littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

I never thought of that...just flying within AMA clubs and only flying with AMA members probably has done wonders for our growth. I was wondering what factor to attribute AMA's amazing growth... I'll have to remember that strategy. So obvious I can't believe I didn't see that before...

[email protected]

My Feedback: (1)

park flyers can get in to trouble also so it the plane hits someone in the park in the eye who payes for thee doctor bill we all need a [ama] card>> at out field new or old no [ama] card no fly so the guy spends 50.00 a month on beer and cigs>> ive been flying since 1945 iam retired but still keep my card up park flyers can do damage goes out of the park hits the front window of a car car hits another who pays everyone cant be happy>>

littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

Can't argue with that. More good points.

BFoote

Its called personal responsibility.

Heard of it?

I have never seen nor know of anyone hurt or injured by an RC aircraft. Seen lots of crazy stunts. Know hundreds of flyers.

Its called common sense and personal responsibility.

AMA, other than their great magazine, is useless unless you want to compete in their competitions where they have managed to co-opt everyone into paying money to them year after year, for absolutely nothing in return other than a nice mag. A very nice mag by the way.

Why I dropped AMA as soon as I found a place to fly where the AMA hadn't handcuffed the local club with their idiotic restrictions. I'll never go back. Met LOTS of folks who fly in parks etc as well, they are all there because they won't pay the absurd AMA fees either for insurance that no one ever needs and even if they did, its called personal responsibility.

The real reason AMA is shrinking is that everyone is playing computer games, or pissing their life away dinking on a stupid smart phone instead of actually doing anything. Just like there are fewer and fewer on a per capita basis going to the National Parks, backpacking, and mountain climbing even though the populations keeps going UP UP UP! When I was a kid, every campground was full up all summer long. Now, you don't even have to worry about a campground being full except on a few rare weekends a year.

Different priorities.

littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

I thought personal responsibility was when you are made to belong to some insurance program... I mean that seems where we are headed in our society now...isn't it??

AMA figured it out long before Obama... We as AMA members pay in to a "pool" so that we are all covered, no matter what we fly...giant scale twin turbine or 10oz slow stik... at the club site, with lots of people around or out in remote locations with virtually nothing to hit...just be responsible and pay the communal fee. The thought of people having to actually choose how they cover their liability is an out-of-date concept.

One thing we can do as good Americans is to boycott the non-AMA type... Do not fly with them and by no means let them fly with you... after all it is about the insurance and what the other guy has to protect you...err...himself...

Hossfly

Back in the early '70s, AMA President Johnny Clemmens (SP ??) managed to obtain the first Liability Insurance program for CLUBS. That saved RC aeromodeling and also provided worth to the AMA itself. Many a flying facility would never have existed had it not been for that Site-Owner Liability Insurance.
The average RC Club is so full of tight-wads that almost no clubs could muster the money to purchase their own insurance. Had AMA insurance not been available, I doubt there would be clubs such as www.jetero.com and its 50 acres would exist. Neither would the ARF Club some 70 miles north of New Caney TX. I also will include the famous Bomber Field some 80 miles northwest of Houston. ARF and BF are on property owned by an individual. Jetero's 50 acres is club owned and how-the-heck do you hink that the original 100 acres fell on their doorstep? Do you think that just possibly that the financier of said property just may have required a site-owner liability insurance policy to cover his butt? That would have been way too much for the club to have handled, as RCers are basically cheap-skates about anything outside their One-Upence toys.

You can sit and cry all day however the AMA's affordable insurance is the main-stay of keeping aeromodeling together. Every insurance policy one owns is a result of many other people also having such policies. Every think about normal businesses, corporations and such? Individuals buy stocks and that money keeps the business going
until it gets healthy or flounders. The AMA insurance program has held AMA together in some tough times.
Now if you really need to P & M, take it out on that magazine MA. That is where $$$ are thrown down the drain. It is the killer of our magazine industry, as AMA undercuts market values, using YOUR money. AMA has not made a profit (Unrelated Business per the IRS) since its inception around 1980. I was on the EC then and was much against, "The money maker for AMA's future." Well, any profit is still in the future. [:@]

opjose

Something which the "renegades" love to avoid by their very nature.

Unless you own PRIVATE land to fly on, personal responsiblity dictates AMA membership if only to make sure that you abide by the established rules.

You have not looked very hard then... the media is repleat with stories of injuries to bystanders and property, all brought on by "renegades" flying at non sanctioned locations... ALL were thankfully NOT AMA members.

