Originally posted by nascarjoe
With the advent of RC on TV, the idea of paid instruction may well become all but mandatory. The people at Inside RC made projections of possibly having 35,000,000 viewers by next year. I've recently opened a hobby shop and even though I've only been open 9 months, my business is booming. The majority of these newcomers told me they had seen RC planes on either Inside RC or the DIY channel.
Wonder what took the RC industry so long? After all, how many millions of people watch TV?
With so many TV viewers who will soon get into this hobby/sport, I think those who seem to have a personal problem with the idea of paid instruction, may just change their tune when large numbers of newbies show up on their beginner flight line.
nascarjoe
Yes, the paid instructor is one answer to that potential time bomb being planted by the TV works. Is it the correct one? Your guess is as good as mine. The point about paid instruction being insured by the AMA since it is a win-win for all is a very good one with one extremely serious caveat. If an instructor does not teach SAFETY first, a large disservice has been done for all. That is where my "standards" comments came from.
There are several problems I have with paid instruction at the club field, but almost all of them are not show stoppers but issues that each club must address in specific terms. They are operational issues rather than insurance related, as this thread started out.
Among them are questions like is who does what to make that club field 'happen'. In other words, who does the maintenance of the field and its equipment (bleachers, pitts area, grass mowing and the like)? Another very serious question is who has 'rights' to the pilot station and frequency and why? Does the club member who paid dues have equal standing to the commercial operation or not?
One of the issues driving paid instruction is access to instructors. That means Sam Student reserves a specific block of Imateacher's time at some agreed upon time. If Sam Student is paying I would be willing to bet his instructor Ivan Imateacher will want that frequency pin to be open as long as Sam has money to spend and whenever Sam shows up. That demand probably extends to flight stations at locations where access to the flight line is restricted for some reason.
Those things need to be worked out, nationally and locally before the first $ crosses hands for training at any club field.