Originally posted by xp8103
Jim,
The problem is, most of those "All I want to do is fly on Sunday morning..." guys don't care even about events that take place at their OWN field. Last spring we held a club only fun fly. We handicapped the more experienced pilots with their hotrod fun fly jobs. And picked some events where those planes don't do well. It cost nothing to enter, we didn't invite anyone else. We had free hotdogs. We spent about $140 in prizes including a fun fly arf, fuel, club membership, and a hat. But you just KNOW that those guys still complained.
The one event we had (a club-only "Bring the biggest plane ya got" flyin, no events of any sort), did not raise any ire. Because it was really a Sunday flying session with hotdogs.
My point is, there is a growing segment of the population that doesn't care about anything that happens beyond the end of his driveway.
While that is true, it is a much wider problem than we can address.
My solution is to use a different approach to the problem. There ARE several 'club building' projects you can take that can (and frequently do) get those folks out off their driveways to help make it happen. Try some REGULAR (as in annual) non-competitive events for LOCAL children's charities, a cheap club only fly in with hot dogs/burgers/drinks on any given 3 day weekend.
The local children's charities gets them out because it is for kids they might have become or known rather than some faceless mob elsewhere (a frequently heard complaint about several charities I have heard). The 3 day holiday fly in brings out the hungry and reinforces the "lets have fun" component. I am sure that is what we need to improve to help the AMA grow.
BTW, scheduling a club fly in on every 3 day weekend and PUBLISHING the schedule in advance brings them out also. Doing it more than once shows intent and doing more than once a year shows commitment.
This is one of the hardest things for a competitor to do, support and encourage folks to just come out and have fun. One reason for that is most folks see the competitor hollering about how much fun it was to wax Mr. RDTRF or who ever. That means they don't understand how YOU can have fun when not competing. That happens to be a two sided coin. A very great many of competitors cannot fathom anyone having fun just tooling around in the sky.
I contend that if YOU are a LEADER, you will tackle this problem regardless of which side of the coin you stand on. Failure to do so is resignation to the ultimate disintegration of our hobby organization followed shortly by the hobby itself. But that is just MY opinion.
I