I want to chime in here and add to what Piper_chuck said. I too have noticed in the last week or so a few people that are looking for places to fly where they don't have a club to join and don't have to pay AMA dues. IMHO this is an extremely bad idea to do this. I understand that the dues and extra fees can really hit hard sometimes, heck I don't like paying them any better than anyone else. But in my mind they are just a cost of the hobby, just like the cost of fuel, especially the AMA dues. I advocate this for one HUGE reason, to protect the pilot. Whether we call them model airplanes, scale models, radio controlled airplanes, or just plain toys these objects are dangerous. You have an object that weighs (using a sport 40-60 size plane for this example) 5-12 pounds, traveling at 50-120 mph, and has a razor on the front spinning at 9,000-12,000 rpm. This can do very serious damage to somebody if it hits them. This is where the AMA comes into play, the liability insurance you get with your membership. In this lawsuit crazy world I can assure you that if you hit someone and injure them with your airplane you will find yourself on the wrong end of a high dollar lawsuit. A couple of years ago Dave Brown's editorial talked about an insurance claim that the AMA insurance paid out and if I remember correctly the amount of the claim was for $900,000, and that is just medical and legal expenses and not any personal injured award. I don't know about you all but I sure don't have a spare million dollars laying around in my bank account. I know that some are going to chime in and say that their home owners insurance will cover them and that the AMA insurance won't pay until after the home owners stops paying . In many cases it will, but not all. One needs to check their policy to make sure that you are covered and for how much. In this case it's nice to have the AMA in case your home owners insurance isn't enough to cover damages.

I've been in this hobby for about 10 years now and I've seen lots of people like this that "buck establishment" and don't want to pay AMA for whatever reason. They are usually the same people that will say that "it's not going to happen to me". "I'm never going to hit somebody." "I'm not going to fly near anybody". Hey, stuff happens. Electronics burn out causing loss of control. A fly-away plane can travel miles and miles away (well out of visual range) before it comes down. So to have the "it's not going to happen to me" attitude is just really sticking their head in the sand and ignoring reality.

I know that it can and does happen. How do I know? Because I have been hit by a plane before. I was standing at the back of my truck in the parking lot at our field. A pilot was flying a 1/4 scale Extra, and made a couple of bad decisions in the air that led to him stalling the plane above the parking lot (well outside of the established pattern). Luckily the plane hit the raised window of my truck topper which killed the motor before it hit me, but it still hit me in the back and took me to the ground. The next day I had a bruise that covered about 3/4 of my back. The pilot immediately started saying that he would pay for all medical bills if needed. He said that because he hadn't paid his AMA dues yet so he didn't have any insurance. Luckily I didn't need to go to the doctor, but if I had he would have been screwed paying for my medical bills.

To wrap it all up, there are a lot of reasons why flying at a club is good and why you need to have AMA, but just to protect yourself in the event of an accident is more important in my mind that just about anything else!!!!

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now. Just wanted to give something for people to think about.

Ken