law

I assume from your address that you are in the UK somewhere. If so, you should post this msg to uk.rec.models.radio-control. Regards, Gord Schindler MAAC6694

That is the case only if you need insurance to fly somewhere. For instance, we have a county flying facility here in Kansas City. The law says that you have to get a permit to use the flying field. The two requirements for getting a permit are a $15 fee and 1 million dollar liability insurance coverage. The only reason for the insurance being set at $1 million is because that is the status quo as established by AMA.

The practical effect of this is that if you want to use the local field in Kansas City, you have to get AMA membership and a park permit.

If you don't want to use the local field, you can just go to any open space with no trees, power lines or radio interference and fly, as long as you have the owner's permission to avoid breaking trespassing laws. On the other hand, in case your plane goes out of control and breaks something or somebody, it is nice to have liability coverage. And any land owner can set any requirements that he wants, such as having liability insurance, etc. You can probably attach this to your homeowner's insurance, but you'll have to check with your insurance agent. If it is set at a comparable level to vehicle liability, which is generally well under $100,000, it just might even be affordable. (wouldn't that be great, if we could actually have competition for all the stupid insurance that we have to carry in our lawsuit-crazed society today...)

The only exception to all of this is if you are in a town that happens to have local laws governing the operation of radio controlled models, but as far as I know, most places don't have anything on the books. I'm pretty sure that you're not supposed to fly them at controlled airports, but you can check on that, too. Small airports with no tower and very little traffic are often good places to fly.

Back to your original question about the law, it is a local matter, and in most places there is no law. This simply means that you have to find a place with a friendly owner who will let you fly, which is the same situation RC fliers have been in for the past 50 years.

There is no 'law' per se; that is, no national law.

What laws may exist are at the municipal or county level, and even those are few and far between.

There may be laws concerning noise levels, laws concerning trespass (most common), and laws regulating or prohibiting specific activities in public places.

Further, most of those municipal laws are not laws as such, they are 'ordinances', and while having the effect of law vis a vis enforceability, are _much_ more easily modified as time and circumstances change.

You need to contact your local municipality and/or county to find out what ordinances may be in effect with respect to flying model aircraft.

The vast majority of municipalities and counties have no such laws or ordinances.

Having said that, there is nearly always some ordinance or other under which a disgruntled neighbor can cause the model aviator a bit of grief, usually local noise ordinances or restrictions on the various uses of public land (baseball fields, for example, are normally reserved strictly for playing baseball). Cheers, Fred McClellan the dash plumber at mindspring dot com

Ahemm! The AMA guidlines are no more the LAW of the land than is racial discrimination.

But like racial discrimination, there are those who would have the AMA guidelines BE the law of the land. And they're living in much the same fantasy world as the racists.

Klown Prince Kevie Kline once again spouts his love of the AMA.

Good question, that I'm also interested in but what part of the world are you talking about? I'm guessing UK but post headers aren't always a good indicator.

| That is the case only if you need insurance to fly somewhere. For | instance, we have a county flying facility here in Kansas City. The law | says that you have to get a permit to use the flying field. The two | requirements for getting a permit are a $15 fee and 1 million dollar | liability insurance coverage. The only reason for the insurance being | set at $1 million is because that is the status quo as established by | AMA.

Gotta love how you only need around $50k or so of insurance to legally drive your car (Texas, for example, requires `20/40/15' coverage, which means that the *maximum* paid for a single accident is $55k), but they require $1000k to fly a R/C airplane ...

| The only exception to all of this is if you are in a town that happens | to have local laws governing the operation of radio controlled models, | but as far as I know, most places don't have anything on the books. I'm | pretty sure that you're not supposed to fly them at controlled airports, | but you can check on that, too. Small airports with no tower and very | little traffic are often good places to fly.

Some people do fly at or near coordinated airports, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's coordinated with and allowed by the airport. I'm not sure if it's a law, FAA regulation or just common sense that requires that coordination, but whatever it is, it

*is* required :)

Or even on uk.rec.models.radio-control.air. But well spotted Gord, most of the others missed the clues!

DrClean - NP's reply covers most of the relevant points. In addition we're all (in the UK) covered by the Air Navigation Order which primarily regulates "full-scale" flying but has some relevance to models. More details at

and while you're there, the rest of the BMFA website is worth a browse around for general information.

When it works, it's good sense. When it doesn't, it's law. And believe it or not, the FAA is genuinly interested in helping R/C as much as possible. Now if only some other three letter organizations would do the same.

That's exactly what I was thinking. It's a funny point of human psychology. Something can be very dangerous (driving), but if everybody does it then we have to make it easy and practical. But if something is done by only 5% or less of the population, then it doesn't matter what obstacles are put in the way or how dangerous it really is. The average person says "RC planes? Isn't that dangerous? We certainly don't need to go out of our way to make it affordable!" There's no good reason for this attitude.

When you think about it, driving is extremely dangerous. I drive 50,000 miles a year in the Kansas City metro area as a courier, and I'm required to carry a million dollar liability policy. Couriers are generally experienced, good drivers and do not have many accidents. In fact, I haven't had an accident in 350,000 miles and 7 years that I have had this job. But they think it's reasonable to gouge us because we're on the road a lot and the level of protection is so high (to protect the employer from the driver of course). They suck about 140 dollars a month from my paycheck. It's ridiculous. Meanwhile, I'm a good driver, driving my route every day, watching a bunch of idiots changing lanes without looking behind them. My defensive skills keep me from getting run over by these knuckleheads, but they get to drive around as much as they want and pay measly $20/month premiums.

The whole system is crazy. If everything were truly based on statistical risk, I would bet that we would be able to get a very favorable homeowner's rider for a reasonable amount. I have actually asked my insurance agent, just to se if I could introduce some competition into the AMA/permit/liability/sanctioning/status quo racket. But because of human nature, the county requires that magical million dollar coverage, which I was informed would cost me around 2 to

3 hundred extra per year. The funny thing is that this amount is comparable to my total home insurance rate. Homeowner's insurance generally covers the structure plus accidents and liability stemming from your activities and conditions in your home. In certain circumstances it even covers your person outside of your home. But liability and lawsuits being what they are, if you increase your liablity coverage, you are only putting out bait for the ambulance chasing opportunists, which means that having high liability coverage is a liability in itself, which is why it costs so damned much.

It doesn't get any stupider'n that!

And you can look at the complete membership manual at.:

-- Red Scholefield AMA 951 Dist. V Leader Member/CD

You as an individual only have access to a 1 million dollar pot. (aggregate coverage) If 2 of your neighbors have accidents that result in $500,000 awards, the pot is empty when you have your accident.

The AMA has everyone convinced that they have X Million dollars of coverage and they don't and never have had...