The reality is the benifit cost, ie the insurance cost is factored in the fees somewhere, so yes you do pay for. It's the only way the AMA can have events and not having to take insurance out on each event, costing much more, and much more to participants. It would really make the cost factory go out of control. So the just spread it out over all members. 

That is the number one argument for club fields requiring AMA membership is insurance. I can kind of see their side. It would be really hard to police who is insured and who is not so the simple answer is make everyone carry a AMA member then the liablity is put off on that, in simple terms.

Maybe it needs to be structured different or sold differently because for someone like me who sees the AMA as a pass to the flying parks it doesn't add up. I am a homeowner with current insurance. There is a very little, smallest chance that anying I could do including kill someone with an airplane would ever dip into the AMA insurance pool.   

And it only gets harder to swollow when its AMA dues the club dues on top of that. And the one club I did belong to had a small clique agenda that made it hard for me to enjoy flying or the hobby that much.  

I have moved now to another part of the country and maybe it's different, but finding the same mentality in IPMS as well I doubt it. 

I will once again feel forced in to the AMA and a club inviroment to fly. 

Sometimes I think that I should just stick to flying helis in my circle and not get reinvolved in airplances at all, but the passion for them is too hard to let go.

Se here we go again. The same arguments that were going on in 1993 the first time I joined the AMA. 

I am hoping that it will not be the same thing again. I think I may have found a sutable club for me. I have visited it several times (over 10) and only once were there a couple pilots flying otherwise empty. I think I know why: there is a low ceiling 800FT IIRC because of a nearby regional airport. Otherwise it's quite, paved runways, clean and in a state park, and I don't fly way up there in oblivion anyway.

I guess the bottom line is since there is still so much debate and argument over the AMA issue it's not a perfect system nor always makes good sense.