Al Stein

Does anybody out there have sites that make it very impractical for all flying operations to be restricted to the area on one side of a straight or curved line? What do you do?

I could picture a little field tucked into the woods somewhere with nothing but trees and the sun on the far side of the runway and the only access on the near side...

Bill Aanstad

Good question -- club out west found out that flyin in the sun can result in self-inflicted mortal wounds with a .40 size airplane, they're hard to fly when ya can't see 'em; I've never been to Muncie (or Mecca) so don't know what the ideal flying site looks like, but according to the AMA rules it seems that the insurance should be real cheap since most sites and clubs do not comply and therefore members pay the premiums (AMA dues)yet won't be covered in event of an accident. Here in Illinois the sun changes position in the sky, setting in the west, so afternoon flyin means staring into the darn thing. Probably different in Indiana, tho

Al Stein

Hi Bill -- thanks for the resonse! I used to live in O'Fallon, but I wasn't flying back then. I do seem to remember, though, a huge open field for R/C flying in Mascouta (or was that Mosquito?)... here we're not so lucky!

tailskid

My Feedback: (34)

We fly at a rectangular field and in the summer months we have corn growing along two sides. Grrrrrrr....something wrong with carrots????

Anyway, concerning the sun....we just turn our back on Mr. Sun and fly 'downsun'....and yes, our field faces EAST!

Cool club...very little rules (#1 Fly safely and #2 Don't Break the Cardinal Sin concerning flying)

Jerry

DFWS

My Feedback: (8)

What is a FlightLine?
At the DFWS field we don't know what one is!
Nobody does or has ever heard of a Flight Line.
How does it work?
Is it like a powerline or something?
Who many volts does it take to operate 12V or 120V?

I heard there was something in the AMA rules somewere?
I think they are called the National Safety Code? is that correct.
But nobody reads them darn rules anyway? and
The AMA never checks on our club to see if we follow the rules or not? We must be following them darn rules or we be in trouble I'm
sure.

Our club is real safe. Nobody has been killed out there yet!
We don't need no Flight line. Never had one and never will.
We fly Oldtimers out of the trunks of our cars. and take off
from the clubhouse doors because we don't like to walk out
to that tar road in the grass thats shaped like a hill for drainage.

We have a good safety record anyway, I have only seen 4 people
get hit by by them little toy airplanes, 3 cars in the parking lot, 4 or 5 frequency conflicts resulting in shootdowns and no more than
a half dozon hands had to be stiched up at the emergency room.

Al Stein

Thank you, wen friend, for that most illucidating diatribe.

Hey Jerry, I think I've seen your field... what you need is some nice trees like we have up here! Anyway, thanks for the input.

I'd love to see my club make a conscious decision to either obey the guidelines as published, publish a concensus interpretation and see how if it's good enough, or just state outright that we won't enforce that rule.

I really thought that a lot of clubs would be in this boat, but maybe most people everywhere are like most people where I live... the rules say that the insurance doesn't hold when you're flying in violation of the rules, so make sure you plan your mishaps to be on the legal side of the flight line and you don't have to worry.

Jim Branaum

My Feedback: (3)

One of our fields has trees on 2 sides and high tension wires 453 feet from the runway center on the approach path. We have two kinds of flyers, them that have and them that will. Once in the last 20 years we managed to put the power out when someone draped a Telemaster across both sides of the high lines. Blew the monocote off, fried EVERYTHING inside, and killed the power.

We have (stupidly) attempted to protect the wires through the adoption of rules. That does not work as well as a simple education program and monitoring by the experienced flyers. We have also learned to be very careful crafting our rules because we discovered that sometimes the verbiage used is enough to sink you. Simple clauses properly used can help unless clear and malicious rule breaking activities abound.

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

What I don't understand is, why is the simple concept of "flight line" so difficult to understand? Can you not stand in the same general area, face the same general direction, and take off and land in the same general location? That's all there is to a flight line. It doesn't have to be a concrete wall, or anything formally established. The rule is written in generic terms. It means, "I'm standing here, and I'm taking off and landing over there, therefore somewhere between here and there is the flight line."

Al Stein

If I implied that I'm too dim witted to understand what a flightline is, I really didn't mean to.

