President’s Perspective - 2001/04
ONE THING I’ll tell you about the job of
being AMA president—or being the
president of virtually any association—is
that you have to like people.
Oh sure, there will be those times
when you feel as if you want to box
someone’s ears. And there will be a few
people who get under your skin so much
that you just want to scream, but you had
better be able to get over it, as this is a
“people” kind of job.
In dealing with people, you find that
some of those with whom you have the
most intense disagreements are the ones
for whom you ultimately develop the
greatest respect.
One such colleague was Ed
McCollough, with whom I argued during
most of his long career on the Executive
Council. Please understand that Ed and I
could disagree about the direction from
which the sun would rise!
Last year, when the vast majority of
the world accepted the year 2000 as the
start of the millennium, Ed was among
the first to argue that 2001 would be the
start of the millennium.
President’s Perspective - 2001/03
THE OTHER DAY, a friend asked
me what I thought model aviation
contributed to our society as a whole.
After thinking about it for a while, I
decided to try to put my thoughts on
paper.
As most would guess,
aeromodeling has been a major
influence in my life since I was a
youngster, and I have seen the effect
it has had on a lot of lives in the
ensuing years.
What attracts people to
aeromodeling is as different as the
people it attracts. Obviously, the thing
that interests most of us, regardless of
age, is that we perceive it as fun; it’s
something we think we will enjoy.
I expect that if you were to ask
most aeromodelers why they find the
sport so interesting, they would have a
hard time verbalizing an answer. But
if you were to ask them what they
have learned from their activity in the
sport, they could talk for hours.
If you were to ask them to assess
aeromodeling in just one word, I
suspect challenging would be a fairly
common answer.
President’s Perspective - 2001/02
FAI—just three letters, but three letters
which can surely liven up a conversation
among competitive aeromodelers.
For those who might not know what the
letters stand for, they are the acronym for
the Fédération Aéronautique
Internationale, the international
organization representing aerosports in the
world, to include aeromodeling.
Recently, US success in the
international arena has been a mixed can
of worms, with huge success in some
areas, Indoor Free Flight for example, and
huge disappointment in other areas, such
as Scale. In between is the gamut of
emotional states.
Unfortunately, some people seem to
think that anything less than a one-twothree
sweep of a World Championships is
failure. Those critics are quick to point out
that we have some high level competitions
in this country, which “rival” the World
Championships.
President’s Perspective - 2001/01
WHO DREW that “line in the sand,”
and on what basis did he or she decide
where that line would be?
In our lives, we deal with seemingly
arbitrary and unreasonable boundaries that
limit our activities. The 55 mph speed limit;
mandatory retirement of airline pilots at age
60; you can’t vote until you are 18; you
can’t drive until you are 16; etc.
Rules, rules, rules—all we ever see are
rules. Who decides these things? Why isn’t
it 54 mph, or age 63 for airline retirement?
Why do we need speed limits? Why should
we have any limits at all?
President's Perspective
A couple of columns back, I wrote about the possibilities of a two-tiered membership system, and it has created a firestorm on the Internet and in my E-mail! Most respondents misunderstood the origins of that column, and assumed that some such system was about to be enacted. This is not the case. Many respondents took this "proposal" as a way for AMA to hide a dues increase, in spite of the column's revenue-neutral statement. The numbers reflected a guess at the increase in premium mentioned, and were only a starting point for discussion. Ed McCollough was right when he suggested that I remove the numbers; however, I convinced him that without them as a starting point, the members would have no idea of what the system's effect would be.
