I understand now, I thought LA was the only crowed place in CA. I went to UCLA a couple years ago and one sunny end of July day I decided to walk to La Brea. Thought I was going to have a heart attack. I thought other than the LA area California was all open country (like in the movies). Am I thinking northern CA for that? or is all CA like your area?

When i was looking for a flying field and club around my town ,i went to 4 different club fields and to their meetings to . There is a field that has 3 or 4 clubs flying off the same one. I went to their meeting and caught a good one .They were fighting over dates for fly ins and it lasted 3 hours . I scratched it off my list real fast. I found a club ,sac in flossmore il that was layed back enough for me,and flew there for 15 years and i did two terms as president. My job sent me to vegas and aspen co and i flew off fields there but did not join any clubs,when i got back to joliet il the old guys i use to fly with all ended up in the joliet club. So i rode my bike there one day and seen all my old friends and joined the same day. We have a great field and out of 100 members only about 30 fly, the rest sit in lawn chairs and yell crap at us flying . lol I have about 6 more months till i retire and i have to wait till my girl friend retires and we are off to arizona . I have friends in a club there and they are waiting for me to hurry up and get there . Riddler , i hill climed when i was young and got tired of braking most of my bones ,so i bought a 54 pan head and owned it for 25 years . I got tired of kick starting it 4 years ago and sold it and got my road king. But i am still a speed freak an miss going up big hills . lol joe

we're more alike then you'd probably know , for years i raced simi-pro dirt bikes , then i got a ride on a simi-pro road racing team under honda , i had this t-shirt for years that said " life begins at 180mph" and believe me it does ! lol....

this is the one thing during this whole debt that i've learned, everyone loves the hobby or why would we bother, we all know this topic has been beat to death , and know it won't be the last time we see this type of question on the forum .
the other thing i've learned is you gotta go to your local flying field meet the people there , you can't pass jugdement based on these forums .
my opinion of the insurance has not changed and i've said all along that wouldn't be my reason to join , my opinion of the people has changed and that will be the reason i'll join the ama when i find a club i want to join .

The cook county forest preserve in il. has taken the sac flying site in flossmore ,but with help from club members and ama the cook county forest preserve gave them open land on cicero av . They also gave them 550.000 for parking lot runway and other goodys. They took the other land whitch was always wet and cut all the trees and are making it into wet lands , for the birdies .lol but it was a good thing that we got along with the park people and when they had hearings on this that a ama rep came and helped. They are doing the dirt work now and should be up and running by fall. They still like me so i will have another brand new runway to fly off of . joe

No, it isn't. We do have some areas with open land, but usually it's already owned by someone, a company, or some level of government. Northern CA is better in many places. You can go inland from us a little ways and find valleys, but it's so hot there, without facilities or water nearby, that a lot of guys don't go flying there. Most of that is desert anyway. Southern CA without water is a big dry-brush firetrap. Northern CA has more water and a better weather temperament year-round. Central CA isn't that far from me, either. It's not too bad, but it's difficult to figure out there if it is farmland, a park, or open land in areas. We have people coming from the Long Beach area & Simi Valley to fly here just because of noise and flying regs around homes. Simi even has a field! But... it's close to the freeway and flying anything above a .46 size plane (I'm told) can easily violate the highway airspace. LOTS of people living here, even in the depressed economy.

joebahl, we just went through a scare a few months back when a meeting had been called by the Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers, who also gets involved with our park land use. Everyone thought that the environmentalists who were preventing us before from upgrading the field, had convinced the AA Corps to get Park Services to boot us out, along with the golfers. One of the Club Members said that the info was kind of lean about the meeting subject, but they told everyone to show up. About 65 fliers showed and found out that they were talking 10 years into the future about land use there. The AA Corps has wanted to use the land for a possible flood plain for a while. Funny thing is, many local flyers remember our area being a corn field at one time, and some other items farmed there later, before City of LA Park Services bought it.

