President's Perspective - 2009/02

hope everyone had a nice New Year. As
we begin 2009, I thought I’d use this
opportunity to review a number of AMA
activities that took place during the past year.
In my first column as AMA president, I
wrote that I was disappointed in the number
of eligible members who voted in the 2007
AMA elections. To try to improve
participation, we took a look at the current
process to see where we might be able to do
better.
When we asked our members why they
chose not to vote, the most frequent comment
we heard was that most felt they didn’t know
enough about any of the candidates to make
an informed decision. In response to this we
made several changes to the process.
We returned to including campaign
statements with the election ballot, a custom
that had been discontinued during the last few
years. Columns in MA were used to remind
members of the upcoming election and
encourage involvement.
The most obvious change was returning to
including ballots with membership renewal
forms and making the ballot postage-paid
return mail. Doing this actually reduced costs,
because the money saved by not mailing
election ballots separately more than offset
the cost of providing a postage-paid ballot.
The result was that the number of
members who voted in the 2008 national
election increased more than 40% over 2007,
and the percentage of members eligible to
vote rose from roughly 8.5% to more than
12.5%. This figure puts us in a range with
other associations similar to AMA.
While we were pleased with the
improvement, we think we can still do better.
In 2009 we’ll be considering additional
changes including making better use of the
AMA Web site and taking a closer look at
electronic voting.
In mid-January last year, AMA introduced
its new Park Pilot Program membership
category. This classification is intended for
members who fly slow, quiet-powered
models that weigh no more than 2 pounds.
Typically these models are suitable for flying
in local parks, school yards, soccer fields, etc.
To date, the program hasn’t achieved
projected hoped-for results. As we move
President’s Perspective
AMA President Dave Mathewson
I
forward in 2009, we will continue to try to
meet the goals established for the program at
its inception. On the positive side, Park Pilot
magazine, the quarterly publication included
with a Park Pilot Program membership, has
been well received. Comments have been
overwhelmingly positive.
As part of the Park Pilot Program
materials, AMA also developed a “How to
Start a Park Flying Site” turnkey package so
members who are trying to secure a field
won’t have to start from scratch when
approaching landowners or officials
responsible for regulation of public facilities.
The package includes a DVD to introduce
model aviation to these landowners and park
officials.
It includes suggestions about how to
approach property stakeholders, as well as
recommendations on how to set up a field. It
even includes a guide explaining how to
quickly and efficiently organize a club,
establish bylaws, and develop field rules. The
goal is to make it easier for our members to
retain flying sites quickly and in large
numbers. Upon request, we provided more
than 200 of these packages to municipal
officials.
In March, AMA launched its Membership
Dynamic initiative. Many issues addressed by
the AMA Executive Council are handled
through a system of committees. AMA
recognizes that we have a tremendous
resource available to us in our 150,000
members. We created Membership Dynamic
to reach out to our members who have
expertise in certain areas and ask if they’d be
willing to volunteer some of their time and
effort to help create a more effective and
valuable committee system.
The results have been excellent. Today,
many of our committees have members who
responded to this effort. Our Insurance
Committee is chaired by an insurance
executive who is a senior officer in a major
national company. He added other
professionals to the committee who are also
active modelers.
Today we have experts working to guide
our insurance program, which has led to areas
of increased and better coverage while at the
same time containing our insurance costs.
In 2008, we began developing a strategic
long-range plan for AMA. As part of this
effort, a number of goals were identified.
AMA will be focusing on them during the
next several years.
When identifying these goals, the
Executive Council prioritized the top three as
flying-site acquisition and development, the
positive promotion of model aviation, and
building stronger relationships with
government agencies. The underlying theme in
all of our identified goals is to structure AMA
to become more of an advocate for model
aviation and our members.
Our membership consistently identifies
finding new flying sites and keeping existing
ones their number-one concern. Urban sprawl
continues to cost modelers good flying sites
and pushes adequate open land farther and
farther out into less populated areas.
