Club charter renewals
The March 31 deadline for clubs to renew their annual charter status has come and gone and there are nearly 400 clubs that have not submitted their renewal documents for the 2016 charter year.
Life becomes busy and sometimes things slip through the cracks. Perhaps that’s what happened to your club renewal. There’s no need to panic! If you are paying by MasterCard, Visa, or Discover card, simply fax the forms to (765) 286-3303, or email the forms to expedite the process.
Have you misplaced the forms? We can help. Send us a brief email and we will forward the appropriate pre-filled paperwork to you. Or you can use the forms in the Club Chartering Guide to get the process started. Please note that this is a PDF document that will allow you to enter information and either print or email the completed form.
Help us help you!
Clubs have expressed concerns about the recent change from a calendar-year membership to a year-to-date membership for individual AMA members. Although this will be a new experience for all, the AMA staff wants to assist all clubs to make this transition as smooth as possible. We will provide monthly email notifications to clubs, alerting them of club members with upcoming AMA membership expirations. For this to be effective, we ask that you please regularly update your AMA club roster. The easiest, and most efficient, way is to make any changes on our online club roster located at www.modelaircraft.org/membersonly.aspx.
To access the roster, you must be logged into the website and have your Web account linked to your AMA membership. This allows the system to recognize you as a club officer. We’ve included a brief video in the April issue of Ground Control that will help you with these steps.
You are seeing the fallout of the new Federal licensing requirements. Members are laying low, not announcing themselves as members of anything so there is no record of them on any list and going ahead and flying anyway. Our club used to cost $225 a year and we have essentially disbanded. A few still fly off the record. I fly helicopters in my backyard. We are seeing a true upheaval in a group of people that don’t like being managed (controlled?) by the government. It will take time to adjust and bring in new members in that don’t remember “how it was.” Overall, education, camaraderie, and safety are going down without the club organization to enforce standards.
It’s a whole new world out there.
AMA 3661, Leader and CD
Don, I concur. Easy access to electrics has made it possible for those of us without a Freudian need to fly large stuff to often fly within yards of our houses. I paid $100 a year to a club, where it’s 13 miles one way to a rough grass field. After three years with precisely one day of flying – I dropped my membership. In those three years, I’d made hundreds of flights at the local park 100 yards from my house (500 size helo and below), or .25 size electrics, nitro helis, and nitro control line at a school 200 yards away.
Some, like me, are also not happy that AMA is trying to inject itself into the process in some sort of oversight role. They’re already on record saying they won’t inspect large aircraft of non-members, and I fear that sometime they’ll decide that compliance with their code requires membership (they say they won’t but nothing prevents it).
I’m not seeing a way to update a club roster on the members only page linked in the text above.
I found it. My mistake.