Of course both of these groups read these and other forums as well, I'm willing to bet most look past the pathetic attempts to score cheap political points with the anti Obama crap. Although it seems he is blamed for EVERY ill in this society, it makes little sense to respond to those posts, other than perhaps with a "thanks Obama" gif.

This is the borderline fearmongering.....pull a membership or block one for exercising freedom of speach? Completely untrue. Um, did you see any of the posts from the guy running for AMA office earlier this year? Not only in random threads, but ones devoted to his candidacy. There's another well known poster here whos posts are almost always virulantly anti-AMA (for years). Still an AMA member. As for monitoring....ya, not so much. Don't know what it takes to get their attention, sure doesn't seem to work on some spam issues. Like I noted above, they are members here just as they are on RCG, and numerous other sites.

Again, absolutely no basis in fact for getting "disbarred" for sharing opinions on the AMA. I'd love to see any language in the membership forms that even comes close to speaking to that issue. The reasons people join AMA are numerous and varied, but I doubt it's so they can play with toy airplanes. I know plenty of guys who belong to the AMA and flying clubs and don't even fly. To each their own.

Porcia 83
"Again, absolutely no basis in fact for getting "disbarred" for sharing opinions on the AMA. I'd love to see any language in the membership forms that even comes close to speaking to that issue. The reasons people join AMA are numerous and varied, but I doubt it's so they can play with toy airplanes. I know plenty of guys who belong to the AMA and flying clubs and don't even fly. To each their own".

Well then it must be like many here suggested "It all about the "MONEY" with the AMA...
But then if people Bad mouth their Job or their boss on social media, They stand a good
chance to be FIRED for exercising their right to free speech.

Now you're throwing all kinds of non related stuff up and trying to make it stick.

No evidence people have been, or would be booted from AMA for disagreeing or complaining about them, so now we'll change to well I guess it's what "they" say, AMA is all about the money. Again....where is the data to back this up. Or better yet, what are you even talking about.....all about the money how? Specifics please.

And the stuff about work and social media is completely unrelated, unless you're suggesting that if you work for the AMA and so something stupid with social media your job could be affected. In that case sure, of course it could be. Why not? Please don't say freedom of speech either....there are limits to that, in most instances those limits are signed off on as part of employment.

In everything we do there is risk and unfortunately risks can't be totally eliminated, OTH how many people have been injured by over 55lb models or flying over 400 feet? IMO there have not
been enough incidents to warrant putting more restrictions on modelers that will do little or nothing to stop the people that are actually causing the problems. I do agree it would not be good
for the hobby if a airliner was to be struck by a model. Also I think anyone caught intentionally endangering full scale aircraft should be dealt with by the FAA .

I don't think I have seen anyone say anything in this forum that IMO would give the AMA a legal right to refuse membership, And in the USA you pretty much have to belong to the AMA
if you want to fly anything larger than a parkflyer especially if you want to belong to a club.

But, as has been stated many times, it's not the members that are causing the problems. It's the supposedly unknowing backyard fliers that are the issue.
That being said, I like the idea of the hefty fine or time served. I also like the idea of requiring a signed form saying you know the rules filed with some enforcement body when ANY RTF or ARF model is purchased. Nail someone after that, the "I didn't know" excuse is gone

You are correct I have said that I don't think that the people causing the problems we hear about on the news are AMA members.

I don't live within 1000 miles of any desert, so I fly electric airplanes, because they're quiet, don't get oily, and I never need to buy fuel. I fly just about anywhere I want to, and never had a complaint about noise, or anything else. I don't need to belong to a club, to have a place to fly. I have several parks nearby, that I can fly at. I build all of my own models, sometimes from scratch, but mostly from kits. I hate "bARFs", They are all exactly alike., assembled by someone in a factory. Who knows what may be weak inside, and just waiting to cause a crash. Half the fun is in the building anyway. I prefer to build my model, and design my own paint scheme. I still like to use silk and dope. I'm old as dirt, and like the old school methods, of building, and flying. These clowns who are giving our hobby a bad name should be punished harshly, for the things they do. If it were up to me, I'd outlaw the quads altogether.

Any model going thru the windshield will kill anyone it hits electric or glow makes NO difference.

