I was wondering how most clubs handle their club trainer.Our "past"trainer met it's demise due to battery failure. I am presently putting another one together and have taken items donated from club members for the servos, and engine. The club bought the trainer new from the LHS. We will have it going soon. Do you have a desiginated person to take care of and be responsible for it? How do you decide who will fly it? We have capable instructors and I thought that maybe just limiting the trainer to the designated instructors would work. Let me know what you guys think. Eddie Fulmer
It's usually a "designated instructor." This HAS to be someone who is at the field regularly. If you have somewhere to safely store it, leave it at the field, on trickle charge. Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"
We have gone through three in the last ten years. I learned on a Sig Cadet, it was destroyed by a member (NOT the club instructor) who wasn't paying attention to a trainee. Ditto with the second one. We have since gone to ARF's (I think the current one is a LT-40) and limited who can use them. Haven't had any problems. We have a free training session on Wednesday nights during the summer so the trainer gets lots of use.
And that person HAS to be an "instructor" who can fly! The "designated instructor" at our club field promptly destroyed our club trainer the first couple of times he used it.
Hey I guess we should use a 3-D plane then huh.. get it Dumb, Dumb, and Dumber. LOL Just a plane type. Hence "Trainer" some folk just pick everything apart. What fun we have. Eddie Fulmer
Trainer = easy to fly, slow, good glide ratio, flat bottom wing, plenty of dihedral, trike gear, low wing loading, radio that's trainer box compatible, easy to repair, tough, reliable engine with a low pitch prop, and etc. Want more? Just ask. IMHO
No good deed goes unpunished. For years, we trained anyone without question with most of them joining our club. We had a couple of guys who received full flight instruction, including soloing. After they were trained, we never saw them again. I overheard one trainee telling another that he was not going to "Pay our dues and conform to our rules" and as soon as he was comfortable in the air, he was "outta here." That was really hard to understand, at the time, club dues were only $25.00 per year with no initiation fee. We have now limited flight instruction to three sessions. After that time, a newbie is expected to join our club and AMA. Weeds out some of the PIA's and the guys who feel safety rules don't apply to them.
From the club I have just joined I have figured out a couple of things about "safety" rules. They can be presented in two ways safety "rules" which is that the presentation to the prospective pilot is more about rules than safety. and "safety" rules which is what my club has done to me. as a full size pilot of more years than I care to think of and currently working as "oil field trash" which has safety "rules" through and through. the local club I have joined has been absolutely superb about presenting the expected behaviour on the flightline to be about enhancing the safety of spectators and other pilots by your own behaviour rather than saying I had to follow rule x y and z to be a member of the club. This makes me feel that to be a responsible pilot I have to look after others (which I do as an instructor, full size) rather than saying I have to do all these things to be a member of the club.
it's about motivation. If you motivate pilots to look out for the welfare of others who may be affected by their activities then the onus is on them to look out for others.
if you try to make people follow rules for the sake of rules then they (and I) will tell you to "poke it up yer erse"
If you have a string of people telling you that you are wrong, then despite the fact that you have been doing this for the last 20 years, you REALLY need to examine why they are saying this. Curtailing their training and MAKING them join the AMA is only partially solving the problem.
My experience with a club trainer..... When I was president of our club I got several to donate money and equipment to supply a club trainer for just the reasons stated below. (To give a newbie that had lost his plane a bridge until he could get his ship back in the air so that he didn't miss training.) No one wanted to maintain, store and bring the plane to the field on training night. Also, the effort to maintain the ship wasn't justified in the actual use it got.
There are just too many problems with a club trainer. For example, who gets to fly it? Can it be used for the landing phase of training? How many times can one trainee use the club plane? Can a trainee use it for all his training? Who buys the fuel? Who repairs it? If the trainee crashes it, who pays for the next trainer? I could add more, but you get the point.
Our trainer was tried for two seasons and it was raffled off at the end of the second season.
It is an unusual club than can successfully operate a club trainer.
dlt
Dan Thompson (AMA 32873, EAA 60974, WB4GUK, GROL) remove POST in address for email
I guess I'm sorta on the other side of the fence here.
I'm not to the point that I feel the need to join a club or that I feel the need for training, as I'm still flying the almost indestructable park fliers. However, I did look into at least one club around here.
If I remember correctly, dues are $55 plus a $15 intiation fee, plus you have to join the AMA, which is another $65. Okay, that's $135. I've looked around, and some of the recommended trainers can be had for about $300 for everything you need. (Shipping not included.) That means that the cost of the clubs is over a third of the cost of the hardware.
Besides that, I'm not a joiner. I understand the need to pay for upkeep on the field. I understand that the AMA provides insurance and that's a good thing. And maybe there will come a time when I want the things a club offers (mainly a place to fly larger equipment).
