Does the AMA website have a forum similar to this? If so where is it? If not, why not? It seems to me that a forum where we members could leave our comments/suggestions for the EC would be a good idea. Polls could be posted to obtain the membership's opinion of suggested changes as well the membership could post suggestions and they could be openly debated. I'm not talking about recreating the entire forum. Only a suggestion/discussion section related to AMA issues.

No it does not and based on some of the threads here it never will.

The AMA will always be much more interested in positive things than the ranting that happens here, especially those who scream without the correct, current, and important FACTS.

One of the failures seen here is a common human fraility and that is of vision. Most of us see what we think is a solution might be but fail to see the flaws in implementation or scale. If you are familiar with a 30 person club, your views of what works and what does not work are very different from the views of a 100 member club guy. What seems reasonable in your neck of the woods very possibly won't work all across the country. Many of us come up with things that just don't work in a herd management world and our feelings are easily hurt when someone waffle stomps our ideas with little grace.

That being said, even though some of us get unpleasant from time to time, this is has been a better forum than the old newsgroup bunch. That does not mean that many of the naysayers have any information, but when they get too offensive they are stopped and the language is almost reasonable enough for my kids most of the time.

While the AMA does not have a forum, several of the Districts provide e-mail forums to which people can subscribe. Districts II, V and VIII have such forums, maybe there are others.

I have seen several issues that seem to me (given my limited background in flying) good points to discuss at an official level. Rather than a lot of AMA members standing around saying "Yep, thats broken. AMA ought to change that". We ought to be saying it to our elected reps within AMA. A prime example is with regards to training. When someone first gets into this hobby, you can easily be out 500 to 600 dollars. Even before you decide whether you actually want this as a hobby. We then tell these people that before we will train them on a buddy box, where we, an AMA member can take control at any time, they must spend another 10% to become an AMA member and maybe more to become a club member.

It gets even worse with small electrics. Someone buys a RTF for $150 and shows up at our field wanting someone to teach them to fly. Because of the current AMA rules, we have to tell them "Sorry, I can't help you unless you spend another $60 and join AMA. This is another 40% on top of what they have spent. So instead they go to the park and try to teach themselves. Quickly crashing there plane and them dropping out of the hobby without ever really getting into it. All this and the chance for interference as well.

I know AMA has a couple of different programs to cover non AMA flyers. The first being the one time flight and the second being the instructor pilot program. The problem with either one of these is they are too short and/or cumbersome. Why not modify these to allow a 3 or 4 month instructor program with a buddy box? You wouldn't allow someone to solo at an AMA chartered field without being a member of AMA but you could allow them to be a student pilot on a buddy box.

Anywhere else they sucker you in with a low introductory rate the first year and raise it the next year. Once your hooked on this hobby, you don't mind spending the extra. It's when you first start out that you don't want to spend too much money.

Granted, there are those that don't want anything to do with AMA and you won't be able to satisfy them. However we as AMA members need to be more active in expressing our opinions to our organization rather than just each other.

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It's all there. Get a temporary membership. OTOH I find others trending to instructing like I do. AMA and join the club if you wish to learn to land. I don't (yet) charge for my instructional services, however I am not going to train anyone that cannot or will not afford to belong to the club. Did a lot of that. [:'(] Get them to make one good landing and off to either fly off the road, out of a pasture, or schoolyard. I refuse to be responsible (liable) for that behavior, or waste my time for someone too cheap to pay their way.
Maybe your AMA program would work, but not with me.

That's the AMA spirit!

Hoss

You never cease to amaze me. I train many young pilots that can't afford the club... I guess I realize that is the future of AMA and this endeavor.

You Sir are the means to the end!

LCS-

Different ends for for different people. For Hoss, the end is AMA and his club. For me, and I suspect you as well, the end is model aviation, which AMA pretends is the end. AMA could/should be the means to that end, IMHO. Many don't agree. I don't have a problem with that. Discussions like this wouldn't hold my interest very long if we all agreed on everything.

Abel

You asked, and I will give you one of many answers.

It is MY opinion is that we need to make as much as possible searchable by non-members since it is clear that most members will pass on poor information, if correct at all. There ARE areas, questions and answers, that should only be made available to AMA members and those can be 'protected' by login systems. The purpose of a search engine usable by the non-member is to open the AMA up to more modelers rather than requiring blind faith before we give them answers. Since the AMA is a 501(c)3, the financial reports of previous years should NOT be close held as they are now. Note that I did say this was my opinion which I am sure is contrary to several on the AMA EC.

Here is my list of things that should be available to the member and kept from the non-member:

Line Item Annual Budget
Model Aviation Archives.

