heavy on an occasional weekend day. In
some people’s minds, that warrants
limiting the club’s membership. The club
often shrinks in the end, removing any
such concern.
Perhaps there is a better way. One
alternative might be to have two
“classes” of club membership as an
alternative to an absolute limit. If your
club is limiting its membership to 60,
then you allow 60 “class A”
memberships, but have no limit on the
number of “class B” members. As class
A members drop out, the class B
members are elevated in the order in
which they joined.
Anytime the flying field becomes
crowded—the club can decide how many
fliers at the field meets that threshold—
the class A members have first rights to
the frequency pins.
Dues? Well, class As could pay the
full rate and class Bs a slightly reduced
rate. Some of the Tuesday-night crowd
may even want to be a class B member,
if the dues were cheaper.
The additional labor available for club
projects wouldn’t hurt, and the added
money in the treasury would allow for
more field improvements. This sounds
better than a specific limit on the
membership.
For AMA as an organization, the
challenge is how to address the potential
growth that could result from the
explosion of park flyers and all of their
variations from RC toys to sophisticated
small RC models. It’s hard to convince
someone who has spent as little as $100
on a model airplane that he or she needs
to join AMA at $58, then join a club with
I’M TALKING ABOUT the size of
AMA and, ultimately, your club. I have
received several E-mails from members
who are concerned that AMA lost some
of its membership base last year, and
proposed that reversing this trend should
be the first priority for the organization.
Perhaps they are right, but I will point out
a few mitigating facts.
AMA should serve its members in
their pursuit of enjoying model aviation.
The size of the organization will have an
effect on AMA’s ability to do that. The
larger the membership, the more effective
it can be in furthering the goals of its
members.
If one person in every five were a
modeler, then society would
automatically provide modelers with
frequencies, flying sites, and probably
anything else the sport needed. Actually,
we would be “society.”
With roughly 250 million people in the
United States, one in five would mean
that modelers would number roughly 50
million. One in 50 would mean 5 million
modelers. Obviously, any number
approaching that is inconceivable, but the
idea that increasing our numbers would
be beneficial to our access to facilities
isn’t lost on us.
Unfortunately, growth isn’t a priority
for many of our members. In fact, it is
opposed by a number of them who view
growth as reducing their access to already
overtaxed facilities. Although a few clubs
are actively recruiting members in an
attempt to grow, some clubs are hampered
by too much activity that overwhelms
their flying sites. It is becoming an
increasing trend for clubs to close their
gates and limit their membership to a
fixed number.
Ironically, some of those clubs that
closed membership and at one time had a
waiting list are finding themselves with
declining numbers. Often, these rules are
driven by a handful of people who are
accustomed to the days when they could
fly without delay because of others at the
field.
Often the actual flying done at the
field isn’t all that much, but it might be
Dave Brown AMA president
President’s Perspective
March 2005 5
Do numbers matter?
dues varying from a few dollars a month
to much more.
The difficulty we face is how to make
it easier to bring these people into the fold
without undermining the current
membership base and the income it
represents. A few years ago, I addressed a
concept of a tiered membership system, in
which members would join at the level
appropriate to the type of models they
flew.
It is obvious to most that some costs—
such as those of providing insurance—are
not the same for all types of models.
When I addressed tiered membership in
the past, it was as a way to allow less
restriction at the upper end of the
aeromodeling spectrum (turbines, largescale
aircraft, racing, etc.) without that
advancement increasing the dues of the
members who fly lighter, lowerperformance
models.
The case for tiered membership now is
more obvious as our sport has expanded
in both directions. The popularity of
turbines is increasing, while the appeal of
small models—sometimes flown
indoors—is exploding. The diversity
makes the possibility of a tiered
membership a reasonable alternative.
We need to address the idea of
attracting those exposed to aeromodeling
through park flyers into the fold, but the
economics of that will be a challenge. A
marketing effort to bring these potential
members into AMA at the current dues
level is proving to be difficult, yet
creating a cheaper alternative without
undermining the existing financial base is
challenging in its own right. We have our
work laid out for us.
The last time I addressed a tiered
system, I had my head handed to me by a
number of members, but times have
changed and we need to keep pace. The
need for such a system is increasing as the
membership becomes more diversified.
The concept of any AMA member being
entitled to fly any type of model is
becoming detrimental to growth and is
unnecessarily expensive for many. It will
be interesting to see the reaction to the
concept this time. MA
SINCE 1936
Dave Brown
AMA president
[email protected]
Edition: Model Aviation - 2005/03
Page Numbers: 5