ORIGINAL: s3nfo
Well, No. Renegades by their very nature don't publish or advertise the results of accidents whereas Chartered clubs are required to report to AMA. Your assertion that renegades have a proven safety record and are demonstratably better than clubs (as you compare them to AMA members that don't belong to clubs) is totally unfounded. There's absolutely no way of demonstrating or proving anything about renegades because there's no one compiling statistical evidence either for or against where AMA is compiling records on chartered clubs. Additionally, the comparison of Clubs safety records to AMA members that don't belong to clubs is not valid. How many of those non-club members fly by themselves out in the boonies (it's hard to injure someone else or do property damage when your all alone in the boonies). How many of those non-club members are older, non-flying members who just support AMA by joining and continue to feel involved by reading MA (these guys are probably not gonna get injured either).
I've been to the Poway industrial area regenade site twice and I gotta tell ya. Scared the h$!! outta me both times. No frequency control and guys taking off without even asking what freq everyone was on or checking airborne pilots for channel conflicts. Flying behind the established flight line. Flying from both sides of the road that was in use as a runway with low passes happening in front and behind people. I'm not a big advocate for a lot of rules, but my experience has been that no rules means chaos.
Hi Jerry-
Well, I didn't intend to infer that
no rules apply at renegade sites, just less formal and sometimes arbitrary ones than AMA clubs demand. In the case of the Poway industrial park, rules apply there too, whether the fliers agreed to them or not. Anybody that ignores frquency control will soon be dealt with according to rules delineated by Charles Darwin!
I think you're right about accident statistics for non-club fliers being biased because they're 'all alone in the boonies.' Non-club sites generally have lesser numbers of fliers and the math is simple; fewer missiles and fewer targets = lesser probability of hits. I think that just illustrates my sense that clubs require rules just as any other group activity needs rules, when the numbers reach some critical mass that people can't prevent interfering with each other's enjoyment on the basis of 'gentleman's agreement' and other such informal means alone.
I've flown at club and non-club sites in and around San Diego since 1973, and quite honestly can see no tangible difference between AMA members and non-members, except that the former have coughed up the dues, usually begrudgingly because it was demanded of them in order to gain access to a club site. Not that I haven't encountered some morons, but fortunately they have been few and no more likely to be renegades than club members. Actually, my recollection of the loss of two non-club sites due to actions by fliers (as opposed to encroachment by civilization) both resulted from inappropriate behavior by AMA members that were members of local clubs. One site was Hourglass Field, just North of Miramar NAS. We lost that one within hours after a pylon racer showed up and flew there with a 30,000 rpm screamer that probably exceeded 100 dB in the adjacent mobile home park. The regulars there flew gliders off hi-start and 1/2A models for many years before that twit showed up, no doubt because he wasn't allowed to fly it at his club site. Nearly identical situation years later at an ad hoc site in San Marcos, except this time it was an unlimited racer being checked out before an event at Madera. Both times it seems the models could not be flown at the owners' club sites, but our 'renegade' fields were considered by them as expendable.
At any rate, my original post in this thread was in response to an indictment of 'renegaders' spoiling things for everyone else, and I think that is unfair and untrue. I don't have statistics to show it, but a feeling that if I did, most AMA clubs would trace their roots to a few guys that found a place to fly, and when their numbers grew to a point where it was needed, they organized formally as a club. I do currently belong to one club that organized prior to obtaining a flying site so I know it happens, but I suspect that is the exception more often than the rule. It is most certainly the exception in the case of the fastest growing segment of our hobby, the park fliers. It remains to be seen if significant numbers of them will ever organize as AMA chartered clubs. If they don't, it sure doesn't mean they have my disdain - they are fellow modelers, and it enhances my enjoyment of our hobby/sport to join them, rather than to beat them off.
Abel