I absolutely love the wildness and dangerousness of AMA "santioned" combat and racing. When you "sign up" to play these games there is an unwritten understanding that you are voluntarily putting yourself and other participants at risk of injury or even worse.
As of 2013, I love the fact that we are still able to participate in these sports that an organization like OSHA would shutdown in a heartbeat.
Ideally, the hazards of these sports do not involve the unaware public and innocent bystanders what so ever, but they have. So far after 60+ years there have been very few trajedies that have involved the "public"...but there have been a few.
In this day and age I see people as being less tolerant than ever for their neighbor's "noise pollution", the height of their lawns, the color they want to paint their house and for anything else that poses even the slightest inconvenience or threat to their happiness and abilities to withstand even the slightest hardship, [like when they call 911 because of a car that wont start].
Have I said anything so far that is untrue..?
OK, let's move on.
I anticipate less tolerance, [more of a hair trigger so to speak] with the general public concerning issues that have to deal with their ability to go outside, jump in their cars and then go grab a bucket of KFC or some Happy Meals safely and without having to worry about the skies raining down with RC controlled models that are being flown OOS via telelink by the "Black Ops Game Boy Geeks".
So far there haven't been any AMA Drone related incidents that I'm aware of..especially none that are news worthy enough to cause a ground swell of anti-AMA sentiment across the USA.
Most of the time restrictions are imposed in response to trajedy and threat of extinction...it's never done pre-emptively.
The decision now is whether to be "pro-active" or not.
My main question is...who really needs to fly their plane like a cruise missile in order to have a good time..?
Do we really need to "embrace" this..?
Am I gullible enough to think that every AMA member with planes capable of flying a grid pattern up and down the streets of downtown Seattle at 20 feet high will be content to simply cruise the 20 acre [and very boring] boundaries of our club field with thousands of dollars worth of guided missile electronic capability..?