In many parts of the country, municipal
property has become a reasonable resource for
flying fields. As a conduit to reach municipal
leaders, AMA attended several League of
Cities conventions and the National Parks and
Recreation Association convention.
Using AMA staff members, district vice
presidents, associate vice presidents, and local
member volunteers, we presented the message
to convention attendees that model aviation is
a viable and appropriate use of public land.
Our intent in attending these functions is to
lay the groundwork so that our local members
and clubs have an advantage when
approaching the leadership in their
communities and asking for help in acquiring
flying fields. The response to this point has
been positive and we intend to build on this
program in 2009.
In May, we partnered with a media relations
firm to promote the positive value of model
aviation. Our intent is to try to introduce as
many people as possible to what we do as
model-aviation enthusiasts, while at the same
time building the credibility of aeromodeling
in the eyes of everyone from our friends and
neighbors to government officials. As a result
of this effort, model aviation has been featured
in several magazines and radio and television
interviews.
We also secured a short clip on ESPN,
which we hope will lead to bigger and better
things. We’ve begun to focus on a number of
other non-model-aviation-oriented publications
such as Women in Aviation, Children’s Digest,
and Senior News. Our intent is to try to reach
all age and gender demographics.
One of our biggest challenges during the next
several years will be dealing with government
agencies such as the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), Federal
Communications Commission (FCC),
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). To
position AMA for this challenge, in July we
created a new position titled Government and
Regulatory Affairs Representative.
… we continue to work toward being
a more progressive organization.
February 2009 5
President’s Perspective continued on page 169
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To date, the majority of our efforts have
focused on the FAA and the Aviation
Rulemaking Committee (ARC) that I wrote
about in an earlier column. Having a seat on
this committee alongside representatives of
the federal government and the sUAS industry
puts us in a position to advocate model
aviation and help define the line between what
we do as modelers and commercial sUAS
activities.
The advent of spread spectrum technology
has opened up a whole new world for RC
modeling; however, we still have a significant
number of members who continue to fly on 72
MHz and have no interest in making perfectly
good equipment obsolete. The area where
these frequencies reside is becoming a popular
target for other interests, including the
wireless industry.
While not a large threat right now, as more
modelers move away from these frequencies
it will become more difficult to argue their
need and value for model aviation. We intend
to continue to fight to retain these frequencies
for the foreseeable future.
In August, the Executive Council approved
two changes to AMA’s bylaws, which were
sent to and ratified by our Leader Members.
These were the first amendments sent for
ratification in more than a decade.
The first was to create the position of chief
financial officer and to modify the job
description of the executive vice president,
who had previously been responsible for the
association’s finances.
The second change, which will have more
of an impact on our members, made the
insurance coverage that we provide to AMA
chartered club officers primary for the
vicarious acts of others. We now provide a
greater level of protection to club officers
when they are acting in an official capacity on
behalf of their clubs.
Flying model aircraft by first person video
(FPV) is a rapidly growing activity among
modelers. In October we created a policy that
would allow FPV to be flown by our members
under certain conditions. This was a big step
forward for AMA and done after carefully
considering how it might impact our efforts in
other areas, especially in our dealings with the
FAA.
Model aviation technology is constantly
changing, and if AMA wants to continue to be
a relevant part of aeromodeling, we need to
always work to adapt to these changes.
Finally, AMA submitted two bids to the FAI
to host the Electric World Championships in
2010 and the Radio Control Precision
Aerobatics World Championships in 2011.
We expect to be awarded both events. This
year we will host the RC Helicopter World
Championships.
These events draw the best pilots in the
world to compete and provide a great
opportunity for our members to visit these
competitions at the International
Aeromodeling Center in Muncie, Indiana.
AMA tackled several other issues in 2008,
but these are probably the most visible and
will have the most positive impact on model
aviation and our membership. As we move
forward in 2009, we will continue to build on
what we began in 2008 and add goals, which
will result in benefits for all of us. We will
reinforce AMA’s position as we continue to
work toward being a more progressive
organization.
See you next time.