RC or not, it goes here.
| Author | Message | Date Posted |
| Fettah | Discussion: Safety Rules and Practices
Steve,
Thank you for agreeing to host our first AeroJunkies Education & Research Organization (AERO) meeting. Thursday evenings are generally good for me, as long as it is after my kids have both gone to bed (usually after 8:30pm; would this be too late?). How does the evening of November 19th, Thursday look on your calendar? If this night is good for you, then let’s hear what the rest of the group has to say.
Here is my first stab at AeroJukies Field Rules:
I ..., a dedicated member of AeroJunkies, agree to:
1) Keep an active AMA Open or Park Pilot membership and obey the official AMA Safety Code and all Safety Rules contained in the AMA official Model Aircraft Regulations.
2) Fly aircraft powered by fuel-burning engines ONLY on designated club fields, NEVER on public fields.
3) Seek help from more experienced pilots if I am new to the hobby or planning to fly an aircraft that is above my current experience level.
4) Upon my arrival at the field, check with all fellow pilots the in-use frequencies in order to avoid any dangerous frequency conflicts.
5) Perform a ground equipment check, which includes, but is not limited to, the aircraft, radio, control surfaces, motor(s), connections, battery, landing gear, and wing attachment system. I will not fly my aircraft unless all components pass this inspection.
6) Perform a range check if the aircraft and/or radio gear is new or has been modified recently.
7) Establish a flight line, or obey an existing flight line if one has already been established.
8) Take off from and land on designated landing areas only, except in special circumstances such as hand-launch, emergency landing, aero tow, catapult-assisted take off etc.
9) Call out take offs, landings, low passes, touch-and-go, emergencies, entering/crossing runway for everyone to hear and to confirm.
10) Fly clear over people and crowded areas, and be courteous towards spectators and other people sharing the field.
Steve – As our lawyer member you are very welcome to modify it to your heart’s content.
AeroJunkies - I tried to keep it simple and unrestrictive. Please let me know if you have any changes or additions. After we finalize it, we can post it on our website.
Thank you,
Fettah
| 11/6/2009
1:45:55 PM |
| Fettah | Scott's Reply
well boys this is what use to come to my email I GAVE UP THAT BIG BOY TOY FOR MY TOY PLANES. iam i different animal from you all.,as i have said before i was a biker for 23yrs ive hung out with angels ,sharks, vets,rum pots, not use to rules and regs!!.now iam an aerojunkie and happy to one. .to me its just common sense we go there for a fun fly we tape off safe areas fly area and landing strip you guys are going to far for me iam not liking it at all. like artie said we are toy plane rebels fly where we want when we want what we want ,and to play devil when i meet fetta for the second time, you derek and artie you guys where flying at the Belmont park full of kids and parents flying over houses, streets loaded with traffic, parents, kids ,dogs,and landing on a basket ball court with kids shooting hoops . i was horrified by that site!! i couldn't believe you guys where flying with all those people there .now miter is a walk in the park compared to t! hat.and we need rules NOT. we don't need all this shit just simple common sense..think about it common sense, not rules and regs, and to worried about if we can use the field wtf first come first serve.iam bummin out boys this isnt fun to me!!! sorry to bring you down thats the reallity i see . its just common fucking sence EFNHA
COMMON SENSE
| 11/6/2009
1:47:00 PM |
| Fettah | Fettah's Reply to Scott
Scott – Thank you very much for voicing your opinion. I very much respect it, and I do not think we are in disagreement in principle. Yes, Artie, Derek and I used to fly at Grove St Park during soccer and baseball practices. We were careful not to buzz people or land too close to crowded areas. Our planes used to be smaller and slower as well. Still, we received quite a bit of heat from parents and umpires. They even called the cops on us one time, although we were flying over the empty soccer field during a baseball practice. That’s one of the reasons we do not fly at that park very often anymore. Our group has overgrown those parks and school fields, in number as well as in level of aircraft, and I love the fact that we have more people to talk to and share this wonderful hobby with. Every morning, AeroJunkies emails are the first ones that I read. I used to walk one block to Grove St Park to fly my planes; now I don’t mind at all to pack up my car and drive up to Mitre Field or Burlington RC Field to meet all you guys. As my skills increased, I have overgrown Grove St Park, so I moved on. I may still go to the park for a couple short flights when it is not crowded, but my interest has shifted to larger fields where I can share my passion with other fellow pilots.