I will tell you a story . When i was president of sac club ,my first term .The county wanted to make our site into a living history farm ,so the kids in the city could pet the farm animals. .We fought with laywers in our club and help from the ama but they had made up their minds .When it looked like we had lost i called the tree huggers and met them on our site and showed all the wet spots around our site right after a good rain and they were pointing all of the birds there. They took over from there and with all of their clout they stoped it fast. That was in 1979 i think. Little did we know that the sneeky tree huggers would want to flood it in 2010 and take it away. Never sleep with a tree huggers they dont care about airplanes. lol Now that the county is buying a brand new site and they are getting a 400ft bye 50 ft paved runway ,i feel better abought my hooking up with the tree huggers back then and from 79 till now they left the club alone.. not so green. joe

I live up in Lancaster, CA, about an hour north of the LA basin. We're in the edge of the Mojave Desert here (still part of LA County, believe it or not), but open land is still hard to come by. Add in Edwards AFB and Palmdale Airport/USAF Plant 42 and the airspace around here is also very restricted. We'll be moving farther north, to California City, before too much longer but even there finding a good place to fly is difficult because of the same restrictions. Weather here also factors in since it's hot, dry and often very windy.

Ah, well, at leas the night skies are pretty decent for my astronomy bug.

When I was a kid all the guys flying worked at Sikorsky, Avco or Chance Vought. They had a lot of "ins" with the military and FAA. I remember my dad was freinds with the Navy Dept. guy (don't know the rank) overeeing the Gov't plants in the area. We did have an Army General for a neighbor though. Seems we need some important people on our side. Maybe take our Governor out flying.

surfer, the only good news in this economy ,is that states and citys are broke right now and wont be doing any thing that costs money. If they can get a grant from the US , witch you can never tell. The city i live in was the fastest growing city in IL but now the banks wont even give the city any money to fix streets or old sewer and water pipes . My city taxes went up 15 percent and the city was asking for more! I think the crooked city should have saved some cash when it was rolling in bye the truck loads but but they were living in la la land just like some of my goofy young custermers who bought 300.000 dollar homes from me and now are out in the streets. I own and live in one side of a 50 year old all brick duplex and rent the other side out ,so my payments are 200 a month. I could have built me a brand new 3 or 4 huodred thousend dollar home but i like buying all my toys and putting my kids through college and travel better than keeping up with the jones. lol joe

don't get me started on the economy , but ya' joe is right thats the only good to come from this poor economy , if they started building they have probably stopped and it's going to sit just like it is , sad i know but true.
i use the satallite maps to hunt down new spots and being out dated as they are ,they are normally over grown whitch i don't mind tall grass for landing , i am a little hard on those anyway ....lol !
i've seen some really outstanding spots about 2 hours away from me , the sierra club started crying about run off from the site , so with the economy plus that hold up the contractor has said the heck with it .
the spot i go to almost everyday is right across th street from me (i lucked out) it's roughly 400 yards by 300 yards with no traffic of any kind , the economy stopped them dead .

Florida was hit harder with no houses to build and vegas too. There was 35000 forclosers from henderson to vegas . And you know florida, the builders just walked away from their subdivsions . My company has held on barely because of good locations and rentel property it owns . I have 6 buildings that are sold that i am building now but my big bosses are worried about every thing lately. Lol but not that worried enough to lay me off till i retire. dam. They dont want to deal with any real work they might get their cloths dirty. lol I have six months to retirement and i told them to find some one soon to replace me and all they keep saying is we will talk soon. They have offered me more money once to stay and i laughed all the way back to my truck. joe

hey i was one of those owners ....lol !
the business i owned was in any and all communications, right down to a little shop on the side of I95 doin cb radios, i still never really trusted anyone with some of the commercial work , and i warned everyone that worked for me,once we were done with the digital change over we were really going to be done , everything went in house , the commercial business's didn't want to pay us contractors any more , thats what i call forced retirement , probably a good thing i save alot of money now that i'm not limping into the hospital 2 or 3 times a month .
i am one of those though i'd rather be working .
florida heck the unemployment here is some where around 13-15 % , the bigger problem and someone said something about more people having time to go out and fly , that is true for the first 4 or 5 months , after that amount of time people tend to stop all unnecessary spending , that means gas just to get to the field is at a premium.
there just are no jobs to be had anywhere , and our government well what can you say there ,they keep putting a band-aid on a it , and it needs stitchs to stop the bleeding .
and for me i don't spend as much either , i tend to find places real close to fly . i'm only 42 and everyone keeps telling me i ain't gonna' die before 70 gotta save now , although i think there all lieing to me ......lol

