Field Safety and Accommodation

by Dave Brown, AMA President

It’s winter and as president of a club, most of our attention is focused on indoor meetings, programs for the club membership, and planning for next season’s activities. Think about taking a break from this and give some thought to a safety review of your flying site.

Why should you consider this in the middle of the winter? Winter is a good opportunity to see many things that are not visible during the spring and summer when the grass has grown. A safety concern such as a gopher hole hidden by grass could cause a member retrieving his model from a less-than-perfect landing to trip and be injured. Look for anything that could cause a problem and schedule the repairs necessary to bring the site up to snuff.

How do you respond to a member who thinks you are discriminating against him or her when you make rules for the operation of your flying site? It’s not discrimination for your club to rule that your site is restricted to—or from—a particular type of model.

A number of clubs prohibit gas-powered models because of noise in order to protect the site. Other clubs don’t allow helicopters at the site unless they fly in the same pattern as a fixed-wing model. A helicopter hovering over the runway for an extended time effectively shuts off the site for others flying fixed wing models.

Hovering 3-D fixed wing flying creates many of the same problems, and some clubs limit or prohibit this form of flying. Let’s face it, the fewer rules we impose on our members, the better, but rules are necessary to make sure the flying site can be used equitably by the majority of the membership.

The secret is to make those rules as fair as possible and to make every effort to create—if necessary—a facility for any discipline of modeling which the membership wants to pursue. A hovering pad, offset from the main runway, can go a long ways toward solving many problems as can scheduling time when people can fly 3-D without interfering with the mainstream members’ use of the field.

It comes down to making an effort to accommodate the interests of each of your members, but recognizing that you may not be able to accommodate every activity. The secret to success lies in making an effort to indulge those members with different interests.

Sometimes you simply cannot accommodate a particular type of model but it has been my experience that if you have made an effort to do so, that member will understand the situation and support your decision. Part of the strength of our great sport is the diversity of types of models we can become passionate about, but that diversity presents challenges when it comes time to accommodate them at the flying field.

With a little effort on the part of modelers who want to do something different and the club officers charged with making order out of this sometimes-chaotic sport, we can all share facilities. This will benefit all of us individually as well as the club and the sport.