Right now though, I just want to become better at flying, and at my level, I can do that with park flyers. I'd like to get trained but if it means I have to shell out over $400 for a plane and a club membership in which I'm not very interested, I won't do it.
I guess what it boils down to is that I don't -- at the moment -- see what joining a club does for *me* that makes it worth $135. When I find the things that make it worthwhile, then I'll pay the money happily.
However, you think a Club, composed of people that have already paid their dues, is supposed to have some member/s that are willing to purchase, maintain, and provide for YOU or YOU ".... won't do it."
So what is your point? Well, IMO, you can keep on truckin' and don't bother stopping at my field.
Oh, BTW, I do provide, keep, and maintain a "Club Trainer" .60 size, but not for cheap-skate newbies. I allow it for unit-demonstrations, initial introductions, and INSTRUCTOR training, but not for the "I don't know if I like it or not" crowd. For those, I could not care less.
Ours will be used for mostly the same thing. Just demos and occasionally we offer a free try at the sticks at our fun flys or people can set up an appointment to try and fly. To train people before they join your club on a trainer that is maintained by the club is nuts. I like to give folks a "test drive" if they want. I think it's good public relations. And we all know that we need that. Eddie Fulmer AMA 63713
"Efulmer" kirjoitti viestissä news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m23.aol.com...
This brings up the question of how usual it is that a club will provide you instruction if you are a newbie. I don´t expect to get anything for free (of course if I do, I don´t complain about that either! =) Now, I have a PPL and it sure wasn´t cheap but the instruction was excellent, I got my instruction in a club. I also once was a member of an rc club, didn´t get any instruction although most people say I´m pretty social, helpful and nice myself, so I don´t think that was the problem. There were regular club evenings and quite a few members every time, but they just didn´t care to help you out, they were quite good themselves though, so I guess they just didn´t have the time to talk to you. Of course, maybe this just happened to be the wrong club for a newbie, a bit elitist, but still the questions remain: How usual is it that there is any kind of instruction for newbies that have joined the club, be it spontaneous or organized? Over here I believe almost everyone, me included, buys their own gear and then search for a club or tries to find some assistance through other channels. Some of course tries it all alone....crash, boom, bang (been there, tried that also=)
A lot depends on the club itself and the collective attitude of it's members. While my club doesn't have an official club "trainer", we do have 2 or 3 guys who are very experienced and usually fly scale airplanes but who also make it a point to keep a Kadet or Telemaster on hand for the express purpose of giving new guys a couple of lessons on a buddy box (and then the new guys BETTER have their own airplane ready to fly) as well as to give stick time to potential new members at fun-fly's etc. We even have an "official" new-member training program where we have several designated volunteers who offer to train newbies up to the point where the new flyers can take off and land by themselves. What typically happens, however, is that ANY of us at the field at the same time as a newbie always offer to help them out with training because the designated instructors aren't always there at the same time as the newbies are.
MJC
"Ken Mattsson" wrote in message news:25bLb.2952$ snipped-for-privacy@reader1.news.jippii.net...
We do a Delta Dart construction project at a yearly festival here. The club buys 200 Delta Darts and the glue, six to ten members help with construction and flight trimming. This is all free to the kids, and a big hit. Invariably, we are asked about R.C. flying, what it costs, and how to get involved. What we tell them is:
You can come out to the field on Wednesday nights and Sundays. You can fly the club trainer on the buddy box with an instructor. You can do this for three sessions without charge. After that time, the R.C. bug should have either bitten you, or left you alone. If you decide to join, we will train you to fly. We have attracted a number of new members doing this. Bill
If I gave that impression, I'm sorry. No, I don't expect anyone to purchase or maintain equipment for me. No, I'll provide my own equipment.
I edited something out of my original message, and perhaps I shouldn't have. I sail. I've taught sailing to friends. I learned to sail at a club. I paid something like $200 for six or eight lessons, and I used their equipment. I now own two boats and at one point owned three.
If I hear someone wants to look into sailing now, I'm happy to take them out and let them get a feel for what it's like to sail. We use my boat and hopefully he or she can get a good idea of what it's like.
I do it because I love to sail and because I love to introduce people to sailing.
My point in all this is that I feel there must be people out there who teach for the love of the hobby, *not* to get people to join a club.
But I still think what I said is basically true, and not just for me. Any club out there has to provide something worthwhile for its members. From my perspective, it seems that most of what they provide is a flying field. That's obviously an important thing. But for me, someone who isn't really interested in building, who isn't interested in fuel planes, and who plans to fly park flyers close to home, what does that club have to offer?
"Not for cheap-skate newbies". Well, I guess I'm both, which may be what irritates you. But how are us cheap-skate newbies ever going to know whether we want to move up from our little park fliers if everyone has attitudes like yours?
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