Originally Posted by init4fun

Hi Astro ,

And this here is both the problem and the answer to that problem .

Yes indeed if all RC flying was done on club field there would be no call for regulating a problem that doesn't exist . But what of the literal hundreds of thousands who don't belong to clubs , it's those very people who have created the problem and if marketing figures are to be believed we are outnumbered by a fairly large number . What is the total of AMA members , a bit less than 200K ? And the claim that millions of drones were sold last year means that by far the greatest segment of RC flying is happening outside of the club structure with things like following a sensible set of safety rules as part of the program* . Had our AMA not tried to position itself as the only hobby way to the skies RC wise , we wouldn't have been lumped in with the unregulated flyer and thus we sit , literally between the rock and hard place that our own organization put us in by first romancing the park flyer and then romancing the drone .

Originally Posted by init4fun

* Mostly although as Franklin's jet video showed , lapses of good safety judgement can and do happen even on "AMA fields" .