President's Perspective
Dave Brown, AMA president
What we modelers have available today is phenomenal.
It cannot have been a month since I last sat down to do this column, can it? Who slipped the calendar on me? I guess that is what happens when you are juggling many topics at once.
Most of the juggling involves safety issues, and it is becoming a challenge to keep up with the continued advancement in technology. What we modelers have available today is phenomenal.
We now have .40-size engines putting out 3.2 horsepower, and the technology to build and fly 1/2-scale models. "Bigger, faster, heavier, and farther" seems to be the trend, and the technology is available for anyone to build models with such performance.
As you can imagine, it can be a challenge to keep up with liability issues. Most of the membership does not realize how broad the insurance coverage provided by AMA really is.
A recent case involved a club that did not follow proper procedures when removing a couple of members. The club officers thought they had a very good reason to expel those members, and they thought that coming down hard on the "offending" members would be an example of their resolve to be "good citizens" in the eyes of their site owner.
In the attempt to show the site owners they wouldn't put up with nonsense, the club members overstepped the line in a legal sense and found themselves involved in a lawsuit. AMA's insurance provided a defense, and ultimately the case was settled for a substantial sum of money as an alternative to going to trial.
This instance shows how important it is that your club follows its own rules in operating. There are very few instances where time does not allow a review of your bylaws before taking action on a serious subject. The fact is, you must be careful in today's society. Failure to do so can bring very expensive consequences.
As this is being written, AMA's Grand Event has just concluded, and it was another successful one. The Grand Event gave us a chance to expose hundreds of kids to aeromodeling and related hobbies in a hands-on manner, and the Homecoming gave many "average" members a chance to enjoy the camaraderie and flavor of an "organized" event, without the pressures of a competition.
This is a big trend today, and it has brought much enjoyment to a large sector of our members. I got the impression that the people in attendance had a great time. We expect that this event will become a "road show" next year, and that we will be able to expose many kids in other areas to the wonders of modeling.
It also gave many members the chance to see the progress on the new headquarters building. Construction is ahead of schedule, with most of the underground work completed and the footing around the outside of the building finished.
One downside of the new building being under construction was that the pond was drained to dig it deeper for the geothermal environmental control system; therefore, it was not available for Grand Event model boating activity. Once the project is finished, we hope the pond will be better than ever for that activity.
During the membership meeting at the Grand Event, a question was asked about plans for a place to fly radio-control floatplanes. We probably cannot do this at Muncie without disrupting the ability to fly Free Flight on the site.
We can explore one possibility, but it will not be in the immediate future. We may be able to accommodate Free Flight ROW (rise-off-water) with a portable pond, like we used to do at the Navy Nats. That will depend on demand.
Next month, fly often and fly safely.
Dave Brown AMA president <REDACTED>
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
