What do you consider?

Most of us are at work....

remove my-wife to reply :-)

Thanks Icrashrc. Never gave that a thought.

Mike

Did you read the last sentance to my post? Obviously not!

You may want to consider what to do when private land is not the best choice. Consider a large residential area. Nothing but small lots with houses on them. Now place it next to a military base or national park! Now you're dealing with DoD or DoI. Or you're driving a long way!

Or what if the area is all farm and horse country. Farmers are notorious for not letting modelers trample through their fields. And in horse country? Forget it! Don't even go there.

Private ownership will not happen over night. It will take years of effort and probably never really be completed. So in the meantime, the traditional means of obtaining flying sites is still required.

And that only considers the ballistic portion. Now add the big, multi-HP saw at the front.....

Not only that but there are VERY FEW national parks within ready access to many fliers.

Suppose you point to a map with lots of houses next to national parks with land suitable for model flying.

Since you are not active in the AMA or in site acquisition for local clubs, I think you really don't know much about dealing with land owners and public offices in that respect. There are a few sites that I know of that were on military land and are not part of county parks. Mather AFB is a prime example.

By and large, most flying sites are either on private land or under local jurisdicton. You don't see much of ANY niche recreational facilities managed at the national level.

supervisor,

#1 promotion of the hobby. To do that the AMA needs to sell off most of Muncie and utilize those proceeds for field acquisitions across the country. Muncie has become a cost prohibitive arrangement for the AMA membership. Join ranks with clubs in major metro area's to have regional AMA regional sites all around the country. These regional sites sould become first class sites with a local club as the main tenant to use, maintain and relinquish a few weekends and a week per year. Those times would be for AMA regional and national events. The AMA should support the local orginazation to privately acquire the flying site and overflight area. First class fields will generate new members. And utilizing metro area's will servo two purposes. Larger population to gain new members from, and metro area's are having some of the worst problems maintaining flying sites. The second aspect of that would be for the AMA to become a mortgage security company. i.e. loan or cosign field acquisition funds to clubs seeking to acquire land for a permanent flying site. #2 lobby and lead efforts to maintain appropriate FCC frequencies and radio technology to utilize technical achivements in the commercial networking and radio world and apply those to our equipment.

Phil

"C.O.J> Hmmmm! My last attempt at a serious topic manage to elicit one serious

Not necessarily national park, but certainly lots of federal land in the greater DC area. Lots of homes there too! Doesn't take an idiot to figure that one out.

Exactly! Can you figure out why? Maybe the a$$hole factor ruined it for everyone. Question is, who were the bigger a$$holes? The modelers or the government?

Phil,

You one of very few who are willing to really discuss this without turning it into a flame war. Congrats for being open and fair minded.

I agree with you as far as the promotion goes. Don't know as dumping most of Muncie would do any good or not. To really help clubs obtain fields, the AMA is going to need more funds than Muncie will provide. I have some ideas but, I doubt they would be given a fair chance. Judging by what I've seen here and other forums, there are many who don't like ideas they didn't think of themselves. Too bad too!

Chuck

How about NMRA asking the national park to build a huge garden scale layout for model railroading enthusiats instead of a R/C site. Sounds more fair to me??? How does that sound to you???

222 Flying Field Reading Pa, R/C club located on a farm. Check the AMA site for there listing. I think they are more heli oriented then planes but there site is in the middle of a field surrounded by crops. Just one example I am sure there are more. Located in area, maybe about 15mi away is a recreational park which has boating, fishing, hiking, swimming, and my fav, hunting. The areas set aside by the Pa Game Commission have crops planted on them....not sure on the arrangement between the Pa GC and local farmers, but to make a long story short you can hunt ( usually the crops are cultivated by deer season, but around small game some are up ) there hike there and horseback ride. You can also fly a R/C planes there......glow or electric seaplane on the water, electric in the fields.....its pretty much open but common sense will tell you not to fly anything huge.

The above C.O. are examples of how state/local governments can work together to provide the community with a valuable resource. The R/C field is privately owned but seems to work for them.

Mike

What are you talking about? What a$$hole modelers? Why haven't YOU gotten any flying sites on federal land?

Jones,

Do you know how much was spent on that site? And what CONTINUES to be spent on it? Land acquisition alone accounted for over $3 million. Split that up among the 11 districst and you would have had almost $300,000 per district for leverage to purchase local sites.

I personally would not want a lot of flying sites to exist on the whims of federal politicians. One senator has a bad experience with a modeler or site and you could kiss the whole lot away. As it is now, a disgruntled politician may ger one or two sites closed at most.

Actually I've seen Senators help flying sites far more than not. But I've seen many a site lost due to bumbling feather merchants protecting their precious government jobs and refusing to help in any way. But again my point is the AMA should push these departments to establish basic policy at the top. This then would serve as guidance for the over paid, under educated LIFERs down the food chain.

established.

You're right Paul. All modelers are as sweet and kind as can be! Especially you! :)

And for the record, I don't need a site on fed land. I own my own!