Remember, flying your model is a privilage, and like any other privilage in the U.S. you have to take responsibility for your actions, and make sure you are covered if something goes wrong.

If you are flying in a farm field 20 miles outside of town, and you think you will never want to fly at an AMA chartered field, then you won't need an AMA card...there's not much to damage out amongst 1000 acres of farmland.

If you will be flying in the city or close to civilization, where, if you lost control of your model and it flew off for some reason, hit someone, and they sued, would you be covered.

Getting back into small electrics is probably going to spark your interest in larger planes again. You'll end up joining AMA later if you need to in order to fly at a chartered club, otherwise you'll be just fine flying your 75 pound turbine with missiles out on a farm somewhere and no one can say a word about it (as long as you own the land).