ORIGINAL: Hossfly
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.
Turbines were just an example. Your comment about large electric prop noise is the reason why decibel measurements are better than vague rules about mufflers. However, the first time I saw a turbine, a fairly recent model, it was at speed and I was quite a distance from the flight line. It was way louder than the typical glow powered sport plane. Additionally, I imagine that the increased speeds of these planes create additional fear in the minds of the public. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't want to cause this thread to branch off into a discussion on the risks (real or imagined) of turbines.
The IMPBA (I mentioned them before) learned about the hazards of noise with respect to loss of ponds and is moving in the right direction. Several years ago they implemented a complicated set of rules about muffling the tuned pipes that nearly all racers use. As long as people had a "muffler" on their tuned pipe, they met the rules. Guess how long it took for people to figure out their way around this one? The net result was noise was not reduced. The funny thing was that an unmuffled .21 size boat was way quieter than a muffled .80 size, but the .21s still had to have mufflers. Enough people finally started seeing the light and the rules are now being simplified to the point where it doesn't matter how you get the noise down, as long as the boat is below 92db at a certain distance, everything is fine. Some of the European organizations have even stricter limits, and I suspect IMPBA will lower the number again in a couple more years.