the-plumber
Posts: 1390
Joined: 8/3/2004
From: East Cobb County,
GA, USA
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Glacier Girl
Instead of looking at us as the "red headed stepchild" how bout you look at us as fellow flyers. Are we all not in this hobby or addiction, for pretty much the same reasons?
If you want us to join your group, then how bout making an effort on your's and the AMA's part to welcome us in and show us why we need to join you. Heck just because our toys are electric, doesn't mean they cost any less to build then most gassers.
Could you just imagine what the influx of what, 2 million and growing, outlaw flyers would do for your group?
Never did much care for fences, and I do like yer moniker. Tried my best to get the webcast when Glacier Girl took that maiden, but the site was swamped and all I got was audio. Major <drat> !!
I think part of "the problem" is that the topic of the thread was supposed to be about the new AMA "e-flyer program", which is designed to attract rank newbies to the hobby, newbies with models which fit the stated criteria. What the program is not supposed to do is market a second-class membership to folks who already play long and hard with state of the art electric models.
IMHO, AMA has not been ignoring electric propulsion at all, and supported the new technologies from the get-go. IIRC Keith Shaw was contributing articles to MA and most of the other model rags a very long time ago. And IIARC, an AMA FAI team member took all the marbles in a world championship a year or so ago with an >>electric model<<. Of course, that model was well past my hobby budget with the twin Hacker motors and the OhMiGod Serious LiPo packs, but the day came and went and electric models are not new and not discriminated against by any AMA orchestrations of which I am aware.
OTOH, dunderheads deserve a head-pinching irrespective of the manner in which their model claws it's way through the air, and electric flying has matured over the years to the point of producing it's own version dunderheadedness in some cases. We've not been successful in establishing any natural law against stupidity, so modelers who opt for electric power are no better and no worse about being idiotic than any of the other paractitioners of the fine black art of model aviating.
Well, ok . . . electric fliers might not be as twisted as the rubber crowd, but that's a different matter altogether.
So . . . . exactly what is it that "electric flyers" want or need from AMA ?
I dunno.
A self-professed "electric flyer" expert tried to claim that AMA doesn't get it, but when pressed for answers this genius allowed as how he didn't know what "electric flyers" want either, and claims to be one of them.
I for one can't tell very much difference between AMA members by characterizing them according to their models, except that I do know the rubber free flight bunch tends to wear "Luddite" and "Flat Earth Society" t-shirts. I also know their flight boxes are as crammed with techno-phernalia as is my flight box for giant gassers. I haven't the foggiest notion what some of the rubber power tool-gadgetry does. Anatomical torture devices, for all I know.
I wouldn't mind having a giant scale electric Warthog, mostly 'cuz I don't much care for the cost and hurdles associated with turbine power and 'cuz a well-done electric setup ought to sound a whole lot like a turbofan spooling up. Besides, the Warthog is just plain cute and an electric version shouldn't be all that diffucult to build; learning about electric propulsion doesn't appear to be rokit signs, so I may build one of those when my bench has nothing else to occupy it.
What do you want to know about AMA in terms of why it's a good idea to join ?
Do you want to hear that AMA is paying very close attention to the goings-on at the SC 203 meetings ? That's the one where FAA established an advisory group to recommend how FAA will deal with UAVs (or UASs, or RPVs, or whatever the buzzword is today). Like it or not our models fall into the broad classification of unmanned aerial vehicles, and it is only by a very narrow distinction between the higher-performance UAVs and our toy airplanes that we are not yet slated for regulation in the National Airspace. Is that the sort of thing in which you might be interested, AMA trying it's best to look out for model aviation generally ?
Do you want to hear about the education programs, or the Science Olympiad, or the FAI teams AMA supports every year ?
How 'bout the onerous marketing programs that everyone seems to hate ? Like the credit card program ? All we ever hear is some dolt complaining that AMA sent him a sales pitch for an AMA credit card, and how AMA shouldn't do things like that. What's not generally acknowledged is that the AMA credit card program cost the membership not one red cent, and that the program netted AMA a considerable pile of money >which helped prevent another membership dues increase<. But members whine about receiving AMA marketing stuff.
Then there's the really ugly DVD program. Talk about whining !!! No one was ever obligated to pay anything for the silly thing, and AMA even included a postage free envelope to return the DVD if the member didn't want it (so the scant few retruned DVDs could be sent to someone else who might like to have it). AMA made something like fifty _grand_ on that first DVD offering at zero cost to the membership. The EC wasn't made aware that the marketing company intended trying to bully the members who didn't return the DVD into paying for it, if they could. Trust me, that nonsense won't happen again because the EC is not fond of the way the third party handled the marketing. Even so, the fact remains that the program cost the members nothing and it made some more non-dues money for AMA, producing yet another nail in the dues-increase coffin.
I'm not going to waste any more bandwidth trying to explain all the good things AMA tries to do for it's members and for model aviation, here and now. Mostly because just about everything you could possibly want to know about AMA is readily available either on the web site or directly from AMA HQ for the price of an e-mail.
As for this particularly ill-considered 'e-flyer program' (in my personal opinion, that is), it needs to die, and Soon, because the entire approach is, again in my opinion, wrong-headed.
AMA is a handful of paid employees (fifty-odd) who do all the drudge work needed to keep a national organization functioning. The real decisions are made by unpaid elected officials, volunteers all, who are in turn supported by unpaid volunteers who in some cases raised their hands at the wrong time and got snapped up.
AMA is really a bunch of volunteer modelers doing their best to promote and protect model aviation in all it's myriad forms. We're never wrong in the trying, but sometimes we're a bit short on getting it right.
As for why you _need_ to join AMA, I'm not sure anyone actually >needs< to join AMA, certainly not the folks who are content with their $30 Toys-R-Us electric bipe that can be flown in a modest living room. I don't "need" to hold a Life Membership in AMA, but I do.
I can come up with a few good reasons why you _should_ join AMA, but I've had all the browbeating I can take for a while so I'll butt out. If you want to continue this particular discourse, fred@amadistrict-v.org works.
I'm one of those unpaid volunteers trying to do what I can to promote model aviation, and I don't have all the answers. I don't even know all the questions.
Do you ?
_____________________________
Cheers,
Fred McClellan
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