Cutting a woman's face and ear off with an RC aircraft in non sanctioned areas is NOT personal responsibility, as happened last year.

Thinking that somehow you are above all of this... is NOT personal responsiblity.

Flying without following AMA rules is NOT personal responsiblity.

Flying without AMA liability coverage is NOT personal responsiblity.

Telling others not to join an organization that promotes safety, educates lawmakers, provides insurance, club liability coverage, out reach to the community, public education, scholarships and promotes the hobby in general is NOT personal responsiblity.

That may be your perception, but nothing is further from the truth.

Around here WE SEE the AMA involved extensively to protect the hobby. Last week we met with an FAA liason who told us how they view the AMA in a very positive light... that alone is worth my yearly fee.

So either the club was overly restrictive and you should have found another, or you did not like the normal requirements that we fly under.

Either way your statement bespeaks a LACK of "personal responsibility" and care about the hobby and others. You put yourself above everyone else.


It is this type of attitude that may find us with exactly the same requirements to fly RC aircraft anywhere.
Insurance is something you will ideally never need, but you are required by most states to have it to drive.

Your "friends" re-inforce your belief that somehow you are the exception and do not require it.

That is NOT "personal responsibility" quite the opposite.


And getting poor advice from people who advocate doing what you do... telling them NOT to join.

While that may be true, it is a non sequitur to your statements.

jester_s1

I'm curious what Bfoote calls "idiotic restrictions." It must be flying over people that no one should tell us not to do, because everybody knows that it's super smart to do that. Perhaps it's the current trend of flying FPV over houses, cars, crowds, historical landmarks, and other things that it will be a big deal to hit. The guys who do that are stalwarts of common sense and good judgement. Requiring a person to demonstrate competence in flying before piloting a jet that can weigh 20 pounds and go 200 mph is just ridiculous, because we all know that a couple of hours on a Super Cub in the park will prepare you for that. Ditto for the models over 55 pounds that AMA puts into the experimental class. Then there's the quadcopter crowd that the AMA won't let fly beyond their lines of sight. We all know that FPV equipment bought from Hobby King is rock solid reliable, so there's no chance of losing the signal or getting lost and needing to bring the bird back conventionally. Or maybe it's disallowing pyrotechnic devices and weaponry on RC planes, because we all know how safe it is to strap a Ruger 10/22 onto an Ugly Stick and go target shooting (admit it guys- we've all thought about it!)

I do understand that sometimes rules mean you can't do whatever you feel like. And I'll admit the AMA has taken a fairly conservative stance on FPV, but these "idiotic restrictions" have kept the hobby from being regulated by the government for decades now, and it appears they'll continue to. A few booger eaters are trying their best to ruin that so they can have their 20 minutes of fame on YouTube, but by and large it's possible to enjoy the hobby with a few common sense safety regulations that keep us from going home with a prop stuck through our eyeball.

Thomas B

My Feedback: (4)

While you have never seen or heard of it, it has happened and it has been well documented.

Fatality wise, there have been something like 6-7 model related fatalities in the US over the last 30-40 years.

They include:

The famous flying lawn mower incident in Shea Stadium that crashed in the seats and killed one person.
A twin Mustang hit and killed an event worker at a warbird pylon race out west, in Arizonia, IIRC.
An Andrews Aeromaster hit and killed a semi famous TV news person after the horizontal tail failed in flight, in the VA/MD area 20-30 years back.
An RC heli hit and killed a flyer in Houston in 2003.
A 60 size trainer hit and killed the modeler flying it out west some number of years ago.
A Formula I pylon racer hit and killed one of the event workers back around 1970ish.

Might be just 6. Cannot recall another one at the moment. There have also been a similar handful of fatal accidents overseas.

The good news is that the hobby is pretty safe, partly due to the AMA safety code you refer to as "idiotic restrictions".

Year in, year out, most if the AMA insurance claims are for things like slip and fall accidents at the flying field.

I coinsider the AMA umbrella insurance a great deal for some extra peace of mind, for me, a person that also believes in personal responsibility. Let's face it: insurance helps us be personally responsible in a financial sense for any accidents or injuries we cause.

