Norfolksouthern

I agree with your remise of rc flieds being more and more difficult to maintain and find. My RC club spent 2 years seeking a new field. The club that let us use their field spent the prior 2 years to that finding a new one, and the club that let them fly while they searched spent the 2 years prior to that doing the same thing. My club doesn't really have any big stuff in it and we have a strict 93db noise limit and everything must fly with a muffler that muffles. And we still all have a good time.

But from what I have seen that is not a major issue at least in my area bringing people back to CL. In fact 4 of the 4 clubs within 90 miles of Detroit that have CL facilities are RC clubs! The president of one of them is on of the top CL stunt fliers in the country! I actually came back because I found CL flying forums online and found that ARF's of competative planes existed. I would no longer have to spend an entire winter building one airlane in hopes it might be able to be made competative. If it got killed there went an entire year. The year I quite CL was the first year I wass going to fly stunt at the NATS. Night before I was going to leave I was doing a final set of practice flights when a red tailed hawk flew across the circle and hit my lines... just before the last corner of the hourglass. Concrete circle. S*** happens. But it didn't make alot of sence for me. I think the availability of planes that fly really well, even if covered in c*** cote at all levels of flying makes it a much more entereable thing to do. The net forums give people a way to get excited not just by expert fliers but by peple just like them. A good example has been all the Musciano contest that have happened in the last year or two where you can only fly planes designed my Musciano... you rmember, the balsa log planes that Scientific used to make that we all learned to fly on. Black Hawk models makes some now. The excitement these contests have created is amazing to me. People being able to communicate with others just gets people going. And flying a patten at an RC club for fliers who have never seen one does as one previous post said blow em away.

For me I am a very good bilder,, but I am not motivated to build much any more. I have in the last 4 years only completed one RC full build. 3 are sitting uncompleted. But I can do and ARC of a plane I can compete with and get appearance points because I do the finish in stunt. To me its the best of all worlds. ... now to get my RC club to put in a circle!

bob