Originally Posted by
jcmors
Actually I think that this sort of activity at a club field is one of the things that could bring new people into the hobby.
Years ago I went to a fly-in in Minnesota inn Owatonna, Watts over Owatonna. I try to go every year, this year it was cancelled. At the time I was working in Minneapolis and I invited some of my co-workers to come and watch. One of them came with his young son and was fascinated by the variety of planes, quads and helicopters they saw. They are both involved in the RC hobby now, though at a different field closer to home. This is one of the things that bringing a group of people together can do, it can draw spectators from outside the hobby.
There were many people who took the time to talk to my co-worker and his son bout what the hobby was all about and to show them some of their models. I think that inviting the public at large to events like this is a great way to try to bring in new blood.
Inviting the public does help but, once the public is there, you need to make them feel like YOU WANT THEM THERE. As I said in my first post, the people were basically ignoring the kid. If you want to keep the kid and his parents involved, you don't keep talking in your own little "click". You talk to them, show them how things work, let them actually see how the sticks make things on the plane work. These are the kinds of things that will get people interested, not having a model sitting on a table for them to look at but otherwise ignoring them