[email protected]

My Feedback: (1)

if the people dont want {ama} let them hit someone and get introuble>> some one will sue them let them pay the bill>>> someone hits me without [ama] insurance will pay and pay a lot but i got [ama] and all the flyers at my club has it ot cant fly that simple

Thomas B

My Feedback: (4)

I liked most of your post, but the above is not true. See my post above where I posted some basic details about 6 US fatalities. I know that four of them involved AMA members flying the models, for sure. I am not certain about the trainer crash, or the Houston heli fatality as they happened after I had some access to some insurance industry information when I was briefly and regrettably involved with the Sport Flyers Association. I think these other two did involve the AMA, but am not certain.

The AMA reported on the AMA web site that the flyer in the serious Tampa, Fl heli accident a public park there with the injury to the girl was an AMA member.

cj_rumley

Thomas,
That all agrees with the factual stuff that has been related to me. Re the poor fellow killed in the Houston heli incident, he may or may not be considered an AMA member. He had paid his AMA dues with a credit card, and the payment to AMA was denied by the issuer for some reason unknown to me, though it is not at all unusual that an installment payment was missed. etc. Former prexy Dave Brown went berserk, but I believe cooler heads prevailed and something was paid to his family.........with a pacification to Brown that membership/insurance would no longer be granted until a credit charge has cleared, persisting AMA policy that is the legacy of that unfortunate incident.
Good news for EBay/PayPal owners, though.......if you pay using that service it is paid instantly and the AMA products services available likewise.
That leaves the trainer incident, and I presume the individual that flew his model into himself was an AMA member, as there would have been big news from AMA if he were one of the "renegades" that happen to outnumber AMA members by at least 10:1.
I'm still wondering what "flying at non sanctioned locations" means in the post you replied to and mostly liked. Does AMA sanction locations (other than the one site they own in Muncie, Indiana)?

Edit: Houston heli incident was 10 years ago, so details recalled may be fuzzy.......my recollection is that pilot with questioned status as insured AMA member was a student, and it was the instructor that was killed.

combatpigg

My Feedback: (3)

At Sandpoint Park in Seattle...probably late 1970s / early 80s..a pedestrian was hit in the back of the head by a AMA Fast Combat plane
A pylon racing course worker was killed while stationed inside a chainlink cage sometime after the year 2000 IIRC.
In the 1990s I saw a guy attacked by his own combat plane. He put his hand up just in time to save his face from the engine and the styrofoam wing panel broke his collar bone. Unsheeted, 1 pound density "bead board" styrofoam [the lightest money can buy] broke this big man's collar bone.

Thomas B

My Feedback: (4)

The pylon related accident you mention was, I believe, the twin Mustang Warbird pylon racer that I had in my list.

The control line fatality was not in my notes and had not run across it before. There was a fairly well known C/L incident out west many years ago where a C/L speed model broke the control lines and hit a modeler in the leg. Serious injury lead to several operations and eventual loss of the leg. The victim was a senior airline pilot and lost his livelihood along with his leg.

As safe as our hobby is, it is always worth keeping safety in mind.

cj_rumley

Some details on this incident for your notes [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=9081634]HERE[/link]. This is a very old and long thread.................

littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

I would have thought you to have been in the hobby longer than that... As I know you would not have, by your own admission here, flew at any location that the landowner hadn't covered his liabilities adequately... since you adamantly and vehemently require that of all those you participate with...or maybe you have now simply flip flopped on that issue. One or the other must be true... Either way it doesn't matter much... Happy Independence Day or Dependance Day...whichever you guys subscribe...

How 'bout them fireworks LOL

cj_rumley

Now, be nice. I don't agree with Hoss on everything, but I do agree with him on the value of the liability insurance provided for CLUBS, or more importantly to landowners. The personal insurance that came later, not so much...........okay, not at all. It has become a means of subsidizing the club/landowner insurance and masking its real cost (would it be thought such a bargain if clubs had to pay their fair share?), and the threat of voiding it is the only stick AMA has to enforce the rules they make. The program circles back to feed on itself when the perceived liability risk drives the rules they make, rationalizes the cost of the AMA Muncie complex (said to be part the 'reserve' stash required to underwrite the insurance, the SIR part from which most payouts are made), controls club membership, etc. It is the elephant in the room, the driving force in AMA policy and planning, supplanting the stated mission of "promotion, development, education, advancement, and safeguarding of modeling activities." Peddling insurance is not included in that mission statement and it is way too much in conflict of interest with the stated objectives.
Other than that, it's just peachy.

littlecrankshaf

My Feedback: (58)

I was! LOL

CJ, you are absolutely right. The insurance for landowners, clubs and members is a great benefit...but by virtue of that we may now have become so inwardly focused we have retarded our ability to promote model aviation effectively... In other words, should we limit ourselves and only promote model aviation to AMA members???

