STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

Just curious, nothing special.

DavidAgar

My Feedback: (108)

Dare I add one for your poll, my club requires it. Thanks Dave

Mode One

It's a package deal for me. I want all the benefits of being a member and feel the benefits far outweigh the cost and don't really see any negative aspects of being a member. Others may, and that is within their rights.

Rafael23cc

My Feedback: (6)

That would be the same as "just the insurance". Same endstate.

Rafael

Stickbuilder

If not for the AMA, the hobby, as we know it would probably not exist. The AMA has done many things for us, such as lobbying for not only the radio frequencies, but keeping the Federal Government out of our hair. The benefits of belonging to such an organization far outweigh the costs. If I only wanted to belong just to have a place to fly, I would probably find another hobby. I enjoy being able to contribute to everyone's enjoyment.

Bill, AMA 4720

lrglnman

I do it for the insurance and the club requires it otherwise I probably wouldn't have it. thats 50 bucks that i could spent else where

exeter_acres

My Feedback: (2)

I compete in IMAC and it is required... but I also like what AMA does for our sport....

So I would join anyways

Lomcevak Duck

My Feedback: (14)

Add: my club requires it.

exeter_acres

My Feedback: (2)

as discussed....that is due to insurance


and to the people that say... my club requires it....

you were not/are not required to join a club

ira d

I joined because every club in my area requires it to fly at their field.

Lomcevak Duck

My Feedback: (14)

Not really, no.
AMA is not primary insurance, most clubs just require it.
And no, I was not required to join a club. Never said I was. That is, however, the only reason I pay the AMA.

rcmiket

Club Requires it.

Hossfly

It's special to me. I have been an AMA member since I don't really remember. I do remember being one way back in grade school and I don't remember just when I was not a member, although I am sure there must have been a couple skips somewhere. After I graduated from Aviation Cadets in '56, I know I have always been a member. That was before the insurance thing was important. It was just the thing to do. In 1957 and thereon, I was flying competition CL and added FF to that in the early '60s. CD and Leader came in '63 and '64 respectively, so being an AMA member was, is, and will -- now a Life member -- continue to be simply a "Way-of-Life."

What does a true modeler do if he/she does not belong to the Academy of Model Aeronautics? I can mention a number of types of personalities that, IMO, such a 'modeler' (??) relates to but RCU doesn't allow such. One never knows what one is missing when one only TAKES and never PUTS BACK IN. Don't you ever reinforce and/or make some changes to an ARF, or even a kit? If you don't, you may be the next one that becomes just holding on to sticks of a dying airplane, while the engine goes its separate way. (Big name had that happen at the big Houston 3D show this past weekend ) Same with AMA when adequate attention is not provided to details, and therefore if the membership would each spend a few minutes tweaking the trims, AMA just might be able to show many good reasons for being a member other than simply "insurance". Many of you love to claim it's "YOUR AMA." Now get off your centers and make it the way it should be. [>:]

STLPilot

My Feedback: (21)

That would be choice 2.

BillyGoat

Not exactly. If clubs just required insurance to individualy cover the liability of flying R/C aircraft, pretty sure my homeowners does that.

Fredsterman

Without the AMA you wouldn't even have a frequency band to fly on[8D]

KidEpoxy

My club Requires It
(for the insurance, I doubt the landowner is demanding we be AMA just for modeling sake)


Fredster-
Do you think Hitec/JR/Futaba will start lobbying to keep the freqs public, or will they all just choose to instead go out of business if the AMA stoped lobbying the FCC

Stickbuilder

Chances are, when the AMA was forced to go to bat for us concerning the frequencies, you were not even involved in the hobby. Companies such as Futaba, JR, and HiTech, would not be as we know them today. Had it not been for the lobbying efforts by the AMA, these frequencies would have been assigned to the business community, and we would have been left out in the cold. Some of us remember those days, and if you had someone operating on the Business Band nearby, you flew at your own risk.

Bill, AMA 4720
Are you a member? Post your number.

Mode One

And the argument goes endlessly, on and on ad-nausium!

P-51B

My Feedback: (5)

Just to support model aviation.

JUGFLIER

I believe there is a disconnect here in the question. Most people join the AMA because it is required at a club field. However, once someone has been in the hoby a while, they recognize the benefits of AMA as an organization. I joined because i had to to fly at a club field in order to get flight instruction. I join now to support the organization.

Hossfly

Something you young people need to ponder about and that is the fact that Bill, "Stickbuilder" here is speaking correctly. As the active DVP, in Nov. 1981, that thought up, initiated, and had approved by the EC, the simple plan that allowed the Freq. Comm. Chairman to obtain the final FCC release of the channels we now have, I can tell you for CERTAIN, that the radio industry of those days was adamantly AGAINST both NARROW BAND and SO MANY frequencies. Kraft and Pro-Line were very much against it, but they were already on the way out. JR was not yet a force to be reckoned with. Futaba was absolutely useless, as any help to AMA and MRC, a player of the day, was also silent. Hitec had not yet arrived.
Only AMA, representing the small number of RC modelers, can be credited with securing the new world of usable frequencies. The "91 Phase In" plan was an AMA Program to assist both the industry and the modelers to gradually get their ducks in line, while complying with FCC rules.

