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The
sport you save
might be your own!
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In
what part of this wonderful sport do you participate?
Trainers? CL Aerobatics? Scale? RC Aerobatics? Pylon Racing?
Sailplanes? Indoor? Free Flight? Helicopters?
Regardless of
what aspect you are involved in right now, the chances are
that you will find yourself focusing on some other
discipline in the future, and, if you have been involved for
a number of years, you were probably involved in another
facet in the past.
Why do I mention this? After watching
modelers for more than 50 years, this diversity is one of
the things that makes our sport so addicting. Challenges we
face are recognizing that an important part of this sport is
its diversity and accepting other disciplines of aeromodeling into our clubs and flying sites.
Those of us
who grew up involved in "traditional" aeromodeling tend to
think that new modelers—and particularly youngsters—should
start out in modeling in the same way we got our foundation,
but kids today have other ideas about how to get started.
Even the adults getting into this sport are approaching it
differently than "we" did.
While a few want to get into the
creative side of the sport, beginning with building their
models, the majority are buying an ARF model and heading out
to the club site to become the next ace flier. Although many
who start out this way will learn to enjoy the building
aspects of aeromodeling later, it isn't something in which
they are interested in right away. Our challenge is
accepting this and welcoming them into the fold.
Hardly a
week goes by in which I do not receive a letter or E-mail
from an AMA member complaining that his local club won't let
him fly his form of aeromodeling or complaining that the
club does allow someone else's form to be flown at the club
site. Lately the focus is on various forms of 3-D flying and
helicopters, although almost anything "different" from what
members normally fly there is suspect. Even electric-powered
models have been discouraged at some fields!
We are involved
in an evolving sport. That evolution, along with the variety
of models we have available to meet our interests, is part
of what makes this sport so great; however, to have the
advantages that diversity gives us comes at a cost. We need
to understand that discouraging or banning those "other"
forms of modeling at our club fields will be detrimental to
the sport in the future.
Although you may not be involved in
some particular aspect of aeromodeling now, it's entirely
possible that you may be in the future. Before you allow
your club to ban some type of aeromodeling activity at your
club site, think about it.
There are times when banning a
discipline or practice is a reasonable thing to do, but that
is rare. Usually there are compromises that would allow
those activities to take place.
Who knows? The activity may
just pique an interest!
Flying season is upon us, so get
those models polished up, get out, and fly, but do so
safely.
Lately the Internet has been filled with videos of
some of the "experts" in this sport doing some foolhardy
stunt that is dangerous and stupid. Usually it's not the
flying part of the stunt that is stupid or particularly
dangerous, but rather the human "props" which are involved.
Hovering a 40% model at low level is a great skill, but it
has no place when it is done directly above a person. Acts
such as this violate every reasonable safety rule in the
book, and the image they portray hurts the sport in the eyes
of the public.
If you want to do something about this, don't
write to me. I can't do much other than make more unpopular
rules.
If you really want to do something about it, look at
the shirt the person is wearing; it probably has his or her sponsor's name emblazoned on it. Write to the sponsor and I
bet you won't see as much of this in the future. The sport
you save might be your own! MA
Until next month ...
Dave Brown, AMA president
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