One of Tripoli's features is a fascist certification policy, so if you only have room for one I would recommend NAR.
After certification your papers work in both directions.
Here’s what I explained to someone the other day:
I don’t know why NAR changed theirs, but we both had the same policy at one time. A few years ago the NAR changed theirs, which honestly put us in a bit of a position. It’s a topic that we discuss frequently at the board level.
Here’s my take: if a person drops his or her membership for at least a year, we know they haven’t probably flown in that time. I don’t know about you, but I lose expertise if I go too long without doing something. That was the basis for the expiration of a certification. It’s true that a person could also just continue paying membership dues and not fly and lose just as much expertise, but that’s harder to track without adding rules and formal requirements such as a flight logbook.
So, now we have this weird situation where Tripoli members can “insure” their certifications by joining the NAR for a year. Then they can drop out for some time and whenever they want to return they rejoin NAR, regain their certification level, and then rejoin Tripoli and transfer their certification. It doesn’t make sense, does it.
Honestly, I’m torn. The only people our rule affects are those who only join Tripoli, our most loyal members.
But, at the same time, all it takes to recertify is to fly rockets anyway. An L3 can just recycle their existing paperwork and reply their rocket. And flying rockets is the only reason to get certified anyway, so it’s really not a huge hardship for most people.
As a side note, right now we have stopped expiring certifications for people who drop their memberships during the next year. We did that because we anticipate that many people will be unable to afford to renew their memberships due to the shutdown we’re going through.
By the way, here’s the definition of fascism:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.