Most people who, "Just Want To Fly(tm)," have little or no idea of the kind of work it takes to provide their flying facilities.

In today's litigious society, in other words "sue happy," no sane person is going to allow their land to be used for flying without adequate coverage for themselves and everyone that uses the land. There's enough paperwork involved in keeping track of landowner coverage, club coverage, and individual members' homeowner's policies to keep at least one member of a club busy, full-time if they were to take on the task themselves. I am willing to bet that in most cases no person, would ever volunteer to spend that much time to maintain that much paperwork, sacrificing their flying and building time, their FUN time, so other people could have fun. It's just not going to happen. Insurance companies can cancel policies at any time for any reason, and policy holders can "forget" to pay the premiums. Most clubs have enough trouble finding officers as it is; imagine if they had to deal with checking up on each member's insurance policy EVERY time he/she flies to make sure the policy still covers R/C modeling, and is still in effect. NOBODY would be willing to do the work, and we would have NO flying whatsoever.

As such, the AMA has a tremendous "convenience factor" associated with it. If your club didn't "force" you to join the AMA, there would be no club, and no flying field. It's that simple. Site and club paperwork is reduced to a few simple forms, and the AMA guarantees that any cardholder is insured for the entire calendar year, so there's no question as to whether someone's homeowner's covers R/C flying or is even a legitimate policy. All this "dirty work" is done for a reasonable fee. The only stipulation is that you have to join.