A lumber company in indiana is moving to Il . I buy my lumber from them ,my sales guy told me they had 5100 people apply for a job there. It is real bad but it is showing sighns of construction picking back up . In the last couple months i have had people calling and going thruogh our model homes ,not to many buyers yet but they are looking . Now if the banks would come around and start lending money without asking for your first born child ,we might build some homes and put some people back to work. Oh as long as i am talking ,the operators local 150 and the laborers union were on strike here for 3 weeks and just went back to work . You goof balls chose the best time to go on strike with so many people laid off . The rest of the unions in IL are laughing at you . lol joe

no offence to anyone but that is in part to why i do not trust to many organizations especially any organization that is a union . at one time in this country's history labor unions were needed , but about 20 years or so ago , they were the main reason why the american automotive manufactures left this country and went to canada and mexico .
i ain't knocking on the construction unions i do not know enough about them , i can only speak of what i've watch ford go through .
and yes i know that some cars are still built here but the numbers are very few , it's really sad when you open your drivers side door and read that little sticker that depending on youe vehicle may read , made in canada , made in mexico , or the best one assembled in the u.s. from parts made in canada or mexico .
heck even most of our r/c stuff is made in china ........

Yeah. I am suprised at all the people bashing the "Chinese" RC stuff and praising Korea, Japan and Philipines made stuff. Probably better factories in China because they are using brand new equipment. Same thing I heard in the 60's about Japanese "junk", the 80's with Mexican "junk" etc. Sad thing is that Americans want things at slave-labor prices while getting paid top-dollar. Never worked like that, never will.

i agree , i've had only customer service issue's with the china based companys , as far as the products they seem fine at least with the foamy planes your kinda forced to buy from other country's in our hobby,
unfortunately if you want something made in the usa you better do it yourself . depending on how old you are reading this it could have been your great grandfather or your father that would have never thought of buying anything other then made in the usa .

Here is the proplem with the unions now, i think . They dont have the money to keep up with the retires they have on the books ,because alot of union workers are layed off now and there money flow has slowed .So instead of cutting back on the people who run the unions themselfs or taking pay cuts in their big offices ,like most citys have ,they decided to go on strike and get more money to help pay retires that they have taken money to pay their checks and keep them in the cash. The city of plainfield went from 7 or 8 city inspectors to 4 to save the city money and cut costs and the rest of the citys are doing the same to keep the doors open. joe

ya' i've been in florida for the last year , you watch these city clowns lay off the work force then they'll turn around on vote for there pay raise , government should go back the way it was back in the begining of time , it should be volunteer , or the politicialns should only be making minimum wage , then maybe they'll know what it's really all about , instead the average politician makes roughly $150,000 a year to sit on there back parts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     i'll probably catch flak for this statement but, it's the union's that killed america , average auto worker 5 years ago made a wage on average of $28 a hour , that was including there benifits package . they'd turn around and strike for more and more , it was more the union doing the same thing the politicians do .............padding of there pockets . now the retired auto workers get to pay for it , whitch is wrong to do to them, they already put there time in .
in the end, the economy is in the toilet , some people can't even afford to feed there familys , most people that are looking for jobs are competing with 1000 other people looking for the same job , there is no end in site , and some people wonder why clubs and the ama are struggling .
you just need to look at your neighbor to figure it out . 

And what does all this have to do with AMA or not? You guys need to get out and fly some rather than staying hunched over the keyboard.

sorry the conversation was getting good , i tried to at least mention the ama towards the end .
i went out flying already some newb crashed into my plane , i've spent half the day  piecing it back together again , cut me right in half .

I think you are very right jim ,good bye every one and happy flying to you . joe

When I was 13 years oldour family lived near younear a little town called WIlmington. My father was a career army officer and was stationed at the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. Don't know if that's still there or not. This was in 1970. That's where the modeling bug got me and I started flying control line. Best I recall, you guys should have no problem finding a clear flat spot to fly!

Kbob i go through wilmington at least 5 times a month ,the armery was bought buy a huge trucking place and its called center point now . they have put in more rail road spures and roads so thousends of trucks pick up there every day. I just road my bike to wilmington for cat fish days and some beer . lol My club field is on old 66 or they call it rt 53 ,we are just east of of the nascar and drag strip. Wilmington is still a small layed back town like it was back then . joe

In addition to almost half the budget going to "salaries":

From gov't records analysis:

"Employees paid over $50,000 in 2006: 29.0%
Academy Of Model Aeronautics Ama: 29.0%
Other organizations performing similar types of work: 0.0%


Read more: http://www.faqs.org/tax-exempt/IN/Ac...#ixzz0uxFGLEEo