islandflyer

I have been pushing for AMA membership at our field, but most fliers don't join the club, and many don't join the AMA either (the latter feel that the AMA insurance will hide behind their other insurance policies, and is therefore useless).
The reason for this freedom of choice at our field is that we fly on public land, and therefore cannot get the authority to enforce any rule whatsoever.
To my knowledge, the club gets nothing from AMA, inspite of requests from our club officers to have the organization's backing to secure a flying site where membership and basic safety rules can be enforced.
Needless to say that it does me a great deal of good to read the bragging about the luxury of the headquarters and other AMA facilities in Muncie (at the other end of the country for most of us! I guess it's reserved to the good neighbors out there).
What I read about Dave Brown seems to be but a symptom of the AMA political illness: on a local basis, the only two guys I have seen part of this "machine" over the last 5 years have shined only by their non-involvment in the flying community, and their non-involvement in the organization of the few interesting events on the island. To top it off, we saw the first of the two be rewarded officially by the AMA when he left the island "for his outstanding achievement" while he was here. This was printed in the Model Aviation Magazine (AMA's PRAVDA).
I guess that it was indeed very important for us to finance the facilities where the dignitaries can rub elbows and congratulate each other.