RE: Why do we have outlandish fees to join AMA clubs?
P-51B and Doc Yates hit it. I would like to share something a now deceased modeler had to say about it some years ago.
Modeler's, gotta love'em!
by Dick Burkhalter
As to the cheapness of R/C flyer's in comparison to golfers, fishermen and others who engage in expensive hobbies, I have some rather interesting psychological theories about that... Golf, fishing, owning and racing horses or cars, hunting or skeet shooting and a number of other expensive hobbies have always been regarded as adult hobbies to which kids might aspire.
The general attitude regarding spending money on those hobbies is that of "I've earned it as a part of the growing up and becoming a man process, therefore I deserve to spend whatever I want on this hobby, which by the way I use to further my business “Contacts”. On the other hand, building and flying model airplanes has traditionally been looked at as a juvenile hobby, which we're supposed to outgrow when we become men. The only men for whom model building and flying is considered a valid pastime are those who are somehow connected with doing it for business reasons. Hobby shop owners, model distributors, professional R/C competitors, special effects flyers for the movie or TV industry. Those guys are excused from criticism because, after all, they're making money at it and supplying all those toys we buy for our kids at Christmas. You may notice that even when there's a story in the popular press about some famous person who happens to be a modeler, it's almost always "and he used to build models as a kid," not "he has built models since he was a kid and continues to do so today."
How this affects modeler’s ability or willingness to spend money on his hobby and himself is quite obvious. Many of us still think we have to get permission from Daddy (or most accurately, Mommy) to spend some bucks on this "childish" pursuit we engage in, or we feel guilty if we spend more than our "allowance” on it. It's especially devastating to us to have to spend money to replace a model we crashed, because it's admitting we didn't know what we were doing. After all, "real men" don’t build their own shotguns, bass boats, horses, golf clubs or whatever, and for sure they don't crash them and wreck them half the time they go out and enjoy their hobby. (Car racers are exceptions which prove the rule; they’re considered only slightly more adult than us - we're pre-pubescent and they're teenagers, none of us has grown up anyway).
If you're out with some of your friends and they're all talking about their hobbies, boasting of their golf scores or the fish they caught or how much money they won at the track last week, do you pipe up with news about your latest R/C success?
Everyone who does, I'll give a buck. Everyone who doesn't, give me a buck. I'll have enough in a week to buy that new plane I've been lusting after. Even those who do, what kind of a reaction do you get? Sneers or laughter, I'll bet. Ribbing about still playing with kiddies toys and jokes about what's going to happen to you when you notice girls. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have had guys say to me upon seeing my models or hearing me talk about them, "Oh, yeah, I built those when I was a kid! I had this full house B-29 with six motors in it and full radio control and was flying it out of the baseball field when a bird hit it and it crashed!" Or some such story. I'll bet it's happened to everyone in here. If it's something that happens while you're in a group of guys, they'll all laugh and try to top each other’s lies. What do you do? Do you stand up and say, "Hey, you guys, cut the B. S.! There's not a one of you who could a cut two sticks of balsa and make a straight spar! You were screwups when you were kids and you're still screwups now!" No, most likely you sit there and just try to ignore them, or you make some crack that indicates to all that you know they're fibbing and then turn the conversation to something else.
So what it boils down to for many adult modeler's is that they're embarrassed about their hobby and don't want to call attention to themselves, so they don't pony up to buy and maintain a nice field where they can be proud to go. So they fly off garbage dumps and wonder why nobody wants to come out and play with them but the flies.