ORIGINAL: KidEpoxy

Perhaps IMAA can swell its ranks with the droves of PPP folks we are expecting to join.
They just have to build light

ORIGINAL: frankp

Your observation is right on the mark. The IMAA did a wonderful job in promoting giant scale modeling. We held great events that were well attended at which we shared information and flew our aircraft in a non-competitive enviorment. The problem is that the IMAA did such a great job that many people no longer feel a need to join. Some of todays giant scale flyers do not even know what the IMAA is.

The reality of the membership problem is that membership directly equates to mony. Today, the IMAA budget is higher or equal to budgets when the membership was around 10,000. The cash reserves that were built up over the years are being spent to pay current bills. The past issue of High Flight had 42 advertisers listed. This is about half the number of advertisers that could be found in the magazing just a few years ago.

Yes, the IMAA has done a great job in promoting giant scale but the question remains, what is it's function today?

ORIGINAL: littlecrankshaf

Frank

Not to overstate the obvious but to highlight a point you have already made; IMAA is paying bills to stay in business to collect money to pay bills so they can continue to collect money to pay bills…seems sorta like real life…. Anyway it seems we are getting to the part of the movie where they light up the cigarettes... But wait maybe there is a second wind…maybe the goal just needs to be a little higher. How about 35% scale 110" or greater wingspan minimums and/or 55# or greater weight…these are the new big birds. I know these are already included but it is the distinction of class that gave IMAA the gas in the first place.

AMA has essentially absorbed the previous big bird and their events.

It just may be time to push the envelope.

ORIGINAL: loser

I think the dwindling membership represents "the change" the hobby has taken in the past 5 years or so. In my opinion the hobby today is MUCH more about RC Flying than RC modeling/building/flying. There are so many very good quality ARFS these days that most newbies to the hobby would never consider or even want to build a plane. All you have to do is fork over the money and anyone can have a first class IMAA legal plane. I think much of the IMAA appeal was the modelling part of the hobby...building, designing, tinkering, the dreaming of imagining "your plane" taking off the first time. That Mystique is pretty much gone or non-existant in "new RC guys". The new guys just want to fly and can do that in many nearby parks or AMA fields. Most of the young guys (~30 or less) did not grow up building any types of models and dont have that interest. Its just a different mind-set.

Time marches on for all of us and as we age (and pass on) I think there are fewer and fewer "modelers" who want to, or enjoy putting the time into building. I am not bashing ARF"S....I have several and they are great and fly excellent. Its obvious the great benefit that arfs have given the flying part of our hobby, at least in my area. I see more and more new guys every year and so many of them get to be excellent pilots so damn quick!!!!.....due to ARFS and Sims!!!!!.

I hope the IMAA survives and even grows. I also would love to see more guys get back into building but I wont hold my breath. i have slowed down lately and fully understand how "modern life" cuts into play time. But...I sure do love to show up at an event with something I built that is different than 3/4 of the ARF's there..... BUT.... ITS ALL GOOD.....FLY, BUILD, CRASH.....Just do it !!!

Steve

ORIGINAL: frankp

As most of you know, the IMAA is the largest SIG within the AMA. Over the past eight years, the membership of the IMAA has dwindled and is now hovering around 6000 members. At the current rate of decline, the membership will fall to the mid 1980's level. Unfortunately, the Officers and Directors have done nothing to stem the tide of falling membership.

With the changing times in our hobby, the management of the IMAA has done nothing to update and modernize the IMAA mission statement or define what unique part the IMAA plays, or would like to play, in todays model aviation enviorment.

It is my opinion that unless the core membership of the IMAA becomes involved, the IMAA will go the way of the QSAA. If you feel as I do that the IMAA is in need of a new direction, please e-mail your thoughts and recomendations to me.

Frank V. Ponteri

ORIGINAL: Gremlin Castle

It is also possible that the IMAA has served it's purpose in that larger aircraft have become self sustaining in the hobby world. With enough dollars it is possible to go fly a plug and play big bird and never have to build or create a single component in it.
As someone here has already pointed out the AMA has usurped most of the value that the SIG had to offer. Politics, infighting,and pictures of fat old men with their planes are already nicely handled by the current AMA offerings.
The generation that would most closely fit the demographic of the earlier membership spends too much of their time defending their flying style to the previous generation of big bird fliers.
I have been a member of IMAA since the mid 90s and a modeler since the beginning of the 50s. I maintain my membership soley to fly at a few IMAA required fly ins each year.
Maybe the big bird concept has successfully flown from the nest and will continue to prosper without the benefit of the parent.

ORIGINAL: frankp

Over the past eight years, the membership of the IMAA has dwindled and is now hovering around 6000 members.

ORIGINAL: khodges

Frank, the "I" being "International", how many of those 6000 members live outside the U.S. and Canada? If the idea of littlecranksaf were implemented so that the base scale of IMAA increased, wouldn't the membership decline even further, since those pilots flying 33% and larger is a smaller subset of all R/C pilots? If the guys over in Europe are part of this total 6000 number, that's an even greater statement of the decline in membership over here. If those guys AREN'T part of this total number, A) Why not? , and B) what then makes IMAA an international association, unless it's just divided between USA and Canada? The reason I mention our European brothers is that some of those guys have taken giant scale to the next level. I'm not even sure you could call some of their models Miniature Aircraft.

