We are now in the building or repair season, mostly repair this year for me. I love this time of the year, building and finishing my favorite models. For me the trade shows and swap meets are great places to meet people, talk about their winter projects and exchange war stories. Speaking of trade shows, the first one is the AMA Expo in Ontario, California. This show was held in the first week of January. This year’s WRAM has been moved from White Plains, New York to their new venue in the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey. Show dates are February 24-26 You can get further info on their website at www.wram.org. The next show will be the 2012 Weak Signals R/C Exposition on April 13,14,15 in Toledo, Ohio. I will be attending all of the shows and would like to meet as many members as possible. Stop by our IMAA Booth and say hello to all of our hard working District Directors and their Assistant Directors. Remember to support all of our vendors that support our great organization.
This year at the AMA Expo in January the FAA is expected to release the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking(NPRM) for small Unmanned Aircraft Systems(Suas) for public comment. The NPRM will provide a 90-120 day public comment period to allow interested parties to comment on the proposed rule and to make constructive suggestions toward improving the regulation. Once the rule is published AMA will be providing suggestions and guidance for responding to the NPRM. This will be your opportunity to weigh in on the issue. It is also very likely the AMA will organize a parallel congressional campaign to once again draw attention to our concerns. It’s extremely important that we start gearing up for the NPRM and are prepared to respond to the public notice once the proposed rule is published. In preparing for our response this would be a great time to start garnering the support of your families, friends, your community, schools, charitable/fraternal organizations and anyone else who has an interest in model aviation. Once the NPRM is published we will need to respond in substantial numbers to make sure our voice is heard and we’ll need all the help we can get.
I would like to thank Roy Barrow for his service as IMAA webmaster for the past 4 years. The president and the Directors made a decision to have a new website developed with improved features. Our new site should be up and running by the time you read this. The new site will be easier to navigate, with online registration, along with plenty of interactive areas, pictures and YouTube videos. The site will feature District reports and links to other giant scale related sites. You will be able to post your event flyers on your District page. And don’t miss our new High Flight magazine section. I am very excited about this new website for our membership. I would like to ask our members for any old pictures from the early days of IMAA, to please submit them to me and I will get them posted. Hopefully we will be able to scan all back issues of High Flight from the beginning and be available to you, our members.
The 2011 Rally of Giants will be hosted this year in Binghamton, New York during the month of June. There is a full page ad in this issue. We are looking for any clubs that would like to host a Rally for either 2013 or 2014. Remember that this years Rally will be jointly hosted by District 1 and District 2. We always try to rotate the Rally to different areas of the country to help promote and share IMAA events. If you have any questions please contact us and we will help you in any way possible.
Some of you have asked about the background to our change in the IMAA By-Laws as to how we now elect our President and Vice President from among the Board Directors. This came about in the summer and fall of 2010 when we knew an election year was coming up in 2011. There was a lot of discussion among the Directors as to how we could do “More-with-Less”. By electing the President from the Board, and making the Secretary a voluntary position of one of the Directors, we are able to accomplish the same duties with less personnel.
The Nomination Committee was charged with looking at election reform with cost savings in mind. We are now able to run our own election, instead of hiring an outside accounting firm and are now saving over $4,000 in expenses.
Also, we were listening to members’ voicing some dissatisfaction at electing the top officers from someone they didn’t know. Was there a better way? That was the 64K question. The Nominating Committee came up with the idea of following a corporate model where the chairman of the board is elected from among the board members. This idea got tossed around at the 2010 Rally of Giants and other events. One of the benefits would be that the President and Vice would be more accountable to their fellow board members and they would certainly work better as a team. Also., having a smaller number of Directors and officers would result in some savings. The recommendations of the Nominating Committee was put to a motion in October 2010 and the bylaws were changed to put this into effect. The motion was passed appropriately and thus we embarked on the elections in 2011.
This was reported in the High Flight Spring Issue 2011 and posted on our website. Also, the full election process was spelled out in the Summer 2011 High Flight and again on the website.
So far the process is showing very positive results with an active and engaged Board of Directors working as a unit to make IMAA the best organization possible.
