ORIGINAL: Wings of Peril
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I happen to like high performance sport planes and always use a muffler but we also have to think about our brethren who enjoy even noisier models like racers, gassers, large scale, helicopters, turbines and even surface vehicles if we want the hobby and the industry to remain healthy.
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"High Performance sport models" whatever that may mean, with the best muffler will be a _ell of a lot noiser than any turbine I have ever witnessed and that includes a fair number since I witnessed Jim Allen and his fellow engineers demonstrate their homebuilt, which I believe to be the first one ever flown in the USA, in the Mesa AZ area back in the late '80s.
Piper C.
If some of the members have planes that can't be quieted, such as turbines, perhaps they could work with the neighbors to define reasonable times for operating them.
Piper there are large electrics with propeller noise exceeding most turbines. When I was preparing to see my first turbine fly (see above) I was expecting something close to those old Dyna-Jets -- pulse jets -- that we flew in CL many years ago. They sounded like a ship's fog-horn. NOT SO with the turbine even the early ones. Very quiet. As a 1-1 scale jet pilot for some 41 years, I was, and still am amazed at the quietness of model airplane turbines.
Now if we could lobby AMA into forgetting this silly "Turbine Waiver" for even just the the turbines on the big sport-trainer models, then maybe more people would start flying turbines and the noise problems may be far less.
Actually that's a joke, as when I was a DVP back in '79-82, there were problems concerning "Noise" with strictly-glider clubs.
People see a model airplane -- it just has to be noisy -- so get rid of it. You know like the mind-sets in these forums about clubs / independents / AMA / non AMA / the small electric people with their persecution complex, and a number of others. Maybe that stems from the old "keep up with the joneses" complex so instilled in urban society. Everyone wants to be "jones" and have everyone else do as jones does.
20 years from now, those flying RC will be those that went out and made things happen for their own locale. Those waiting for AMA and/or local government to provide something will still be waiting.