We need to find more ways to get more modelers active...and I am confident they will also see benefit to becoming an AMA member...but if they don't, what the heck, its all still good...

Hossfly

LCS, we have been "at it" for some years now. My time in "the hobby" ( to me a definite SPORT) is of little consequence. I flew rubber power and Hand Launch Gliders when I was 6 years old. That was in 1942. [&o] I was flying some CL competition and some FF when I was 16. Maybe you never were in that "hobby" but I was.
IIRC, I received my first AMA card at age 9, . I think it was at age 16 when I got an AMA card and have been so since then. So I have been an AMA member since before dirt. I received a CD license in 1963, and Leader Member since April 1964. That was still CL and FF. In 1980 I went through a life-style change and dumped 125 trophies into a dumpster outside my apartment. Mostly FF and CL Stunt but a few RC ones were in there. I started flying RC in 1971.

Having served as a CD many years, a District VI Contest Coordinator for 3 years and an AMA DVP for almost 2 terms, Club Secretary, Club President several clubs, have started several clubs, have belonged to 4 clubs at one time, Now 3, financed a club to owning its own property I think I have adequate experience to make statements reference the AMA and its programs.

I knew John Clemems very well. We had our differences, but we well respected each other. AMA had an individual insurance program long before the J.C.'s Club Insurance program. Therefore Insurance has no part in MY time in the AMA, nor does insurance have a part in YOUR model aiviation time. It's there and without it there would be no AMA to keep us straight.

Kind of like this specific day, 07-04-'13, we need to place our time into our future, not yesterday. As for me, I have some 80 kits (not ARFS except for 2) in my barn and at 77 years young, I will have a difficult time getting them all done. [&o]

Don't Forget that Aug. 17 is National Model Aviation Day. Let's all get behind our respective Clubs and put on a great show to the public. In addition let's be SAFE and display this fine activity to the public as much as we can. There is a posting down in the Event forum that shows a number of Texas events. Let's all get behind this display of our SPORT or HOBBY as you so think of it. I wrecked 2 old old machines a couple weeks ago at a competition Fun Fly and I need to get my backside to the barn.
Ya'll be careful, ya hear!!!

[email protected]

My Feedback: (1)

my club does not want anything to do with the public we are 20 strong alll [ama] menbers hae our own field we lease>> 800 ft long blact top run way very nice at least a mile of wide open country on all 4 sides>> we are all in our 60 to 90 any given day of the week there ar only maybe 6 flyers per day

HoundDog

My Feedback: (49)

I thought there was something WRONG with U 3 guys ... U all were supposed to Find GIRLS & CARS at 16, Not keep playing with toy airplanes ... But glad U all kept the Faith. Makes all these Fourms interesting and at times exciting. Grate Hobby/Sport ain't it?

cj_rumley

Hoss, is it the "gas license" you are referring to here? I had overlooked the history of alarm amongst modelers used to rubber band power that led to the first AMA rule 'waiver' and I believe there was some insurance involved to calm the dread of these new infernal machines. Some things never really change....

cj

HoundDog

My Feedback: (49)

Just the Opposite with 2 of the 3 clubs I fly with, Infact the Arizona Model Aviators Mesa AZ. have 10 Intro pilots Will Furnish the plane (Elec or Nitro) with Xmitter and buddy box + free fuel for 60 days. Now U can't beat that offer. The Lakeland R/C Club Oconomowoc, WI. has at times provided a Trainer and very cheep complete set up to some youngsters. We need all the youth and O'L Geezrs too, this hobby can muster.

cj_rumley

HoundDog, I'd rather belong to your club(s).

on_your_six

My Feedback: (11)

I read that OpJose has set up 4 big sticks for students to fly. How common is it for the club to supply the students with aircraft and radios. I can sure see that it would get students to show up and would get more members, but does that translate to keeping the members after one year?

That is a large investment from the club... four planes to build and maintain. A ton of batteries to keep charged and ready to go. Four transmitters (assume) and four buddy boxes.
Est cost; 4 combo planes @ $700ea +Servos $100/plane+radios & buddy box @ $200/plane = $4,000.00 Minimum and that does not include a fuel budget or any crashes.

WOW... that is pricy.