What is required to create a new MAAA/MAAQ affiliated club, or, if you are an existing club, how to know the requirements to register and officially use a new airfield location? Either way it is a two stage process… Club and Airfield.
The first thing to consider is joining an existing MAAA/MAAQ Club wherever possible. There are many benefits to this and would save you a lot of time and effort.
Creating an MAAA Affiliated Club
There is a cost of money, time and effort in creating and running a club and, while we don’t want to put you off, it’s always good to be up front about this stuff.
To create an MAAA affiliated Club you will need to;
- As a small group you can be an un-incorporated group or, for larger numbers, we would recommend you register the name of your club with the Department of Fair Trading as an Incorporated Not For Profit
- You will need a minimum of three people to take up the committee positions of;
- President
- Secretary
- Treasurer / Registrar (Registrar is the person who handles memberships)
- (You can have the Registrar as a separate person and other committee positions as you see fit)
- You will need to develop a; (reach out the MAAQ Secretary for more information)
- Constitution for your club
- set of By-Laws
- Open a bank account in the name of the Incorporated association
- Start gathering members
- Join the Club to the MAAQ/MAAA with the Club Registration Form (There is a very small fee involved)
If you are a club without an airfield, but you intend to fly your aircraft at different already established airfields you may consider registering as a Special Interest Group (SIG). You will need to talk with the MAAQ Secretary about that.
Creating an Airfield
The Airfield is where your club members are going to fly their aircraft. A Club can have more than one airfield.
To apply to register an airfield you must obtain the following information;
- Written permission from the landowner acknowledging your club and the intended use of the land.
- The site must be within Non-Controlled Class G airspace (if you email us the lattitude and longitude of your site we have a tool that can give you this information)
- You are not allowed to fly over 400ft or from a location in use by manned aircraft unless you have an Area Approval from CASA
Once you have the landowners permission (and the lattitude and longitude of your site) you need to email the MAAQ Secretary with this information. The Secretary will verify the airspace requirement, file the landowners permission documentation and register the field in the MAAQ Airfield register (this is one of the important aspects that ensures you are covered by the MAAA insurance).
If you know the requirements of your airfield will exceed tolerances mentioned in the Area Approval page you will require an Area Approval which means you will need to follow the procedure set out in MOP-005 Application to Register an Approved Flying Area Procedure and submit this to the MAAQ Secretary once complete.