always both were unavailable for me.

But this don't change the fact that it would be interesting to have at least 1 backup serverlist (not the forum or anything else from condorsoring, for sure!!), just the serverlist, hosted in another reliable server (preferable the same were the main "Condor Club" resources were.

Cya

[Strider69]

@Tony:
It would indeed be great if this club-thing would come true.
Maybe the Condor developers can be invited to become members and bring their expertise.

I think the developers will be lifetime members without question.

[Icarus]

Do you want quality racing and competitions all year round ? Will you miss the thrill of SBC this winter ?

If so please have a look at this thread http://forum.condorsoaring.com/viewtopic.php?t=9213

Here is a first draft of how such a club might run. Please post your comments and opinions here and feel free to poke holes, crticise, chop and change as much as you want. If this is going to work it has to be something that everybody is happy with.

Here goes.

Condor Competition Club (first draft).

Club aims.

To provide professional hardware and bandwidth resource for use by the community / competition organisers / tasksetters / scenery and download developers etc for:

Major competitions year round.
24/7 tasks with online scoring and benchmarking.
Free hosting resource for members own tasks / competitions.
Teamspeak server
Repository for downloads, eg sceneries etc.
Webhosting for the club and competitions.

Club funds to be used primarily to provide the above resources, any surplus can be used to contribute towards competition prizes, software requirements for competitions eg database, scoring etc, or other any other purposes decided and agreed by the membership.

Club membership

Membership will be open to any person who holds a legal Condor licence.
Membership fees will be payable annually and be determined by the funds necessary to run the club’s resources.
Members will be entitled to:

Participate in all competitions hosted on the club’s servers free of charge.

Use the club’s servers to run their own tasks when the capacity is not being used for competitions. A system will be established to manage server time and allow booking of capacity.

Use the club teamspeak server at any time.

Download any files in the download section free of charge.

For newcomers and the undecided a limited period of trial membership will be offered at minimal cost. After the trial period trial members will be able to upgrade to full membership on payment of the balance of the annual subscription.

The club will endeavour to keep the membership fee as low as possible, sufficient only to cover the resources described plus a small reserve for contingencies. The annual membership will be determined by the number of members and resources to be provided by the club. Refund of membership fees paid will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Use of club resources.

Servers will be open to all and free to join by all, including non-members. The club and / or competition organisers may decide to charge a nominal entry fee to non-members to enable them to be scored and ranked and eligible for prizes in the competitions. It is envisaged that 24/7 tasks, including scoring and ranking, should be free to all including non-members.

Any free server capacity not used by members will be offered to non-members on a rent a server basis.

Club committee

The club committee will be nominated by the members and elected by the members. The committee will consist of the following members.

Chairman
Treasurer
Membership secretary
Hardware secretary
Competition secretary
At least a further 6 committee members to assist with the running and administration of the club.

Club funds

Club accounts to be maintained by the Treasurer and publicised to all members. The club will be a non-profit organisation.

Committee members, competition organisers, scenery developers and anyone else connected with the club will receive no remuneration from the club or members. However legitimate expenses incurred may be reimbursed by the club.

The committee will decide on allocation of club funds, items of major expense to be submitted to members for consideration and agreement prior to purchase.

Apologies in advance about such a large quote! I'm thinking rather this than having to scroll back all the time?

Use of club resources
Good ideas here. I'd suggest we develop or agree on a system to allocate the hardware resource to competitions. There are a few competitions already well known, but how does a new competition get any airplay? Perhaps competitions are given priority on the basis of no's of pilots registering for the competition?

Other stuff
The club constitution needs to outline the mechanism for resolving disputes or differences of opinion amongst committee members. Is it by vote, are there any casting votes, is it by simple majority or is a quorum needed; ie 75-80% to carry any motions?

Tenure of office holders. How long will they serve?

Mechanism for election & re-election. Do people volunteer themselves as nominees for office, or does the membership nominate potential committee members. How do we install them - is it by anonymous vote?

Committee powers. What decisions need to be referred to the membership and which ones can be made by the elected committee on behalf of the members? There's no point in having a committee unless they can represent the membership in quick and efficient ways at times.

Disciplinary actions. Committee driven or membership vote driven?

[Polewka]

Apologies in advance about such a large quote! I'm thinking rather this than having to scroll back all the time?

Use of club resources
Good ideas here. I'd suggest we develop or agree on a system to allocate the hardware resource to competitions. There are a few competitions already well known, but how does a new competition get any airplay? Perhaps competitions are given priority on the basis of no's of pilots registering for the competition?

Other stuff
The club constitution needs to outline the mechanism for resolving disputes or differences of opinion amongst committee members. Is it by vote, are there any casting votes, is it by simple majority or is a quorum needed; ie 75-80% to carry any motions?

Tenure of office holders. How long will they serve?

Mechanism for election & re-election. Do people volunteer themselves as nominees for office, or does the membership nominate potential committee members. How do we install them - is it by anonymous vote?

Committee powers. What decisions need to be referred to the membership and which ones can be made by the elected committee on behalf of the members? There's no point in having a committee unless they can represent the membership in quick and efficient ways at times.

Disciplinary actions. Committee driven or membership vote driven?

1. If I understood it correctly, the competitions will have priority and the major ones (and well known) won't have problems with time coincidence, because the organizers have interest that more people participate. And I think good hardware resources can run some servers at the same time, like SBC did. Remember, they didn't make it centralized: servers in Germany, in France (at the same time) and in the US.

2. Without loosing the necessary organisational needs, please K.I.S.S.

Cya