You see, somewhere in the US there is at least one club whose parking, spectator, set-up and run-up areas, flight line (if I understand the term now), and runway all reside in a forest clearing not much larger than my driveway at home.

What I was looking to find out was whether any of my peers, if or when faced with the decision of either

• Flying only over a rather close-in tree line and looking into the sun, or
• using a standard left-hand pattern whose downwind leg runs over an unused field on the other side of the road (which would be behind them as they faced the runway) --

I was wondering whether anybody would consider flying on the other side of that road... That was the question. Get it?

Now I can see by your post that you're very clever, so I'm sure that you've already realized this: to fly as I've described is quite legal: the AMA proscription allows me to fly anywhere on the far side of a straight or curved line behind which I and the specatators must stay, so all I need do is to define my flight line by a line whose curve encloses the pilots but leaves the runway on the west AND the road and field on the east on the opposite side from the pilot. Pilot and spectators both within the curve, runway, road, and field beyond outside. Understand?

teefly-RCU

i would like to see documentation on "the club out west" that had an accident with a 40 size flying into the sun. what club was it and do they by chance have a website. our club is currently building a new field donated county property at our local small full scale airport. it is on the east side of the full scale runway facing directly into the sun. our club is just like other clubs i have been in up through the years and generally flies afternoon sessions. some members are against this site location due to the safety issues and health issues (going blind!) but club officers insisit that all will be well and the club is moving forward with development. i have been flying for 25 years and do not worry about my ability to fly there if it is all we have. my concern is all the newbies (90% of our members) ending up with out of control planes. how in the world can ama cover a claim with the flights directly into the sun? in these days of insurance companies looking for any little reason not to pay will ama cover us in case of accidents? i'd love to hear from an ama offical on this question.

Geistware

My Feedback: (16)

We fly on a land fill.
Land Fills have methane vent pipes.
We have a vent pipe inline with the runway
The vent pipe has MANY marks!
Enough Said!

Gordo-ProBro

What a fun thread. We have several problems like this. we have to fly under or over the sun in the mornings. We have lots of room at the ends of and around the ends of the runways, but new rules forbid flight on the other side of a straight line. So what does a guy do? (What do you think a guy does?)

Gordon

J_R

Go to the AMA web site. Choose "About AMA". Choose "Whats New". Choose "News from AMA archives". Find the article titled "Accident in Arizona".

JR

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

Al Stein,

THAT is exactly what I'm talking about. In that case, you have a U-shaped flight line. It's the concept of "me here, plane there, flight line somewhere in between." The whole flight line rule is designed to keep you from intentionally flying directly over your head and the heads of spectators, especially when flying low and close-in.

The purpose of my original post was not to belittle you or your question in any way. Sorry if you thought that.

4*60

My Feedback: (41)

A flexible flight line written up in the rules would be good, I would think. We don't have that available because we have a "cliff" behind us. I've often pondered avoiding sun by moving the flightline back and forth.
The only time I heard a change in flightline ridiculed was the story of someone who came out to fly, promptly crossed the runway and went flying from the opposite side that everyone else was flying from. He never came back to that field!

phayd

We actually have 2 flight lines/ runways, depending on the wind/ time of day.

One flight line is nnw/ssw and the other is ene/wsw. They cross out in the flight area, and the pits are in the nw quadrant.

It is generally decided by the windsock/sun which direction is the flight line.

Gordo-ProBro

phayd, I'm jealous. We used to have that system too. But there came idiots among us (they may have been there before me, who knows). Imagine standing at the pilot's station, when from somewhere behind you a plane tales off up and nearly over youre head! Seems that guy thought he'd rather use the other runway! And there were other el stupidos. So now there is one runway, helis use the other full time. And that's life in the big city, or way in the country as i happens to be.

Gordon

phayd

Ours is laid out in such a way that there really isn't a chance of this. Even if el stupido takes off behind you, the plane never nears flight area. Now if the person is el supremo stupido, and makes the wrong turn after take-off...

Al Stein

Oops, didn't realize it but I guess I was actually in violent agreement. Sorry 'bout that. I apologize for the overreaction.

The AMA wording concerned me because I read it to imply that such a flight line would put planes clear behind the pilots at some parts of the pattern, but still be forbidden because the planes pass anywhere behind.