ORIGINAL: Clean
Going away, no more than any other aspect of the hobby, in fact our portion of the hobby has been growing for the last 10 years. Of course, at our numbers adding 1 or 2 hear or there is a markable increase!
Lord knows what the future brings, but I usually chalk this discussion up with the 'Where are all the young people' which of course if you've ever looked at an old magazine circa 40's and 50's was the lament back then as well. Along with, 'where are the true craftsman now that CL is so readily available' really cracks me up.
And don't get me started with those behemoth IMAC planes who seemed damned and determined to get us ALL banned. Whoevers idea it was to have an airplane with half a Volkswagon engine in it for power and then to fly it in what must be viewed by the general public, (and most of the sane RC public) as out of control needs to be shot. Impressive, yes, but Holy Jesus would you guys get a grip! And where oh WHERE are the AMA DB restrictions when it comes to those things. You cannot planly port the exhaust of one of those things and expect it to be quite. The prop noise alone carrys more than a mile! Keep it up, and then CL WILL be making quite a large comeback. If townships will actually make the deferation between RC and CL when they go about banning.
I have to agree that C/L is gaining in popularity, largely due to the litigation that R/C is starting to get subjected to. The challenges of opening up new R/C fields is mounting, even when almost all the planes are park flyers. Clean is right, the public is less than willing to put up with what they perceive as guided missiles these days. And the IMAC behemoths with the big block Harley Davidson motorcycle engines and noise that carries farther than the thump of a boom car are not helping the R/C aspect one bit. If anything, the big models give communities more ammunition in their efforts to shut down flying fields.
NorfolkSouthern