EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — A newly formed Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) subsidiary and IMC Club International have entered into a license agreement that will provide IMC flight proficiency programming to EAA and its chapters around the world.
The agreement comes three months after EAA and IMC Club officials signed a letter of intent to explore an EAA acquisition. The license agreement will result in IMC Club’s chapter resources and offerings being created and distributed as new programs produced by the EAA subsidiary, EAA IMC, LLC, to EAA chapters and members.
IMC Club’s 2,350 members will become EAA members immediately. For IMC’s 126 chapters, beginning in the first quarter of 2016, those with neighboring EAA chapters will be encouraged to merge into the EAA chapter, while IMC Club chapters without a nearby EAA affiliation will be encouraged to become new EAA chapters.
In addition, IMC Club founder Radek Wyrzykowski will join the new EAA subsidiary as Manager of Flight Proficiency and continue to develop programs and activities to promote flying proficiency, including the build-out of EAA’s Pilot Proficiency Center at AirVenture.
“It is important to maintain and expand the reach of IMC Club programming while allowing the content to remain free of charge. This integration into EAA allows us to do exactly that,” Wyrzykowski said. “At the same time, this agreement brings our flight safety programs and scenarios to more aviators through the worldwide reach and visibility that only EAA can provide.”
John, let me assure you that as long as I am with EAA and still running the IMC Club out of there, the interests of pilots and our original mission will not only be preserved but also it is going to be grown and expended.
As an IMC member almost from the beginning, i must confess more than a small amount of trepidation over the merger, especially given the encouragement, or as i see it, insistence upon a merger with or conversion to an EAA chapter. I fear that IMC and the IMC goals will disappear as it is blended into the EAA hierarchy and cease to exist in the way that it was initially conceived.
I was a early member of IMC, and helped setup an IMC chapter locally, because i felt that the IMC club was a good fit and good for GA.
EAA, AOPA and the other alphabet groups have long since ceased to truly serve the interests of GA and as the pilot population continues to decrease, their participation will increasingly become more and more dedicated to their own survival and not generally in the interests of GA.