President’s Perspective - 2010/12
School Club Initiative
If you received the September edition of AMA Today, AMA’s monthly electronic quick brief, you read a short overview of a new initiative to be launched in early 2011 designed to help create student-run model aircraft clubs in local schools. The response to that short piece was better than anyone expected, which tells me there is huge interest in the concept among our members and clubs.
A number of educators across the country are already involved with model aviation clubs in their schools. Many of them are modelers themselves. For these teachers, being club advisors is an extension of their modeling activities and an opportunity to share aeromodeling with students.
In the interest of expanding youth outreach, we are developing a specific AMA-chartered club program for schools. The concept includes a faculty advisor similar to that of most extracurricular school activities. The structure of an individual club will be at the discretion of its student members with the guidance of the advisor. Club officers will be selected by the members. If the club members prefer, or need additional assistance, they may opt to affiliate with one of AMA’s local chartered clubs that wishes to participate in the program.
These new school-level clubs will be designed so that activities are engaging, educational, and not financially out of reach for young people. AMA will provide incentives and recognition to these clubs and will host a special section of our newly revised website where clubs across the country can interact virtually with each other.
Based on the response to the notice in AMA Today, I am excited about this new program’s potential. Model aviation is an excellent recreational and educational activity, and offering this club-level program in local schools will be a great way to introduce young community members to the excitement of model aviation.
If you’d like to know more about this endeavor:
- Information will be included in the 2011 Club Charter Kit.
- Call AMA Education Director Bill Pritchett at (765) 287-1256, extension 515.
- Email Bill Pritchett at [email protected].
AMA Today
For those who may not be familiar with AMA Today, it is an electronic publication launched in March 2010 and sent once a month to all AMA members who have provided their email addresses. AMA Today is intended to provide our members and the modeling community with a quick snapshot of interesting items. If you are not on the current subscription list but would like to be, send an email to [email protected].
FAA UAPO and sUAS Regulatory Process
In my last column I indicated that in early September we met with the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Program Office (UAPO) as we continue to work through the FAA’s regulatory process for small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). At the time, I wrote that we had scheduled a follow-up meeting to address some concerns raised during that meeting.
The follow-up meeting took place in late September, and our concerns remain. The FAA appears intent on trying to force-fit model aviation into regulations that fail to consider the complexity of our aeromodeling activities, the diversity of the hobby, and the potential detrimental impact such regulations would have if instituted. This simply won’t work and would only result in unnecessary harm to aeromodeling.
We understand the challenges facing the FAA and the tremendous pressure it is under to complete the regulatory process that will allow commercial and public-use sUAS to operate in the national airspace. However, that must be done in a way that avoids collateral damage to what we do as model aviation enthusiasts.
Aeromodeling is a recreational activity. We fly in a defined box—whether that box is a model aircraft field, a local park, or a schoolyard. Our models remain within visual line of sight. We subscribe to see-and-avoid practices and yield to anything else in the airspace. There’s a big difference between what we fly and autonomous aircraft that intend to travel from one point to another without the ability to see and avoid others.
Although we are concerned about the direction of the process, please don’t interpret these comments to mean “the sky is falling.” The sky may be a little cloudy, but our intent is to continue collaborating with the FAA UAPO to help draft rules for model aircraft that address our concerns without being overly restrictive or onerous on model aviation.
This is the time for our members to become more familiar with the regulatory effort. As the process becomes more defined, we will outline areas that may impact model aviation. There may come a time when we will ask our membership to respond to the sUAS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) when it is released—most likely sometime in mid‑2011.
We will update our membership on the ongoing process monthly in AMA, AMA Today, the AMA Insider, and via email. More information will also be available on our website at www.modelaircraft.org.
See you next time.
Dave Mathewson AMA President [email protected]
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
