I'm personaly not against the club concept. There are 3 major clubs local to me (about 20 minutes in three directions).

However, most of those clubs have dues and field impact fees. In those cases, you're looking at nearly $200 to start your club membership. In addition, the clubs require (and rightly so) AMA membership, which is close to 100bux a year. So, w/o even owning a plane, you're at $300.00 to get yourself ready to walk into a hobby shop and begin picking out your flyer.

As such, i'm one of the many people in my area that went out an purchsed a $90.00 airplane (FirebirdII) and started in an open field.

The sad part, is that although the electrics make it easy to get started, they also make it easy for people to make bad decisions on when and where to fly. Maybe local clubs should find a way to bring this new breed of beginner into their ranks w/o the big price tag? maybe AMA could offer cheaper park flyer dues for members (with membership still only applying at sanctioned fields).

I wouldn't mind becoming a member of a field if my fees were more reasonable. However, i'm goign to guarantee that my planes don't have the needs/impact/danger level of the bigger nitro counterparts.

just thoughts. anybody wanna get this ball rolling? ;-)