With all the criticism of the AMA I've been reading on a number of sites, I would have thought somebody would have started a viable alternative by now.
In fact, the criticism has been going on for decades. Nobody has been able to come up with a replacement, in spite of a number of attempts. Only one, SFA, even came close.
When I was in the AF (1966), when Don Dewey and a former AMA exec were trying to get support for an alternative, I met a new airman on base who was a member of a regional body that had some activities of it's own separate from the AMA . Asked him about what the group's approach to the situation was. He said that the head of the group was approached to form the nucleus of a new organization to compete with or even replace the AMA to represent RCers. They were told to find somebody else. The idea wasn't viable. The AMA was just too established with all the background, experience, and connections for any off-the-street organization to challenge it. And worse, such a split would in fact be destructive for ALL of Model Aviation.
I've said it before, and I'll probably keep on saying it. AMA is the best thing we have, or are likely to have. Many of the critics don't even seem to understand the scope of the AMA. Everyone focuses on either the Magazine, or the Insurance plan, or the Muncie facility, not the overall operation, like the museum, or the scholarship program, or the committees to try to find things to help model aviation, like the sound committee, or the field retention committee, or the frequency committee, or the contacts with the FAA/NAA, or FAI, or the new plan library. The AMA is big, relatively speaking, and so much criticism seems to me to be focused on small picture viewpoints.
The AMA is a human organization, run by humans, for humans. Criticism is unavoidable, as are percieved reasons for criticism. If by some chance, a new group is sucessfully formed, within a few years, it will be in the same situation as the current AMA, subject to huge amounts of criticism by the same types of people criticising the AMA, if not by some of the people.
Each of us is part of the whole. If any part of that whole is diminished, we are all diminished!