Recently I received a resignation letter from Tango. His reasons for resignation are posted below for your review.
I will only leave this post as 'viewable' for the next week to two weeks as I don't want this topic dangling on our forums forever. You are invited to make response .. good or bad. What this is all about is the allegations made by Tango and if we need to make any changes here at BSS. This is YOUR squad .. not just mine.
In short Tango says we USED to be a friendly bunch of guys and that now we are dictators and that I send out threats via email, and that we don't put RL first.
I want to respond first that we will remove Tango from our squad list as requested within a few days if Tango does not change his mind. If there are things we need to change .. I'm open and let us do so. I'll make a few comments then post Tango's email at the bottom. If any of you feel inclined to contact Tango and repair the relationship .. please do. I have sent him email to re-consider, I won't be sending any more to him at this point.
As the CO of this wonderful group of guys, it is important that I take my CO responsibilities seriously. I owe that to the group when I take on the CO position. It would be far more fun and much less work on me if I could just go fly .. instead of taking hours of maintenance time to keep the squad in good shape. It is the responsibility of a CO that when they see a potential problem .. they bring it to the attention of the squad in total and make attempt to 'fix' said problems.
I happen to like Tango a lot, but sorry, I feel his response is totally wrong. In fact I think he's not ever really read anything here on the forums .. or really talked and communicated with any of us. If he had really done so .. he would have found many post here that indicate RL first, Not many rules at all .. however "Muster Up" is one such rule. BSS does not require much or ask much of its pilots .. but we do ask that all pilots communicate with us once a month in some form.... even this we are 'easy' on. How can I do my job as CO if we don't know who we can count on for matches etc? There is no rule that says if you can't make a match or number of matches your "out" like many squads have .. no, we simply say "be there if you can". No pressure. RL comes first. Always has been. We simply want to hear from all once a month .. that simple.
We have never run BSS like the military. However since we are a 'squad' we do have a light structure and do sometimes get into 'character' with emails that might say "Order of the Day" .. do we really consider that a Militant and Dictatorial email? Of course not.
Is it possible that the recent email could be viewed negatively, maybe, but to resign over it? It would have been better I think to say .. Hey Tbar, that email was a bit strong. Yes?
My feelings at this time are to remove Tango from the list after a few days if we don't hear otherwise from him. He's always welcome to rejoin if later he changes his mind.
Tango's email:
Dear all,
In light of this very militant email, you may consider
me as removed from the roster, ToW, ToW forums and
anything else you want to grumble about.
Yes I do lead a busy life at the moment. Yes, I do
work shift work, Yes I do get home so tired I sleep
instantly. Yes it is obviously my fault that a
computer game takes a lower priority than real life.
ToW used to just be a friendly bunch of guys having
fun playing a game. Now it's some sort of
dictatorship. Sorry but I didn't sign up for that. I
don't want to be dictated to, I don't want you
organising my life and I certainly don't want you
getting grumpy with me because my new job takes a lot
of my spare time.
Please also remember that when I do get some time off,
it's nice to spend it with my GF or actually go out
into the real world.
ToW has been a good squad to be with and though I've
only recently flown twice in the last month (not at
matches or events) I honestly think that it's now time
to step down and leave.
Some people are taking this far too seriously and it's
not nice to find demanding/threatening emails in my
inbox threatening to remove me and others if we don't
make ToW the main priority.
Now I'm just going to fly AA for fun, for me, and for
FREEEEEEDDDDDOMMMMMM
Tango.