Last time I flew at the MARCS club, I got the speech from a couple of club officers (Walt & Steve) about how they were not sure that they wanted me to fly my jet at the club because of the problems you describe above. I told them that the club's security was much more important than me getting a quick fix, so I'd happily leave the aircraft in the van if that was what they wanted, but that it might be better for them to constrain any pilots who bust the rules rather than banning aircraft types. They decided that I could fly, but that they would be watching my every move with great scrutiny. I tried for quite a while to get Walt (safety officer / field marshall) to come out to the flightline with me and give me his interpretations of acceptable flying (for those who do not know it, the club has a golf course close-by to the left, a full-scale airfield to the right, a 400 ft hard-cap due to full-scale ops that include skydivers, fixed-wing & helicoper ops directly over the club area, plus they fly from one end of a runway that is activley used by the crop-dusters - so obviously they have some pretty tight restrictions that can be tough to abide by if you are not constantly monitoring your position).

Anyway, I couldn't convince Walt, but I found one of the other officers more interested - can't remember his name, but he's the guy who's the prison warder. I spent at least an hour with him, explaining the turbine rules to him; explaining what the various bits in the aircraft were, and how startup works; telling him about the process we have to go through to get waivered and offering him (since I'm a turbine CD) to help him go through the process if he was interested in either getting his waiver or just understanding the process better; showing him what a turbine waiver looked like and explaining how the club should protect itself by asking to see the waiver for anyone flying a turbine (BTW, judging from the response I got, I think the AMA does a poor job of informing clubs what to look for); explaining about the AMA mandated safety aspects (extinguisher required, separation from other models on start-up, failsafe settings, fuel tank limits, etc) that should be expected of turbine pilots; etc., etc.; and then I had him go out and call for me for 3 flights. I flew where I believed was within the limits and constantly asked him for feedback to fine-tune my flying.

Overall, the experience ended up pretty positive, and either he was just being polite, or I managed to leave at least one club officer a little more informed about how seriously most of us take our responsibilities, and a little happier about the fact that turbine ops could fit within the club's rules. The tight restrictions definitley make MARCS less than my favorite place to fly jets (I've only flown turbines there 3 times in all my years of being a member) however its always better if the decision about flying jets at a given location is elective by the jet pilots rather than being a blanket enforcement by the club. For anyone else who is a turbine pilot that flies at MARCS ocasionally, please take the time to chat with any officers & other members present to try to help allay their concerns before you go fly. There's enough anti-turbine sentiment out there already, so your P.R. skills are vital and we all need to do our bit to help repair any damage (or ideally prevent it from happening in the first place).

Later,
Gordon