Hi Franklin ,
It is interesting to hear of the differences in model aircraft flying populations from place to place across the US . Here , sure plenty of parkflyers are flown , but by the likes of those of us who are already flying everything else anyway and I know of no fields I drive by (and I get out quite a bit for an old guy) where I ever see folks flying parkflyers in any kinds of numbers that would indicate a thriving parkflyer population . Sure the occasional grandpa taking the youngster out to fly an air hogz plane or one of those little mini drones , and that's about it . It is that reason I think the PPP wasn't the success it was hoped to be , with the huge numbers of parkies being sold a membership subcategory catering specifically to them sounded like it would be a great thing and in the beginning of the PPP I had hopes that it would turn into a big subgroup of the AMA in the same way folks hope the drone thing does as well . But with my belief that most of the parkies were actually being bought by us who already are open members the numbers never did meet expectations of how many new members we got VS numbers of parkies sold .
Now with that said , at the model aircraft fields I do fly at , among the guys who fly everything , I see WAY more electric being flown than engine powered and quite a bit more small stuff being flown VS big stuff likely in a nod toward the "grab it and go" convenience of the smaller electrics . For a couple or few quick hours of flying VS the most of the day commitment of bringing the big gasser to the field , with all it's support equipment , assembling the wings & tail and going through all the proper steps to get something big in the air , nothing beats having something you can preflight at home , take to the field fully assembled , do a quick radio check and then fly . Now that's in no way any kinds of slap at all to the all day flying outing with the big plane , they're great to see and it's nice to see them when I or other folks have the free hours to do that , it's just that more and more due to other life's responsibilities the quick couple hour outing is what wins out over the all day flying session . And I wont even mention the exhaust mess to be cleaned up afterward
. I guess the bottom line is that most days it seems , for most of the flyers I see including myself , convenience wins out over excursion when wanting to spend an hour or two tearing the skies a new one ....