"On the "secondary insurance" issue, it is secondary for the flyer, but PRIMARY (based on what I have read in the other threads) for the landowner of the club."
A club or property owner must have their own insurance. They cannot rely on yours to cover them if you kill someone on thier property. They would also be hosed on non-aircraft accidents like 'trip and fall' type injuries. To get YOUR insurance to pay, YOU would have to be proven negligent. That's unlikely unless you damn well deserve it for being dangerously stupid, in which case the AMA is going to disavow you anyway! And the club still let you be a member and fly at their field, so they are STILL responsible for what happens.
So two insurance policies should be covering you at a (AMA) club field; the property owner or club's policy and your own homeowners policy. Both would be exhausted before your individual AMA policy paid out.
And, the attorney would have to prove that you knowingly and wantonly endangered the victim to even make the claim against you. If your wing just fell off mid-flight and the prop decapitated someone's cat in the crash, the manufacturer will be sued before you. As will the club or property owner.
It's a matter of simple liability to sue the club or field owner. It is a much tougher matter to prove negligence on the part of a hobbyist, flying at a designated field where one can reasonably expect to get hit by a model plane (as opposed to say, at the mall) because of malfunction.
Quick example: at one motocross track I was involved with, a bike flew over a retaining barrier and slammed onto the hood of a car in the pits, slightly injuring a person. The track owner's insurance paid the bill, not the guy who owned the bike and went into the turn hot. It was even his fault. Stupid, but not Negligent (at least in the legal sense).
We've focused on insurance because pro-AMA folks bring it up as the no. 1 selling point for your $58. I don't believe it is.
None of the other benefits (except keeping bandwidth) described do much at all for me, or a vast majority of week-end hobbyists not dedicating our lives to it.
And certainly the AMA has made some very questionable moves- this entire board is lit up with them.
I feel like the AMA is catering to people with big, fast planes that cost a lot of money. Fine, I'm not one of them. I'll look elsewhere.
Having to pay them just to fly is like taxation without representation. I just don't think the average guy with a slow, cheap trainer is being represented very well by the AMA.