ORIGINAL: Charley
<SNIP>
As to taking positive action: I recently became acquainted with a PF who flies with a friend of his on the local college campus. I got a rough measurement of the distance yesterday from the the place where they fly to our club field. Looks like it's a little over two miles. That should be enough separation, although IIRC, the AMA reccommends three.
What I'm going to do next is get back in contact with this guy and wangle an invite to fly my TM-400 with them. Hopefully, while chewing the fat between flights, I'll be able to steer the conversation around a brief mention of safety and frequency control. Maybe I should sign back up as an intro pilot so I can invite them out to field....... Anyhoo, that's all I can think of to do at this point.
Any suggestions?
CR
Hi Charley
The AMA does not recommend 3 miles.
The Safety Code, which the club agrees to enforce, states in RC rule 5: “I will not knowingly operate my model aircraft within three (3) miles of any preexisting flying site without a frequency-management agreement. A frequency-management agreement may be an allocation of frequencies for each site, a day-use agreement between sites, or testing which determines that no interference exists. A frequency-management agreement may exist between two or more AMA chartered clubs, AMA clubs and individual AMA members, or individual AMA members. Frequency-management agreements, including an interference test report if the agreement indicates no interference exists, will be signed by all parties and copies provided to AMA Headquarters.”
While the definition of "preexisting" is not clear to me (does it mean before the club was founded or before flying started today, etc.?) and there seems to be some other ambiguity in the rule, it appears
the rule is required, not recommended. The real question is does the rule, in the situation you described, affect the club and individual AMA supplied insurance in the case of an accident caused by frequency conflict. I would suggest to you that an inquiry to the AMA Special Services Department is in order.