President's Perspective
"I wish the world's societies could work together as well as the world's aeromodelers."
I'll say one thing about being president of the AMA: it's not a good position for those who have an aversion to traveling!
The month got its start in Lausanne, Switzerland, where I served as the U.S. voting delegate at CIAM, the Aeromodelling Commission of the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale). If all of those acronyms confuse you, don't worry; they are really harmless parts of the international aeromodelling bureaucracy.
Of all the countries in the world, the United States takes part in the greatest number of aeromodelling events, and has historically done quite well in most categories. The influence that the U.S. has on the formation and rules of international aeromodelling has been the subject of many discussions among those members involved in this activity.
It's always interesting to hear the modelers talk of how "we" should be able to dictate the rules to the rest of the world! I'm not exactly sure where "we" got the idea, but I can tell you that "we" cannot.
The AMA sends an extremely hard-working group of people, who are experts in their respective categories, to serve on the various category committees. These people put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort, working with their peers from all of the other countries. Our U.S. representatives are quite effective in overcoming adversity and in formulating the rules used for international competition. In the end, I cast the U.S. vote on these proposals, but I do so only after conferring with these category experts.
In spite of all of this, we still win a few and lose a few. This is not a reflection on the people we send, but the reality of dealing in the international arena.
At this last meeting, the U.S. was successful in getting our preferences incorporated into the rules, and we were awarded both of the World Championships for which we submitted a bid. All of the Americans who held chairmanships were reelected, and both of the general rule proposals we put forth passed. Overall, it was a very successful meeting for the U.S.
On the other hand, we "lost" in a couple of rules proposals involving rubber weight in Indoor and Outdoor Free Flight. We tried as hard as we could to make our point, but in the end, the rest of the world didn't agree with our objections. It was a battle we simply could not win, and in our after-meeting debriefing we agreed that there was nothing we could have done to win that one.
Why is this last point important? When you put as much of yourself into these processes as our people do, it is important that we don't let them down when we shouldn't. I felt really good about our crew's performance this time. We won virtually every situation where we had a chance, and we did so in such a way as to increase the general stature of the U.S.
I must admit to being a little emotionally torn as I sat behind the delegate from Yugoslavia as the body voted to remove an upcoming European Championship from Yugoslavia for "security" reasons. On the airplane ride home, the pilot announced the first NATO attacks on that country.
One great idea, in my opinion, was proposed by the Control Line technical group and was voted in: future Control Line World Championship teams will be allowed a fourth team member, who must be a Junior. This Junior will compete with the adults, and his/her score will count for the team standings if it exceeds the score of one of the adult members. In other words, the Junior member can help the team, but can't hurt the team.
I am excited about this, as I see real potential for getting some youngsters into these events, and I can see a great deal of mentoring for these youngsters. I think this idea is worthy of our support, and hopefully, if it proves to be as successful as I hope, it will expand to other categories. In addition, if enough Juniors are competing to qualify as a World Championship (five countries), a Junior world champion will be crowned!
Junior classification (Editor's note)
- A competitor is classified as a Junior in FAI terms up to and including the calendar year of his/her 18th birthday.
- A Junior in AMA terms is a competitor less than 15 years of age as of July 1.
'Till next month.
Dave Brown AMA President dbrown@dbproducts.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
