Originally posted by Jim Branaum
Hmm, where to start.
Nascarjoe, please do not take anything I say as a personal remark but as an observation based on what 'shows'. Before starting I have to say that Pogo was right on target, even here.
I am afraid your point of view is/has been poorly colored by the crowd you fly around and with because I know that what you have described happens, just not everywhere! In fact what you described as normal seems to be less than acceptable in the places I have been, visited, and am familiar with.
In my club instruction is given whenever by who ever. I admit that there are few instructors, but better few willing to fly someone else's plane than lots of newbie crashes by unprepared instructor wanna be's. An example of that is I have a student that everyone who instructs has washed their hands of, he may solo around the first of the year. In almost every club I have ever been a part of, getting new members was always a goal and teaching them was part of the community effort. That makes me think you are seeing a local oddity rather than a serious problem nationally, but I could be wrong.
As for club meetings, it is a reasonably rare case when much over 20 to 30 percent of the membership shows up. I guess that is good for clubs with membership over 100 since meeting places tend to get expensive as more people need to be seated. The issue is not how many people go to the meeting, but how many (percentage wise) are having what they define as fun.
The better way many have found is to get the local politicians involved with a visit to the flying field on a weekend before asking for things. That gets them 'educated' to what our "needs" are and what kind of things we do. Those visits also set the tone of things so that potential complaints are viewed a little less enthusiastically against us.
One of the important things everyone seems to miss is that old folks vote more than kids. That means showing your politician a flight line of old folks on buddy box has more impact that a bunch of kids flying with instructors. The latter is ballyhooed as the great AMA way, but we all know that sooner or later they will discover girls. The politicians are not as dumb as we insist because they know that also. The politician also sees kids with R/C models as spoiled rich brats and that point of view does not help us at all.
My opinion, but I am willing to be educated into a different one.
Jim,
No problem, I won't take it personally. My main point was that the politician will not see kids in the hobby. If someone wants a little league, baseball, football or soccer field for the kids, who can turn down such a request? Surely not a politican as the kid's parents are the voters. My idea was to present RC aeromodeling to the politician in the same vein as for little league and as an educational tool. Problem is, there are no kids to show the politican. Keep in mind, we would be selling this from a non modeler's perspective, not from what we think might be the true situation with kids. What about RC school programs?
You do have a good idea about getting the politican out to the field to see what our sport is all about. And if he gets hooked on the sport, that would be the icing on the cake we need.
I've been studying this situation for many years from personal experience as a member of a half dozen clubs, not to mention information from close to a hundred beginners, who have shared the same sad story over and over again. Even the best clubs may bring in only a very small number of members annually. My point is for the politican looking at the big picture, i.e., after 60 years, (on paper), there are only 170,000 members. No matter how you look at it, it definitely looks like we are keeping our "light" under a very deep and dark bushel.
AMA tried to essentially triple their numbers with their Sign 3 and Fly Free Ambassador program, but after 3 years, only 151, out of 150,000 members took advantage of the program; only 3000 new members have been signed up. Is it that difficult to find 3 new members?
nascarjoe