RE: Do you think the FAA should be sticking its nose into our hobby?
Poll observations...
As of Monday morning, a good day and a half after starting the poll, the percentages have somewhat stabilized at roughly 25% of the respondants saying that they DO welcome FAA involvement. On the other hand, and clearly the majority of opinion, roughly 53% say that the FAA should butt out. (The numbers don't add up to 100% because I'm not including the votes for "I'm not sure" and "I hate polls".)
While the numbers indicate a little more than a 2 to 1 ratio, I'm surprised that the votes haven't been overwhelmingly against FAA involvement in our hobby. (Let's face it - The government doesn't have a sterling reputation when it comes to sticking its nose into something in order to try to fix it.) However, with almost a third of the respondants saying that they think the FAA should step in, I'm inclined to wonder why. Is it that these members possibly feel that our hobby is starting to get out of control and they would like to see some minimal FAA guidance now instead of more-smothering legislation in the future?
The small number (just 4%) of votes for "I'm not sure" tell me that very few folks haven't already made up their minds one way or the other on this matter. This tells me that the issue invokes strong passionate opinions in folks. That's not too surprising. (Again, we're talking about the government's welcome or unwelcome involvement here.) Such a low number of "undecideds" also indicates that most folks have already made up their minds before knowing what the FAA's proposals are. It'll be interesting to see if the yes/no percentages change after the FAA publishes its NPRM.
Sadly, 40 guys (14% of the overall number of contributers) chose to throw their vote away by clicking on "I hate polls like this" instead of contributing to the poll in a positive way. I guess my watermelon did its job.
Harvey