District V
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, US Virgin Islands
Welcome back everyone!
I’m writing this while stuffed with Thanksgiving turkey and contemplating the upcoming holidays. As I finish my second year as District V vice president, I find myself reflecting on the observations and experiences during the previous two years, and about the letters and emails that I receive from members.
To the clubs, club officers, and all of the members in the district, I ask you to reflect on the past year and ask yourself how you treated your members and prospective members.
I realize that, under certain circumstances, clubs need to restrict themselves to certain types of operations, sizes of aircraft, or powerplants (e.g. a glider club, all-electric, or park flyers because of size or noise concerns), but those uncommon circumstances aside, do you truly do your best to make all types of modelers feel welcome and a part of the club?
Do you welcome a pilot who flies foamies with the same enthusiasm as a person who flies giant-scale turbines? Do you push the helicopter pilots off to a muddy corner of the field with no shade while you yuck it up with your airplane-flying buddies in the shelter of the pits, and everyone spends more time talking than flying on the runway that you just banished the heli guys from for “safety reasons?”
As modelers, no matter what part of the hobby we enjoy, remember this: We have more in common with each other than not! We really should be able to transcend petty bickering—and I’ll be frank—stupid rulemaking aimed at groups of people we think are beneath us, and celebrate what we have in common: our love of all things that fly.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. We, as a larger group (the AMA as a whole), and we, as individual clubs, don’t have swelling ranks of numbers that have the luxury of running off prospective new members.
I don’t want this to come across as a rant. I want it to be food for thought as we move into 2022, and my hope is for a new year with increased membership numbers and a prosperous year for everyone.
