ORIGINAL: TonyF-RCU
Those of you commenting on Dave's drinking and flying 25 to 30 years ago are way off base. That was a different set of conditions and standards then exist today. Everyone, including Dave knows that such actions would not be condoned in today's environment. So, let it rest.
Tony,
I agree with you on this point, it is in poor taste to bring up events of 30 years ago that have little relativity to the problem at hand.
As for Dave calling an emergency meeting of the EC to rethink the turbine regs, it is entirely in his prerogative to do so. There was nothing underhanded about it. Several of the EC members had voiced concerns to Dave that they were rethinking their vote. Dave has a very strong opinion that these new regs were a mistake. Therefore, he exercised his right to call that emergency meeting. In that meeting the EC council changed their mind. It is as simple as that. The fact that the council did change their mind could be seen as a confirmation that Dave was correct.
I disagree with you on this point. The proposal passed the EC on Nov1 with a vote of 8-3 because Steven and Terry were at the meeting to answer questions and present the facts and opinions of the jet community.
IMHO, Dave Brown resented the fact that the TRC was able to come into what he considers his arena (the EC meeting) and get a proposal passed that he does not agree with.
I see "the fact that the council changed their mind" as confirmation that Dave Brown will always get his way when there is nobody present to make a reasonable case for the opposition.
Any AMA member can attend a regularly scheduled EC meeting, this is not true of a "special EC meeting". I believe that Dave Brown called that meeting so that he could exclude the opposition in order to control the EC himself.
Frankly, if I had been on the EC council, I would have voted against what was initially passed. IMO, there were several items that just didn't make sense to me. As I understood the proposal, we could have installed up to 45 pounds of thrust in any size model, 50 if it was a twin, without any kind of speed limiting device. The pilot was responsible for keeping the speed below 200 mph, without any means of measuring that speed. Seemed like a recipe for disaster to me. 200 mph was going to be the most any model could fly, despite the fact that there are numerous models that have been demonstrating very high safety over that speed for a very long time. Doesn't make sense to me. In addition, the signatures on the various forms now required were going to have to be notarized. That one really made no sense to me. I got my private pilot license without ever having to get anything "notarized". Why should I need to in order fly my model plane?
FYI, the requirement for the first years renewals to be notarized was the EC's idea, it was not in our original proposal.