Small parks are still good for individual flying or for 2-3 people flying together. When we were just a small group, Artie, Derek and I used to do that. In a setting like that, 2-3 small aircraft in the air do not attract much negative attention. Every pilot is responsible of their own mishaps and accidents. Everyone is somewhat covered by AMA’s insurance, as long as they follow AMA’s regulations and rules. However, the story changes quickly as the group size exceeds 3 pilots. Concentrating on your aircraft while keeping an eye on other aircraft and people around becomes quite difficult, if not outright impossible. This is the exact situation where a handful of tried-and-proven rules can help make the flying environment safer and the tasks at hand more manageable. AeroJunkies is growing quickly, and it is a good thing. It means that we are going to reach the critical mass required to establish ourselves as a chartered club, hence be able to request from city administrations permits to use certain fields and parks and indoor places such as gyms. We will be taken much more seriously as an established club. It may also give us the ability to get insurance for our members that will protect us better in case of (god forbid) a serious accident. When I consider all the perks and benefits we will get as a club, it is a no brainer in my opinion; I hope you all agree.
If there are some of you who do not care about any rules and regulations and want to fly your aircraft any way you like, hey it is your plane and your choice; you can do it on your own whenever you want and wherever you want. But when we are flying as a group, each of us is representing the rest of the group as well, hence we automatically get assigned some additional responsibilities.
Scott – I am assuming that you read the draft of ten rules in my last email. Did you see anything that was restrictive or against having fun? If you did, please specifically point it out. Saying “no f…g rules” is a non-starter. Please share your opinion on how we can improve this list. As I said in my previous email, “Please let me know if you have any changes or additions.” These are the unspoken rules we follow most if the time and forget to follow occasionally. I just put them in writing for better impact. In my opinion, every single one of these 10 proposed rules is a part of what you call “common sense”. And believe me, I have been working at a science center in the last three years with over thousand users, and even at Harvard “common sense” is not always that common. I deal with user neglect and small accidents on a daily basis. The other day a user filled a plastic container with water, placed it on a heater, set the heater to 250C (almost 500F), and left it overnight. You can imagine the mess I found in the morning. Fortunately it did not start a fire, but the lab smelled of burnt plastic for hours. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that “common sense”; we can use these rules as a pre-flight checklist or as mnemonic tools.
AEROJUNKIES - PLEASE DO NOT STAY SILENT! VOICE YOUR OPINIONS AS SCOTT AND ARTIE DID, SO WE CAN DISCUSS AND WORK OUT AN OPTIMAL SOLUTION.
Thank you for your patience listening to my ramblings,
Fettah
| 11/6/2009
1:48:11 PM |
| Fettah | Our Lawyer-at-large Steve's Response
Hi everyone,
Well, there has certainly been a lively and frank discussion among a number of us as to the purposes and goals of the budding AeroJunkies club. Some of these have been "subcommittee" communications with the..er...uh..., shall we say, more libertarian members, who considerately avoided exposing the entire group to a diatribe that could have taken the entire Raytheon mail server offline. :-) Having given all of this further thought in light of everyone's comments (including Fettah's latest email that arrived while I was writing this), here's where I am:
1. There are a number of folks who have been flying at Mitre Field, which has become our de facto home field, for years, in large part to avoid the rigors and restrictions of an official AMA-sanctioned airfield. Those folks were gracious enough to share their "little secret" with the rest of us, and I don't think it is either fair or appropriate for any of us, individually or collectively, to now plant our flag on the runway and tell them how things need to be done. I got the message, I heard it and I respect it. For those of you who fall into that category, you can relax. Big Brother is not moving in to start grounding your Fokkers because you didn't do a range check before flying. Let's just consider Mitre Field to be the designated "Live Free or Die" airfield. Part of the fun of this sport is that lawyers, scientists and biker dudes can stand side-by-side and enjoy the same thrills, experiences and camaraderie that are not so easily achieved at the Harvard Club or Laconia Bike Week. When any of us if up for a free-for-all, we can show up there and have at it. My one "legal" suggestion is that we should be very UNOFFICIAL when doing that so that there is in fact no argument that anyone's actions can create liability (legal or moral) for anyone else.
