Our club has around 80 members with maybe 50% active. Any weekend during good flying weather it gets quite busy. If you are the only one in the air your welcome to fly 3D, hover at a safe distance from the pits or flight line or fly back and forth down the center of the runway. Unfortunately it took instituting a rule stating if there was more than one plane in the air circuits were mandatory and no reversing maneuvers. Too many accidents and close calls with guys attempting or flying 3D while others were flying. Unfortunately most of the incidents involved 3D style of flying where reversing maneuvers and abrupt pull ups to a hover or vertical path without any kind of warning cause a few bad mid airs. The general consensus from the many clubs I have flown at is that everyone else gets along together in the air except those attempting to fly 3D while others are flying. Accurate or not that is the perception. One of the biggest events here in Ontario has had to curtail 3D flying to a time slot as many of the rest of the pilots were stating they would not attend if the guys were allowed to fly 3D while the others were flying circuits. And for those of you who think scale flying is easy try researching and building a good scale model then fly the maneuvers in a proto type manner with judging and see where you come out.

In my opinion there is too much elitism and if everyone respected each other regardless of the discipline, time, money or type of model flown the sky’s would be much friendlier.


Dennis