ORIGINAL: bkdavy
My discussion about the rogue flyers liability for damages stems from their negligent conduct. There are 4 legal elements to negligence that must be established. They are:
1. Duty to protect: Everyone has a general duty to exercise reasonable care toward other people and their property. Model airplane pilots have a duty to operate their equipment exercising reasonable care toward other people and their property. There are no specific regulation regarding how to safely operate model airplanes, but the AMA safety code is a defacto standard accepted by a large majority of manufacturers and customers, and would meet the "reasonable" standard. This would include establishing a frequency sharing agreement between the sites.
2. Breach of duty: By knowingly operating their systems within 3 miles of an existing flying site without a frequency sharing plan, the rogue flyers are breeching that duty.
3. Causation: There must be a clear link between the behavior (either action or failure to act) and the event that causes damage (shooting down another plane). This is the hardest part to prove. Did they really shoot you down? You must have a way to prove that they were operating on the same frequency at the same time. The frequency monitor can help, but you'll also have to go to their field and see them flying. Witnesses will help.
The only possibly relevant part of the AMA Safety Code is item 6 under the Radio Control section. It states that a frequency sharing agreement may exist between AMA clubs, between AMA members and AMA clubs, or between AMA members and other AMA members. No provision is made regarding non-AMA modelers and/or clubs. By AMA policy, you can only be interfered with by another AMA member. Ergo, the AMA SC is not relevant as it is not "reasonable." Further, "accepted by a large majority of manufacturers and customers" is an unfounded presumption. A large majority of manufacturers are offshore, as are many of their customers.
4. Damages: Having established the other three elements, plaintiffs are entitle to be restored to his or her original position before the negligence occurred. Damages may be personal injury or property damage.
The plaintiff is also responsible for taking action to minimize damages. Therefore, it would be contingent on the existing field to try to establish when the rogue flyers are flying. Hence my suggestion for a frequency monitor. If the channel is clear, and you take off, and they subsequently shoot you down, they are negligent and can be held liable.
The intended and responsible use of the frequency monitor is to determine if the channel is clear before transmitting. It is not suitable for the evidence gathering you suggest. All it can tell you is that there is some energy detected in a given frequency slot. It may be coming from a 'rogue' flyer's transmitter, or it may be spillover from an adjacent channel in use by the guy next to you on the flight line, a TV signal, a remote controlled crane on an interstitial channel, a noisy transmission line, et al. It doesn't even tell you what direction it came from, nor how far away the source is. As a practical matter, if you had enough corroborating evidence to prove that a particular individual shot you down (as you said, it would be contingent on the existing field to try to establish when the rogue flyers are flying), you must have know enough about his location and operation to have prevented the incident. Else is he just one of a multitude of possible sources of interference that might have been within the 30 sq mile area circumscribed by a line of 3 mi radius around your AMA sanctioned flying site.
This argument does not in anyway imply a "right" by the existing flying field to the frequencies. It simply requires that the rogue flyers exercise reasonable care in the operation of their unsanctioned flying site. They are not doing that.
Says who? How are you going to prove they were any less reasonable in exercise of due care in their operation than those at the sanctioned site?
The AMA shouldn't get involved in the dispute. This is a civil dispute between two parties. The AMA is fulfilling its role by establishing standards and providing insurance to those agreeing to abide by those standards.
As flying sites get harder and harder to find and maintain, I predict that this situation will arise more often. The lawsuits will follow.
As far as AMA fulfilling their role, there is much more they could be doing, e.g., representing model aviation per their charter, and not just AMA. AMA's stubbornly parochial posturing refuses to acknowledge that there are model flyers outside of AMA sanctioned clubs, and so offers no substantive guidance to club members pertinent to getting along with them. Look at the "Partnering With Parkflyers" doc on the AMA web site for an example of the myopic view I am talking about. See if you can find among the god and motherhood prose any tangible guidance aside from the bottom line "get them to join AMA."
Abel