Idiots may doom "Park Flying"

[storklappe]

Close to my house there is a GREAT place to fly "Park Flyers." Almost every morning I fly my Aero Works SU-31 and I have the entire place (three baseball fields) to myself. Last night, my son wanted to go flying but when we got to the field, there was like three million kids playing soccer. We left the plane in the truck and got out a frisbee. About ten minutes later a guy shows up with his son and a plane I didn't recognize but it was about the size of the new Aero Works Sting Ray. As it was a pattern-type plane I figured the guy was not a newbie. I went over and talked with him and it turned out that he had never flown before. I offered to help him and also told him very strongly that he should not attempt to fly with the kids all around us ( I also strongly encouraged him to join AMA). He agreed that it wasn't wise to fly so my son and I went back to playing frisbee. About ten minutes later I see the guy on the far side of the field (with kids in close proximity) run up the electric motor and toss the plane. Fortunately, the thing went aproximately 20 yards and crashed without hitting anyone. Eventhough the plane was trashed, the motor would still run so he tried it again. Same story only the flight was shortned to maybe ten yards.

The point to the above is, even though no one got hurt, I overheard several parents saying flying needed to be banned before someone gets hurt.

Sorry for the long post but I hate it when one moron can screw up a great field!

[twostroke]

I have to agree with you. It is really a shame when someone is that negligent, especially after it was strongly suggested he not fly. I am a truck driver and fly my foamie sometimes when there is room and space (no people or trucks closeby). I pulled into a truckstop one time and a guy was flying a .40 size big stick, right over top all the trucks (the lot was full) and landing on the asphault lot down between all the parked trucks. I could just seem him crashing that thing into another drivers $150,000.00 Peterbilt and then there it would go all over the news. We definately need to educate people about this. This also can become an issue with park flyers and local flying clubs in close proximity due to frequency issues.

[SleepyC]

You did the right thing.

Another thing you could try to do, is to form a kind of park flying society, and hold a regular day. And then make rules about flying during the week.

A local park by my house got so popular that there was in upwards of 25 - 35 piolets there on weekends.

Now its organized with freq pins and all. And all the people know that if there are sports being played its a NO fly time.

People still fly during the week, but since usually someone from the group is there, they educate newbies to the policies.

The benifit to this is that you contact the metro parks and work with them to assure that things are done safely. Then when a "rogue" element has a problem.. the authorities are more likely to single that out as what it is "an idiot", and not chalk it up to the group that use's the park properly.

Also, if you tell a newbie that its cool to fly if you follow our rules, and if you don't the authorities will ask you to leave, it sometimes makes an impression.

Just a thought. It may help preserve a great flying spot!

[Freddy Warbird]

Idiots always doom stuff that is fun. I live in California, and have seen so many thing become banned over the years because of behavior like this. I get upset. We will loose our parkflying field in just a little while, and all I can do is enjoy it while it lasts.

It seem as the population goes up, the fun is banned as well. All that is left is work, and pay bills. It doesn't surprise me at all when I hear about a kids that do drugs, or gets into trouble.

[whiteknuckleairlines]

there is always going to be some jackass that doesnt want to follow the rules though. We have an outlaw field here which is very well known. There are ALWAYS people out there flying. 99% of them are very respectable and are accomplished pilots. Anyway - long story short - we were out there one day and a truck full of kids drives by. They all look at us, slow down, but keep going. 20 minutes later I see a parkie zipping around about 200 yards up the road. I walk up and wouldn't you know it. It is the truck load of kids.

I asked them why they didnt at least ask what channel we were on. Their reply was "we did, we turned on our radio and none of your stuff crashed. so we assumed we were good".

It was all I could do that day to keep from going to jail for assault and battery.

On to the point - These models are readily available to anyone just like hair dryers. they both come with warnings on them and people still electrocute themselves with hair dryers. Enough said.

[twostroke]

That would have been hard to walk away from that! "Your stuff didn't crash so we figured we're good!" - What the heck is that, especially if my stuff in the air is about 6 G's worth.

There should be a law, it really stinks that someone with a mindset like that can even blatenly shoot you down and you have no recourse. Supposedly there is a guy who lives about a mile from the field and rumor has it he bought a frequency checker and a TX with a programmable module and purposely shoots people down because he doesn't like the noise of the airplanes even though he has a Harley and can be found outside working on it all the time revving it up and making far more noise than us. People like this go out of their way and even spend money to cause us grief. I wish somehow you could enforce some sort of law against this.

Nothing against Harleys, just the person who owns it!

[MrKiwi]

At the local park near my house, parkflers and anything motoized is banned because some idiot newb flew a foamy into someone. now i cant even fly rubber powered dleta darts! I hate it when newbs think flying rc is easy and its do big deal, some of them think there so smart that they dont need a trainer or an inscructor or an big enough place to fly! I've seen someone try to fly a funana 40 in his parking lot. That kinda stuff makes me really ticked to see people do that kind of stuff, they dont know the dangers of rc, theey think there toys and misuse them, causng accidentednt and giving out hobby a bad name. Foamies are just as big a hasard as glow and gas, people think the prop will just bounce off you. Newbs are taking over the hobby and there not taking any safety measures while flying.

[mikeyj86]

WKA, I had a similar experience at my field yesterday. It was gorgeous out and there was no one at the field, started assembling my edge till I realized I lost a wing bolt, packed it up and was pretty pissed. As I'm leaving the field, I see these guys by a parked truck, as I get closer I see they have one of those cheap rtf planes that you can get for like 70 bucks. Knowing that where there are at is a pretty popular r/c flying field, maybe its a good thing that I randomly lost a wing bolt, might have dodged a big one

[bosshoss]

My 2 cents.

Education ,education, education.

Hobby shops must be compelled to inform buyers of AMA and legal flying sites. Many here in Chicago do not. They are more interested in a sale first, than giving the new customer a host of restrictions governing their new toy.

After nicely telling the newbie what he/she can or shouldn;t do, if they heed , great, make a new friend get them in the hobby,

If they ignore it, like the moron in story above, call the cops. We do it all the time. Sometimes people don;t want to be told how to conduct themselves from someone not in a uniform. Fine, get them one .

Spread spectrum cant happen soon enough, IMO. I have long since vacated the 72 band.

All it is gonna take to gum up the works is one incident , a bad incident, and it will make national news. Spend the time to inform the morons, take action if they do not heed.

My 2 cents.

[rightflyer]

Same here in Columbus Ohio, Parks and Rec banned all motorized model planes. Only gliders. Crazy! OF course, there are those idiots that make everyone look bad. Any time I fly anywhere and I am concerned with a possible safety issue, I don't fly.

[Freddy Warbird]

At the park I fly at it says on the park sign in bigger letters then the rest of the rules "No Rockets!" and yet FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

[xtremeRCpilot]

I am greatful that I have like 10 parks close to me. Some bigger than others , but in the summer when sports are active, If one field is being used I go to the next till I find one vacant. Unfortunately I have to limit myself with the planes I can fly, but no one gets hurt..