Originally Posted by
Appowner
I bailed on the AMA some 25 years ago and haven't looked back. I remember a time when the NATS bounced around the country year to year and it was rare when any category had no participants. That all went away when AMA HQ left the DC area and went to Muncie. That move IMHO signaled when the AMA quit building any relationship with the government.
There are a lot of communities in the country that would be more than willing to host a NATs. I just do not believe the AMA wants to nor knows how to approach these communities to secure the venue. If they did know how, there would be a lot more flying sites around.
The Nats used to travel around the country. My first Nats was at Lincoln, NB. There was one at Lake Charles, LA, that I missed, one at Tri-Cities, WA, two or three at Lawrencevill, IL and then we got stuck at Muncie, IA: Largely to validate the Muncie land acquisition. When the Nats traveled, volunteers from clubs local to the venue were the bulk of the workers. When it was held at Lawrenceville several times in a row the clubs got jaded and volunteer participation dropped off. The EC used this as a justification for tieing the Nats to Muncie.
During my experience with the Nats, AMA did a poor job of
PR & management. During the first Muncie Nats no one in town knew there was a national contest going on at the AMA site. I asked around when I'd go into town to eat or buy snacks. At the first Lawrenceville Nats AMA rented cars from the St. Louis Airport Hertz agency but the AMA Nats staff neglected to find out ahead of time if Hertz had any pickups to rent. They didn't; big surprise. We had to use volunteers' vehicles to set up. I worked for AMA in Facilities Maint twice, twice for NMPRA as a pylon judge, ran a pattern site for NSRCA in 1996; my last time at the Nats. I got paid mileage & per diem working for AMA and the SIGS. Never covered my expenses and burned up my vacation time. So after the Nats quit traveling I quit the Nats and traveled to other places on my vacations.
CR