2. For those us who would also like to have the option of a more formal club that is more geared toward electric-powered planes made of light material (foam, balsa, etc.) than general AMA or Burlington RC Club membership and, yes, some safety rules that go with the territory, we can devote some effort to putting that in place as an independent endeavor. I think Fettah has a very good point that we can greatly expand our venue options by establishing some credibility as a formal organization that can show that it is reasonably self-regulated, responsible and appropriately insured. Obviously, there is little point in simply duplicating the efforts of the AMA and established local RC clubs like Burlington. From my perspective, what makes us different and worth forming a separate club is the fact that the kind of planes we fly SHOULDN'T NEED SO MANY RULES--certainly not the comprehensive set of regulations forming the AMA Safety Code (which I would not particularly want to incorporate by reference in their entirety as part of our own rules.). As Artie pointed out, no one is going to die or become a paraplegic from getting whacked in the head with a small or medium-sized electric-powered airplane made of foam, balsa or other light materials. For those of you who have spent some time at the Burlington RC Air Field, you can COMPLETELY understand why they absolutely need the types of rules that they live by. Some of their planes are half the size of my car, weigh in excess of 10 pounds and are made of much harder materials like wood and fiberglass. Those really could kill or maim another pilot or a bystander. Therefore, I believe that the more laid-back and less formal environment that we all crave is only possible if our number one rule is limiting ourselves to small-to-medium sized lightweight electric powered planes. No gas, no glo, no copter blades that can behead one of us or a bystander. I'm not going to try to come up with an exact set of specifications--we all know what we mean by "small-to-medium sized lightweight electric powered planes" and SHOULD be able to use our common sense in choosing what we fly as part of this particular group. Assuming that we can reach agreement on this fundamental point, then I think we can limit our rules and restrictions to those few that are truly necessary to avoid serious injury to person or property other than the planes themselves. If we lose $600 worth of planes in a mid-air crash or an Ultra Micro Sukhoi or Mustang whacks me in the ass, big deal. What I think we need to avoid is landing my 55" wing-span Apprentice on a busy street that could cause an auto accident or put it through some neighbor's picture window at full throttle. I also don't want to get a nose job from my or someone else's Typhoon's aerobatic propeller (man that's a scary piece of plastic!). So that's basically what I'm talking about. Obviously, we don't need the same rules to fly the kinds of planes we could fly on an indoor basketball court that we would need to fly 15-pound fiberglass behemoths.
3. As for "common sense," it's a nice catch phrase, but we all have very different definitions of the term based on our individual competencies and what turns us on. Scott, I personally wouldn't be caught dead on a motorcycle, no less take New Hampshire up on its invitation to pave its streets with my brains by not even wearing a helmet. At the same time, you might very well think that I lack common sense for wearing a bunch of razor-sharp tempered-steel equipment to climb up frozen waterfalls in New Hampshire or climb 20,000+ foot mountains in the Andes where I'm stepping over 500-foot-deep hidden cracks in the glacier (incidentally, my mother is clearly of that opinion). So, that's why I think it's worth spending an hour over some pizza and beer to try to come to some consensus on what we think "common sense" is in this context. You can save the date of Thursday, November 19 at 8:30 pm at 7 Coolidge Road in Winchester, but I am just awaiting confirmation from my wife that she has no objection to hosting a bunch of overgrown kids talking about their toys.
All the best to everyone, and (dare I say) let's have fun and be safe!
Steve
| 11/6/2009
3:02:00 PM |