So here's the situation:
I've been looking into various clubs in my area lately, and I've noticed they all lack a paved surface to fly from, and most are actually pretty cramped flying space wise.
Now, this is the way to go if your flying something big, fast, and noisy, and you need a dedicated space cleared for the sole purpose of larger RC planes. But if your strictly an electric park flyer like myself, the idea of paying $100 a year in membership dues (on top of AMA membership) to a field you can't even ROG from, isn't exactly appealing.
Put another way, if my flying site choices are between paying $100 a year to hand launch my Park planes from a grass strip...
...or this:
The choice of flying site is pretty clear.
One problem is that flying alone is both risky (always good to have a spotter, and someone to answer questions from on-lookers while you concentrate on flying), and well, boring. We all put lots of time into our skills and our aircraft, so it's always nice to receive complements, advice, and tips from fellow pilots.
The other problem with park type areas is that they aren't dedicated to RC flying. This might surprise some of you, but that runway in the picture above is sometimes used to play
basketball of all things
. This means I'm often shut out of my pristine landing surface.
So here's where I'm going with this: I'm looking to put together a "park squadron" of sorts. basically, it would be a collection of park pilots around the area (I'm north of Philly in Bucks Co. PA myself). The idea is that if I come upon my local field, see the court..er, runway is open, I text/call/email/smoke signal the other squad mates that we have an airfield, and it might be worth the drive over. I also imagine weekend "park storms," where the squadron meets up at a given location, and spends the day moving from site to site, flying at different fields/locations.
So here's My questions:
1: thoughts/suggestions on the best places to get the word out and start recruiting?
2: General thoughts on the idea?
3: if there was an organization like this in your area, would you be interested?
4: is there anyone from southeast PA reading this whose interested
?
What say ye airmen?