excaliber,

This forum gets treated like the old CB days by those unwilling to put their given names to their scribblings. The rest of us try to wade through the manure for the occassional gem.

I am concerned that this unaccepted but web posted requirement for club safety officers has a couple of major problems with it. If that offends you, so be it.

The first one is strange as it seems to put the AMA in a position of dictating to the clubs. Actually the problem is with the AMA 2005 REQUIREMENT that the Safety Officer have e-mail. The AMA can require contacts to have e-mail, that hurts no one. However by requiring a specific individual to have e-mail the AMA takes the position of setting the qualifications for club officers. Is that really a good idea?

Here is an example where an AMA changed from a club responsibility to a targeted individual for the official club contact point that created problems in the field. Some larger clubs had to do double work to maintain the recharter effort. In large clubs the club president does not keep the entire paid club roster since frequently there are other officers responsible for that (sectrary or treasurer of membership chairman). I know of at least one case where this created a major problem, but that is transparent to the AMA.

Now let's couple that with this appointed Safety Officer who is responsible for enforcement of the AMA Safety Code. Ignoring J_R's on target comments about liability there is another important thing we have done to our selves that is negative. By making a specific individual responsible for safety, we have released the general membership from the task. Sorry, but why should they worry about it when it is Sam's job? This is a serious concern since once a month most club officers I know tell the members it is EVERYONE's job to be safe.

When I teach folks to fly, I teach safe operations AND the AMA Safety Code with the local club add on rules. If we had a DVD to give to beginners, it could be used to point to a structure of lessons that ALL instructors might use. That is the first step we need to take in standardization which leads to SAFER operations.

It should be clear that since there seems to be lots of 'stuff' that suddenly turns up as rules we have to live by, the web site is reasonably considered a good source.