Originally Posted by astrohog

My perspective is a bit different.

Since I began participating in this hobby decades ago, one of the attractions for me was the passion and graciousness of the folks who were already involved in the hobby. The fact that they were so passionate that the individual members had freely donated their own time, money and sweat equity into building a flying facility to responsibly enjoy their hobby and to share it with the public and others that were interested in participating. From day one, it was the collective passion for the hobby that drove those members to share and engage with others that WAS the hobby. The "industry" was no different than any other, it was born from demand for the products and services that they offered. I was fortunate to have a couple of high-quality, mom and pop type hobby shops in my area that supported my hobby needs. Both of the proprietors of these shops were actively engaged in the hobby themselves and were very experienced modelers themselves, who would freely share all of their expertise with anyone who asked, many times finishing up their business day only to meet me at the field for a lesson, or to open the clubhouse in preparation for the club meeting or potluck dinner. I can assure you, neither of those proprietors retired wealthy (in financial terms, anyway). Club instructors were generally the more experienced modelers who had, "been there, done that" and wanted to give back some of what the hobby had given to them and ensure the future of the hobby by passing along their knowledge and skills. I do not know a single instructor (myself included) that ever felt that we were even remotely being, "suckers for the industry". Conversely, I believe we all felt our hobby shops were there to support our hobby first, with scraping out a meager living being secondary. This was also a time where the, "senior" members would support the "greater good" by teaching and instilling the AMA safety code and responsible operation of our aircraft. I was particularly impressed by this because it felt very relaxed and not rule and authority-based, rather it was based on respect for the other members, the non-flying public, full-scale aircraft operations, respect for the hobby itself and the fact that in order to keep our FREEDOM to enjoy our hobby relatively unrestricted, that we had to be good stewards to all who did NOT partake in our hobby and how our operations might affect them.

All of this went out the window when the AMA stopped recognizing that they were there to serve the hundreds of thousands of volunteer members who, collectively WERE the AMA, NOT the elected officers and EC. At some point that, "good ole boy" culture trickled down from Muncie and infected the local club structure. Instead of club elections being more of "volunteering" a member to take his turn as a club officer, elections became a popularity contest and power grab and sucked much of the fun out of the club culture. It became a, helicopters vs. fixed-wing, 3D vs. scale, giant-scale vs. glow, scale vs. fun-fly type thing and each of those factions would try and get THEIR candidate elected, so their sub-group would gain glorified status within the club ranks. This division of our clubs served to completely disrupt our collective unity and distract our focus from the greater good into a culture of selfishness and using the club as a way to further personal agendas. I believe that the shift from a unified community of responsible modelers into a, "bigger is better", power-grab organization, is what really killed the Feds' respect for our organization. The AMA once had the respect of the Feds, as is witnessed by our ability to work with the FCC in the 80's to secure our own, protected frequencies. If we had not been able to do that then, it would have been paramount to the extinction of our hobby then, much like it is now.

United we stand, divided we fall. Too much division these days, in ALL aspects of our lives. We better wake up and learn how to stop being selfish, in order that the greater good is served, not just our own, selfish and narrow wants.

Regards,

Astro