THANK YOU!
Americans in general seem like they just need someone or somthing to blame for all thier problems, but then they never do anything about it.
that said, IMHO, AMA is well worth the $15 dues I pay. Although I must admit I am not looking forward to next years dues of $58. At one of my club's fields(we have three, the new one, the old one, and the one on the lake) there is this big inflatable"dome" warehouse about 150 yards southeast of the runway that belongs to a bentler corperation, who supplies ford motor company with some widget or another. This dome has been a topic of concern for our club(one of the major reasons we set out to aquire the new field). It just so happens one sunney sunday afternoon I was out at the field for my very first flight ever(one of the guys at a meeting I went to told me to come out and he would take me up) there were a few others, and soon I was blissfully putsing around the sky with white knuckles and sweaty hands. About 3min into the flight we hear this "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-phuf__________OH S*** PHIL HE HIT THE DOME"(wasn't me[sm=stupid.gif]honest!) so my soon to be instructor takes control of the plane and lands, then heads off to talk to some bentler guys(he was also the ranking official as VP) turns out, the plane(a 40 size trainer) had torn a 13 in gash in the top layer of the teflon( thank God there were two layers!) if the dome had been deflated, shipping would have stopped and bentler would be charged $1,000,000 a day until shipping was restarted. The gash cost $3,000 to fix, all of which was paid for by the AMA. needless to say, bentler was not very happy about all this, although now(about a year and a half later) they are slightly releived we are moving most flight operations about 7 miles further from civilization to the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere( a private full-scale airstrip used maybe twice a year), another ten minutes added to my driving time.
that was my first encounter with the importance of AMA, and I don't need any further convincing, ACCIDENTS CAN HAPPEN POEPLE, even though we need to try really hard to minimize the oppertunity for them to.
grace n' peace,
Kevin