ORIGINAL: Loubud
This is for the fellas that believe the AMA is the last line of defense for our hobby. The AMA is forbidden by Federal Law to lobby for anything at anytime. They may attend public forums in the same manner as private citizens. As a 501 (C) (3) they have rules to follow just like everyone else. And one thing to remember is the AMA represents a small number of people at 165,000 and shrinking. The people that are going to defend us is the manufacturer's of the equipment we use. From the radios and receivers that we buy to all the accessories that they require, the stick planes, the arfs, engine's, motors, boats, cars and everything else. Our saviour is BIG BUSINESS. And BIG TAX DOLLARS.
Couple of points . . .
AMA is indeed prohibited from lobbying, and that is as it should be for a 501(c)3 entity. AMA is _not_ prohibited from representing it's membership, and by extension of AMA's mission, model aviation in general, by participating in working groups and meeting with sundry Federal agencies (FAA and FCC, for example) to provide facts, offer opinion, supply information and to answer questions. AMA is also not prohibited from participating in the NPRM process used by those agencies - AMA is properly participating in the NPRM process for the BPL issue, along with ARRL (another 501(c)3 organization keenly interested in BPL interference problems for _their_ members - the ham radio bunch). AMA is participating in the working groups which have come to exist in relation to FAA's stated intent to put UAVs under increased regulation, and that is as it should be as well, although I do wonder if AMA is putting sufficient effort into that particular process.
What we do NOT see are hobby industry entities participating in the majority of these 'advisory' processes, except where the processes might impact their product line.
If you think Futaba spends much time or money on BPL, guess again. The radio control portion of Futaba's world-wide business base is a fraction of a percentage point at best. JR, HiTec, and FMA have more at stake with respect to BPL than Futaba. IMHO there are only two _big_ businesses in the r/c hobby arena, Hobbico and Horizon. Yes there are other companies which have grown to considerable size, but none of them are anywhere nearly as large or do as much business world-wide as Hobbico or Horizon. OS might be participating in the advisory process, but probably not Zenoah - their real business is industrial engines very much larger than the noise makers we use.
With respect to the companies heavily involved in the FAA-UAV advisory process, Tower, Hobbico, and Futaba don't total up to rival Boeing or Lockheed, and so don't "weigh in" quite as heavily when it comes to offering opinion which might influence critical issues or decisions. Worse, none of the large model airplane business entities have any experience at all in the technical aspects of FAA regulation, nor of the processes by which those regulations come to exist.
The good thing in all this is that FAA doesn't seem keenly interested in regulating our toys _right now_, and BPL installations are very buisily demonstrating to FCC that the subject is a really big can of worms the FCC should never have opened in the first place. We're probably 'safe' on those two problem areas, for the near term anyway.
I don't put a whole lot of stock in the notion that big hobby businesses are going to help keep AMA functioning, and take the view that by and large we are on our own.