ORIGINAL: crash99
We both see people complain about the dues. My take it is all about flying. Here is a short story.
A older man stop by the field for a few weeks in a row bending everyone's ear about AMA this and AMA that. This person and that person from the old days of the AMA. I think we are a bunch of good guys and we are very active all year around.
But after hearing the same stories over and over I told the guy, Look .... I don't think we really care to much about the AMA except for the insurance. See what's going on in the sky? Flying. That is what we want to do. We fly for the fun of it. He turn red and said if it was not for this person or that person you would not even have a flying club. I agreed with him but you might want to tone it down a little.
If you would like, I will take you up on my trainer and get you some fly time and have some fun. He still got red in the face and said how can you not want to hear about the AMA. He got up and left.
Later we found out he burnt out a welcome to other area clubs. See, I don't think people will pay blindly. All we want to do is fly. Insurance is all I get out of the AMA. I don't have faith in the AMA. Maybe due to we live in Missouri and the VP never visits. We even offered to put him up at a nice resort but he was to busy.
Crash99
Your story is very familiar. It seems AMA is more like a "religion" than a membership organization intent on promoting model aviation. If FAA provides for the CBO status that most here anticipate, there will be only one denominational choice...AMA... What a whacked world that would be!
FWIW I flew models for a long time without AMA and will certainly continue regardless of AMA or FAA. Since I have and always will have abundant alternate flying sites, I only joined AMA to support a local club here... that I "perceived" at the time as doing something really good for the community. Man...when I got in there and seen how that AMA religion had worked on them, I was appalled to say the least... Found this forum and others like this forum only to confirm that distasteful "religious practice" is rampant! Of course all clubs aren't that way but it is really hard...almost impossible to find examples that are otherwise... Much easier to find those that say and are adamant that they will not fly with non-AMA modelers though...
Man! What the hell happened????
Somewhere in the past AMA must have quit pushing for the members to promote model aviation. Instead I guess AMA was happy just to have members only promote AMA's religion...
It wasn't until Dave M's column in the last MA that I had any hope for anyone to open their eyes and see what is really going on in our hobby...