I suggest we enjoy it while we can. It IS the way of life. People find new things all the time, and there are many MORE things now than 50 years ago. AMA will adapt, and probably in a way us old timers won't like, because we tend to be inflexible.
I for one am going to enjoy it while I can and not complain about it too much. Yes, another year with AMA.
Exactly. I am not sure why some of us think that everyone should want to fly CL Stunt (or whatever) and would, if only we presented it properly. And since they don't we are doing something wrong that has to be corrected.
An example from my youth - when I was a kid, every drugstore, department store, even convenience stores, had two toy aisles, one for girls and one for boys. The girl's aisle had more-or-less what you would expect, Barbies and other dolls, games, etc. The boys aisle had one side with balls/bats/gloves and army guys. The other side was models, mostly plastic models but usually a few Comet or Guillows, a pretty complete set of rockets (either Estes or Centuri but never both) with a Testor's glue and paint rack at one end. Virtually every single example was like this, and if it wasn't, no one went there. We would shake birthday and Christmas presents, and separated the ones that sounded like plastic parts from the others, like socks or a shirt, or God forbid, a book. Virtually everyone I knew was the same way, and those who didn't were the extreme minority. There were car guys, airplane guys, and rocket guys, but you were one of those or you were very strange.
Go into, say, Target today. The balls/gloves/bats are still there, the army guys and stuff like that is usually still there, but you will not find anything like a model, glue, paint, of any kind. This was true *long* before the internet, so don't blame that. KIDS DO NOT BUILD MODELS ANY MORE, and that is not a defect or a flaw with society. Those kids from 25 years ago are grown up, and THEY DON'T BUILD MODELS ANY MORE, either, and that is also not a defect or flaw.
That's why changing it in a vain attempt to appeal to these target audiences doesn't make any sense. There are a decent number of people who like it the way it is, and they are more-or-less going to keep doing it until they can't any more. There is no evidence that altering the rules/events/conditions will attract anyone else, and in many cases it will drive away the truly dedicated. Maybe we are dying, and maybe we aren't, but trying to invoke radical changes (like the strange FAI rule change suggestions) to stave off the inevitable is almost certainly not going to change the end result.
I would also note that people have had the same observation - the event is doomed, where are all the juniors, how do we drum up more fliers - for as long as I have been doing this, 45+ years. And if you read histories like "Do you speak model airplane?", the same thing with the same predictions was going on *in the 30s*. That's the 1930's, *85 years ago*. So we have been a "dying hobby" for almost a century.
Brett