President's Perspective
Dave Brown AMA president
AS I WRITE this column, five months ago was September 11 and our world was forever changed. I'm sure most of us expected some changes in our lives, but few of us could have predicted where it would affect us most.
If you remember, there were real concerns that the cost of gas would skyrocket, yet gas is about as cheap as it has been in a long while. The price has been driven down because of decreased air travel and reduction in fuel demand. Air travel is slowly recovering, and the really cheap fares are disappearing as more people go back to flying.
These events would lead you to think that things are coming back to normal, but don't let that fool you. We are still dealing with the aftereffects of September 11 and will be for many years.
One of the more obvious changes has been an increased level of security measures, and that had a significant impact on modelers in the Salt Lake City, Utah area during the Winter Olympics. Without warning, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) put out a Special Federal Air Regulation (SFAR), which prohibited much aviation activity within 45 nautical miles (NM) of the Salt Lake airport, to increase security for the Olympic games. This SFAR included all Radio Control (RC) aircraft, and was in effect during the entire Olympics.
The FAA enacted this regulation without providing aeromodelers, through AMA, any notice. The first we knew of it was when a member found the notification on the Internet and brought it to our attention.
This action put AMA in a quandary. We are obviously living through extraordinary times, and the Salt Lake Olympics required some extraordinary steps to ensure the security of the event, but it seemed that the FAA should have asked for our help in disseminating information, if not in the process of determining what was necessary for RC modeling.
The FAA didn't ask for our opinion, nor did it ask for our help in contacting the modelers. It simply included RC modeling in a regulation that prohibited many full-scale activities in the area. Obviously, the necessary "radius of protection" for RC models could have been much smaller than 45 NM, but that was the way the FAA worded the document.
Our dilemma was what to do with this SFAR. AMA has always been reluctant to be in a position of acting as an enforcement agency for the federal government, but it didn't make any sense to allow our members to be in the position of violating a federal law simply because of not knowing about it.
After much discussion, we decided to do our best to get the word out to the clubs in that area. This is not to say that we agreed with the restriction, but we were not in a position to effect any change in it.
I intend to write a letter to the FAA administrator, encouraging her to work with us in the future if a situation arises where aeromodelling activity must be regulated. I fully understand the need for security, but I think the FAA could be much more effective and modelers could be much less restricted if we were involved in the process from the beginning.
September 11 has also affected the insurance industry. The effect of the terrorist attacks on insurance rates alone is bad enough, but other factors, such as the drop in value of the stock market and even the Enron debacle (some of those losses were insured), have the insurance industry in an uproar.
This, combined with the fact that AMA recently had a substantial claim, had us braced for a big problem in renewing AMA's liability policy. We were even concerned that we might not get anyone to bid on our policy in this hard market.
We were relieved to get a renewal policy, but it was at a substantial increase in cost: 64%. Any of you who are having to buy medical insurance are adjusting to a 40%-plus increase, so given the circumstances, we were probably fortunate to get this.
What will this mean to the membership? I don't think there is any way to avoid a dues increase. The only real question is how much. We are looking into this matter now, and I can assure you that we will keep the increase to a minimum. AMA has not increased its dues since 1997.
The increase will not be the percentage of the rise in insurance. Insurance is a large portion of AMA's expenses, but not that big. I expect—and this is just my guess—that a dues increase would be in the $5–$6 range. I wish I had better news, but we must deal in reality. MA
Dave Brown AMA president dbrown@dbproducts.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