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littlecranshaf, I agree with your observations. Abel, you get lumped into that mix as well. Model aviation is the end and the AMA S*H*O*U*L*D be the means. I contend that WE need to make the AMA better at helping model aviation rather than hindering it, as seems to be done more often than not by most currently on the EC.

A Members only Discussion forum would be good on the AMA Website if members were actually allowed to speak there minds in a civil manner of course. The Plans and the Past Magazine Issue Archives are excellent, so I would hope that gets left just the way it is. A Members Only Classified Area would be good on the AMA Site. The current AMA website is not very interactive with its members. It is basically just an information resource at this point. It would be nice to see it become more interactive with its members, and actually become a place where a Member might want to hang out for awhile. I will give a thumbs up to the Sport Aviatar web page. Some pretty good reading in there! The rest of the AMA site aside from the archives makes me sleepy!

HERE....HERE ....JIM BRANAUN

Right now I'd settle for getting a District V Chartered Club link fixed.

The AMA link for Emerald City RC Club, in Georgia, reads as "http://www.goecities.com/emeraldcityflyers"

Link doesn't work because it should read GEOCITIES, not GOECITIES. It's a simple typo.

Been trying to get that fixed for over six months, to no avail. I managed to get all the other bad links for District V Chartered Club web sites fixed, but for some reason correcting an html typo appears an insurmountable problem.

You may be doing functional specs, but odds are better than even that you can find someone in Muncie capable of swapping two letters in an html link. Maybe.

The other Districts have an equal or greater number of bad links to Chartered Clubs.

If the Chartered Clubs' web site link pages cannot be maintained in good order, would-be visitors to those clubs have to resort to finding the club in the Chartered Club listing, elsewhere on the AMA web site.

As for functional specs, there has _got_ to be a way for Chartered Clubs to get club contact and web site data corrected without need for EC action. I know how that process is supposed to work, but the simple fact is that it doesn't. Yes, I know the staffers are swamped. Staffs are _always_ swamped. Nothing new there. No reason the task of reviewing District links can't be farmed out to the VP or one of the AVPs. Even better, give _them_ the ability to correct District-specific sections of the site.

It would be nice if the text for the buttons didn't latch onto the screen pointer until the pointer crossed another button. Sticky text is at least irritating, moreso if it obscures a button the visitor is trying to find.

The AMA Documents (PDF) links, under Member Services, need to be links to html pages, not .pdf files. .pdf files can sometimes take forever and a day to load, depending on the connection speed. It's not a burdensome task to convert a text document to an html document, particularly when the source documents have a low rate of change. Why force visitors to wait while Adobe loads, or worse, why force them to use Adobe when it is not necessary ?

There is a lot of basic AMA information not available on the web site. Case in point : every Fall we see innumerable rants about 'paying a full years dues for only part of a year', or questions like 'how does AMA pro-rate late year memberships for new members ? This kind of information needs to be presented as FAQs because the vast majority of web surfers are used to FAQs. Forcing them to read footnotes on a .pdf document wastes their time.

Ditto for insurance concerns. The number of questions regarding the actual insurance coverage for members is almost a universal constant. Sounds like an excellent candidate for a FAQ that addresses 'what if' scenarios.

'Other links' needs to be reworked from the top. Among other things, why does AMA provide links to aero clubs and personal web pages in other countries without also providing a link to the National aeromodeling organization in that same country ? It's nice to see a link to an Irish club, but where is the link to their National organization ? Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question because I know the MACI link is there, it's just not on the same page with the link to 'Newbridge And District Model Flying Club', which _was_ the URL for that Irish club but which has been revamped into a personal web site that does not represent the Newbridge organization.

In short, the 'Other Links' section is a mess, pure and simple, and far too many of the links are either defunct or are not what they were when the link was created. A routine audit of links provided on the AMA web site would seem appropriate for inclusion in your functional specs.

You _did_ ask.

So, why don't you do that very thing ?

Unless something has changed of late, every District has a web site. Some are whizz-bang, some are not so glamorous. Every District site I ever checked had at least a listing of District officers and contacts. Some Districts have open discussion forums for District members. We have one of those in District V, and admission is not absolutely restricted to District V members; it has been opened to a number of folks who had contributions to make and who did not live in D-V.

If your District web site doesn't have such a list, or you can't get any attention there, drop by the District V web site and find my District e-mail address. If nothing else I will point you to where the information you want can be found even if I have to go find it myself first.

I'm not guaranteeing that I'll forward every notion you come up with, but I do guarantee I'll listen to your pitch.

But do start within your own District. That's why the District staff exists, to support the District members and clubs.

Band Queer,

Since you are in District VIII, there is an email discussion list. For more information see the District VIII website, http://www.ama-dist-8.org/index.php

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