Now look at the Model Media of today. Simply swamped with ads for as much as can be imported from outside the country, much of it all the basic same, just different importer names on the box. Back in the 60 -- 70s, every modeler wanted to own a hobby shop. Yes, I did for 7 years. Great fun for 4 years but then I had come to understand that running a business part-time really took away the fun. By the time I sold out, I hated the d_mn place. Now every RCer wants to be an importer. SOS--DD.

Kid, you can bet your booties that those companies don't really do much of their total electronic business with toy airplanes as we know toy airplanes. NONE of the industry is going to give a small rodent's posterior about our problems. Between 27mhz, 49mhz, 75mhz and 2.4Ghz, the industry will support itself with its "TOY" and surface model operations. YOU airplane fliers are expendable. [sm=47_47.gif]

May I suggest if you could use more real factual information in your day-dreams, then just maybe some of those day-dreams could be useful rather than simple rhetoric without basis. My own basis is not heresay and/or emotional fantasy just to argue. I was in the battle.


edited to change improper verb form.

KidEpoxy

I'm not going to continue this line of debate in this thread, other than to say
Look the tense of my post: Future... as evident by the terms Will & Would rather than did.
Dont confuse what has happened in the past with what may happen in the future.

<big tirade snipped to keep thread from bogging down in debate>

Silent-AV8R

Just for a point of reference, Futaba does +/- $850,000,000 USD per year worlwide. Only a small slice of that is from hobby RC. Hobby RC could go away completely and Futaba would still be just fine. And don't forget that the US is part of a bigger world. The radio folks sells LOTS of stuff in Asia, Australia, Europe, and so on. So if the US hobby industry went away, the rest of the world would struggle on just fine without us I think.

Jim Messer

My Feedback: (2)

O.K. Here goes. I joined the AMA in 1941 at age eleven (11). I am now seventy-seven (77). I have had the same license number for 66 years. Model airplanes have always been a big part of my life, and that was only made possible by belonging to the AMA.

I built my first gas model, a Comet Zipper, powered by an Ohlsson 23 engine in 1941, and attended my first Nats that year in Chicago. How proud I was - to be a part of the AMA, and to be able to pull out my "license to fly" out of my pocket and show it to my other friends not in the hobby. How many other kids at age eleven had a license to do anything? That license meant more to me than anything else that I owned at the time.

I didn't win a first prize in free-flight competition until 1945, and from then on, I won hundreds of good useful prizes at the many free-flight contests that I attended all over the north-east. Guys like Harold deBolt and Ed Keck were weekly competitors, but I won my share of prizes competing against them.

Then, beginning in 1943 we started into U-control competition as well, and by the time I graduated high school in 1947 I was competing in Class C U-control with H. deBolt, using one of his designed Speedwagons powered by a Hornet 60. Of course, he always flew faster than me, but we became good friends.

I attended the NY Mirror meet in 1946 where 150,000 spectators turned out to watch. My brother Bill lost his free-flight airplane that landed in the crowd of people, never to be seen again. Guys like Carl Goldberg, Harold deBolt, Dick Korda, Ernie Babcock, Chester Lanzo, Ed Lorenz, Frank McElwee, John Byrne, and Norm Rosenstock were also attendees, close to 1200 in all.

In 1948 I was invited to the 2nd. International Contest sponsored by the Plymouth Motor Corp., in Detroit, MI, where I flew a free-flight airplane. I saw Bill & Walt Good fly a radio control airplane there for the first time. Boy - was I impressed!

Over the years, I attended all of the Nats that were held at Glenview (Chicago), and at Philadelphia (Willow Grove), all sponsored by the US Navy. Those weeks were something I wish that every modeler could experience. Associating with hundreds of other modelers in the hangers, and competiting against the best there was, was only made possible by the AMA. I met Carl Goldberg, my longtime mentor, and thrilled him with a Zipper gas model powered by a K&B 40 in the Old Timers event, that went straight up like a scalding dog. We became friends and looked forward to greeting each other at every Nats. I have a nice photo of Carl with his 1/2A Viking that I took while standing in line with him at the last Nats he was able to attend.

At one of the Nats in Phila. I met Dave Platt for the first time, and marveled at his scale model Douglas Dauntless that won a perfect score. I was in awe at such an accomplishment.

In the mid fifties I got into radio control, and worked along side of Harold deBolt who was in it for a living. He taught me a lot. I also made friends with Vern Kriehbiel who owned VK Products, and between those two I learned to design all my own R/C planes from then on.

In 1976 I put the first gas engine on the US market for giant scale, the Quadra 35. In 1978 I had the only two gasoline powered airplanes at the Toledo show, my Bristol Scout and my Ercoupe. The Quadra business flourished, and it allowed me to retire from my full time engineering job about ten years earlier than expected.

I tell you all this, because none of it would have been possible, had it not been for the AMA. I have gotten so much out of the AMA over my lifetime, I feel bad when I see some of you guys bashing the AMA for no good reason. If you would just look at the good that AMA has done in the past, and what they will do for modelers in the future, and take advantage of what they have to offer, then you too can look at the dues as a real bargain. If you like to fly R/C airplanes, then you can thank the AMA. They, and they alone, have made it all possible.

Although I am not a lifetime member like "Hoss", I intend to be a lifetime member in another sense - I shall keep my AMA #11691 until the day I die.