ORIGINAL: TonyF
I can just see all the canopies blowing downwind after a dust devil moves through the pits.
We have lived for decades with all the dangers of IC engines without putting a single rule in to the pattern event about how you will start your engine, or how it will be restrained while you start your engine, or how it will be put on to the runway, or how it will be shut off or how it will be removed from the runway. Our normal process of having your model carried out by a helper to the runway, positioned for take-off, then picked up at the end of the flight isn't even in the rules. We allow people to go out on to an active runway without any process defined in the rules for their safety at every pattern meet I have been to since 1975. Why has that worked for all these years? Because for the most part we are responsible people who are interested not only in our own safety but the safety of the others at the field. That has worked pretty well up to now.
I'm sorry, I am against adding this rule to the pattern event.
Tony, if you had not noticed, I am not the author of the rule being proposed, nor am I trying to convince you that it is necessary to pass. I did try to clarify that since it has now been re-written in the form of a requirement, that you now have options as to how you will meet it if it does pass. If you don't like the idea of removing your canopy, theneither find another way to meet it, or maybe a way to defeat it instead.
Hey, that ryhmes!