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... we continue to
work toward being a
more progressive organization.
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I
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 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.
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 with 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, all of which will be held 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. MA
See you next time ...
Dave Mathewson, AMA president
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