As someone above said, I keep my IMAA membership just so I can fly at some of the giant scale fly-ins that require it; I like flying giant scale at fly-ins where the flying is restricted to larger planes; typically the pilots are a bit more fastidious and prepared, if not any more considerate at times, and the air tends to be less crowded, but it seems a shame to have to pay twice (AMA and IMAA) to go to a fly-in. High Flight has some good articles, but the magazine needs more COLOR, and the price of membership justifies more than a quarterly issuance of the magazine.

ORIGINAL: frankp

As most of you know, the IMAA is the largest SIG within the AMA. Over the past eight years, the membership of the IMAA has dwindled and is now hovering around 6000 members. At the current rate of decline, the membership will fall to the mid 1980's level. Unfortunately, the Officers and Directors have done nothing to stem the tide of falling membership.

With the changing times in our hobby, the management of the IMAA has done nothing to update and modernize the IMAA mission statement or define what unique part the IMAA plays, or would like to play, in todays model aviation enviorment.

It is my opinion that unless the core membership of the IMAA becomes involved, the IMAA will go the way of the QSAA. If you feel as I do that the IMAA is in need of a new direction, please e-mail your thoughts and recomendations to me.

Frank V. Ponteri

//snip//

The question is do you as a member want the IMAA to survive and if so what would YOU do to improve that likelyhood? What I am seeking is recomendations!

ORIGINAL: Hossfly

IMAA is just like AMA. The Board has their little position and the membership does nothing about it.

IMAA tied the noose around their own neck when they traded with Dave Brown reference Sanctioning Procedures. When IMAA gave away the sanctioned event distance separations for AMA SIG status and insurance, IMAA started rolling down feces-hill gathering same as they accelerated downhill.
In the larger areas where there are a number of clubs, and a club obtains the IMAA/AMA sanction which is called Cr -- non rule book event with restricted entry -- then works for months to get a great show organized, and now 2 months before the event a nearby club, certain individuals with A/Hs on both ends of the torso, sanction an AMA C event through only AMA using IMAA's defined Big Bird sizes, then the IMAA Event loses half or more of its potential draw. [:@] This is reason enough to never sanction through IMAA, because doing so can well be a disaster. IMAA sits on its butt and does nothing to get that ball out of play. I have written about that but the Dist. Director is like an AMA DVP and simply says, "Uh Huh" when at a director's meeting. Without IMAA Sanctioned events in the area, who will even know such exists?

It is difficult enough to get guys to pay AMA dues and the numbers clearly indicate that group is on a downhill slide also. There is no reason for most fliers to think about IMAA. They can do their flying at regular AMA events. IMAC has captured the contemporary Big Bird people, other than the scale purists, which no longer need IMAA because there are adequate scale events and regular AMA Fly-Ins for their needs.

Like AMA depends on the Charter Clubs to sell their wares, IMAA tries to stand on some plank that has long faded away. Kind of like that guy all blindfolded and tied up being punched at with a sword on the plank over the deep sea. Just not a bright future when the leaders are all blindfolded, the membership doesn't care and only the sharks await. [X(]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but IIRC, a person can compete in an IMAC event without belonging to IMAC. The same goes for all other AMA sanctioned events which may be the event operated by a specific SIG, such as Pattern, Pylon and Scale.

Therefore:

(1) IMAA needs to immediately lobby Dave Mathewson and the AMA EC using IMAA Directors one-on-one with the AMA DVPs, and get that stupid assinine AMA Cr thing deleted with normal C separations between IMAA Fly-In events and regular AMA Fly-Ins.

(2) IMAA must allow Contest Directors to allow non-IMAA to fly in an IMAA Event, however with no elgibility for any awards, etc., but to get those people into the IMAA circle of friends and become knowledgeable about IMAA.

If IMAA fails to do this, then the hill will just get steeper.

While some IMAA officials may think that this IMAA member making the above statement is in violation of Article VII, Section 11 of the IMAA Bylaws, I think not because I plainly differentiate between IMAA's position and my own. [>:]

IMAA 04598 Chapter 148

Edited; Always have to type IMMA vice IMAA. []

ORIGINAL: frankp
Even when the membership was at it's highest, the percentage of international members was only around 500.

ORIGINAL: STLPilot

Seems to me that the electric events are exploding while the larger events are dwindling. Might be one of the reasons that the AMA has shifted gears, but that's for another discussion.

ORIGINAL: Stickbuilder



Do you ever think about what you are going to say, or do you hear it when we do? The larger events are not dwindling, in fact they are growing. Try on Top Gun for size sometime......Oops, you won't do that one will you?

Bill, AMA 4720

ORIGINAL: GerKonig



I agree w/you. I have attended giant scale meets in NJ, PA and De for almost 20 years now (maybe a little less), and I have seen the quantity of giant scale planes dwindle, but I have to report that this summer at all the giant scale meets I attended, I saw more and more people... Also, more and more models:-) The only downside is that pilots seem to be younger. This is a clear indication that I am aging:-)

Gerry