In a previous article, "Jay Beckman" said:

I'm considering applying to join an area flying club and I'd really like to
get some thoughts on the subject, Positives and Negatives...

There are a lot of different types of flying clubs.

The main difference is that some clubs make you buy a share of their
fleet, and the share price may appreciate in value over the course of your
membership, and then you sell it when you leave. Other clubs, such as
mine (http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/) charge you an initiation fee
when you join, but don't give any of it back if you quit.

Another major difference is how they pay for upgrades. Some clubs will
levy the members if they want to buy a new plane or upgrade the panels or
whatever, and others (like mine) will do it entirely through debt and
lines of credit. Our club has in the last five years sold two Archers,
bought a newer Archer and a Dakota, put a Stormscope in the Dakota,
painted the Dakota, and put new engines in two of our planes, all without
hitting up our members for anything extra beyond their monthly dues.
We're planning a new engine in the Dakota next year, and possibly in the
Lance the year after that.

Before joining a club, you should ask about:
- What it costs to join?
- Whether that's a share or an initiation fee?
- Whether they levy the membership for upgrades? If so, how much are they
likely to levy?
- What's the ratio of members to planes? (We find that once you get over 15
members per plane, people start complaining about aircraft availability.)
- How do they schedule planes, and is the "scheduling book" visible to
all, and accessible through the Internet AND through telephone? (You
can't always count on getting to the Internet when you're weathered in
somewhere along the way.)
- How is the fleet maintained? Do the members do a lot of the
maintenance, or is it done by professionals? (Our club used to do a
lot, but years ago we decided to get everything done by professionals for
liability reasons. We don't even change our own oil now.)
- Whether the fleet is a good fit to your mission?
- What sort of checkouts and currency requirements they have for different
planes in the fleet?
- Do they allow all weekend or week long bookings in the high season? Is
there a surcharge if you don't fly a certain number of hours on a long
booking?
- Do they do social activities or flying activities as a club?
- Do club members get together to fly to Oshkosh in club aircraft?

You'll also need to look at the planes yourself to see if they're clean
and well maintained. Garbage in the planes or "barely legal" maintenance
is a good sign that the members don't have pride of ownership in their
planes, which I think is a bad thing. The worst thing that can happen to
a flying club is for most of the members to start treating it like a cheap
FBO. Once that happens, the people who do all the work in the club, the
officers and other volunteers, will start burning out and then nothing
will get done.

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
[Y]ou should write for the comprehension of the next programmer who
looks at your code, keep it clean and sensible, and *not* play
any obscure Jedi mind-tricks. -- Anthony de Boer