President's PERSPECTIVE
AMA and its average member.
A few weeks ago, I spent an evening "solving the problems of the world" with a couple of other members of the Executive Council, and, as very often happens, the discussion drifted toward what AMA does, or could do, or should do, for its average members. It's natural for this discussion to occur, as most of your officers get asked this question on a regular basis.
As the evening wore on, we talked about a variety of topics, including:
- flying sites
- the magazine
- insurance
- frequencies
- competition rules
- instruction programs
- awards programs
- club recognition
- safety programs
Each subject bounced around the question of which group it would benefit most, and very often, which group it would hurt. As subjects would come up, we would drift into ideas which would benefit one group of members or another. After following that trail off into oblivion, someone would invariably bring up the need to do more for the average member, and the discussion would restart in a different direction.
In the last 18 years, I have taken part in this same discussion literally hundreds of times, and the result and direction is almost always the same. We identify something we might do to benefit some, and realize that it will only benefit a handful. Eventually, someone points out that it is midnight, and we all give it up for the night.
I had been thinking about our latest bull session the other day when the thought occurred to me that we have been doing our darnedest to try to do things for the average AMA member when such a member doesn't exist!
An average AMA member? Hmmm. I know how to do a lot of demographic surveying, and come up with an "average" member. That member would be of some certain age, have an improbable number of children, like 2.39, would have some number of years of education, would earn $xxxxx, and would spend $yyyyy on the hobby each year. That would be an average AMA member, or would it? Yes, it would be a statistical average, but that information would not be all that significant to those of us trying to do more for our average member. An average member? If that method doesn't describe one, then what does?
Let's see: if I try to average 10 RC pattern fliers, 2 Wakefield fliers, 3 giant scalers, 4 CL combat fliers, and 101 RC Sunday fliers of widely varying levels of expertise, what do I get? How does that average change if I throw in a guy who flies nothing but autogiros, or a couple of ornithopter buffs?
Guess what? There is no such thing as an average AMA member, and simply changing the word "average" to "typical" doesn't make much difference. There is no such thing as a typical AMA member either.
AMA's members cannot be referred to as average or typical in any sense of those words. I believe that the vast majority of AMA members are way above those standards. One of the greatest assets of this sport — or hobby, if you prefer — is the diversity of its participants. We are all members of an organization dedicated to the sport/hobby we share. We share that interest with others of similar, yet so dissimilar, interests. The secret is for all of us to celebrate that diversity, and to work together to improve the image of aeromodeling in general. If we simply look at everything we do from that narrow perspective of how it benefits us individually, we will surely fail to survive as a group.
Now, if I could only find out what that "average" AMA member would have us do.
Till next month,
Dave Brown AMA President
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