Fortunately, this is not the attitude in commercial aviation, in workplace safety, nuclear power, and other industries. While I could maybe accept that some feel that way with respect to participants in the events, it is another thing entirely when innocent spectators are hurt. Both instances I mentioned could quite easily have resulted in serious or fatal injuries to spectators. No waiver form is going to protect you from getting sued, as the courts of held that someone cannot waive gross negligence. And who will make the decision on what's gross negligence on the part of the event organizer or pilot or both? A judge or a jury. One doesn't have to look very far in the news for information on how those tend to go when negligence is involved. Seven figure payouts are quite common.

If you want to take the opinion that "risks can't be totally eliminated," that's your business. But hurt a kid badly at an event and see how expensive it gets - and how fast.

Sometimes it seems like some people almost want something bad to happen. I don't know, so they can maybe start a new career feeding this type of information to plaintiff attorneys?

Risk cannot be totally eliminated, ever. No amount of rules or regulations or planning can stop things from going wrong. Commercial aviation, nuclear power, and virtually ever other industry out there has issues. Wonder if the folks at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima thought risk was eliminated. How many scale aircraft crash a year? Think anyone goes to a MLB game expecting to get clocked in the head by a foul? No.

You follow the rules as best you can, take as many reasonable steps to stop things from going wrong, and you take it from there. Nothing is going to stop accidents from happening, short of holding events or flying again.

I guess it's a good thing that the designers of seat belts, airbags, TCAS, backup warning sensors, blind spot monitors, and a host of other technologies didn't hold the attitude that "risk cannot be totally eliminated." Just because events happen doesn't mean we can't take a hard look a the sequence of events, decision making, design, construction, maintenance or other issues to try and prevent the event from happening again.

I don't wish for anything bad to happen. But as a graduate of military aviation safety school and someone who's spent a career managing risk in both aviation and heavy industry, giving up on the idea that risk can be eliminated is an anathema to me and pretty much the entire safety professional community. I see increasing risk to the public as a result of the growing number of large and fast aircraft. I have been trained to not wait until something happens to address an issue, but to try and prevent it. What I'm trying to do with these examples / discussions is to raise awareness that it is possible. But that's the opinion of a safety professional - an aviation safety trained professional at that - so you'll have to decide how much that matters.

If we got rid of automobiles we could eliminate all problems associated with them such as drunk driving and hit and run incidents, But to get rid autos would be unreasonable and create
far more problems than it would solve. The same is true for anything be it model aviation or otherwise no matter how many restrictions you may come up with there will still be risks.

There has to be balance between what is reasonable and what will enhance safety and more restrictions, and there will always be disagreements on what should be done but in
general if rules from a common sense point of view are too unreasonable they will largely be ignored and sometimes have a opposite effect than intended.

Gibby;
It's our personal likes and dislikes that make the world go round. Some people like to fly by them selves. I my self like the commorodery and the banter at the Field with my friends. Heck a lot of times I don't even get a plane out .. to much like WORK to put one together. Unlike U I don't much care for building, much less even putting an ARF together. Thank God for USED and Swap Meets and thank GOD for RCU.
I guess what I'm trying to say that every one has different ways of getting pleasure out of life and our Hobby/Sport. No one should be "exalted for" or "looked down upon" because they don't do things the way someone else does or likes or doesn't care for what others like. Life would be so BORING if we all were in lock step and everyone thought and did everything just like everyone else does. Now again that's JMHO

I just checked my posts and not once did I advocate banning anything. I advocated geographic and altitude restrictions on sUAS flying (in any form) that keeps them clear of the overwhelming majority of manned aircraft. Just today, US Senator Chuck Schumer is quoted in USA Today that the near miss yesterday in New York "should be a wake-up call for stricter limits on drone use."

I humbly submit that we can either do it ourselves (hard altitude and geographic limits) and retain some control over the outcome, or the legislators will do it for us.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2...anes/28207569/

This kind of stupidity of who's know's their membership with the AMA or not? We don't know that yet. If they were members of the AMA, I would tend to think they know altitude limits within their airspace. Apparently as the news shows us, they. the unknown pilots of these drones have NO identity
as of yet. I have kept on saying , these types of major infractions, stupid mistakes, or on purpose,they should have the hammer down on those people.
Give them 5 years Prison time, revoke their AMA member ship, which I doubt they have, or they would know better, and slap them with a 5G fine, not including if it took a full scale aircraft down, which resulted in major loss over 5K, damage, then if fatalities occurred, who knows? It will happen one day. Wait for it. I hope is does not happen but afraid it will sooner than later.

Franky:
For an educated person that can put a 20 ton fighter on a pitching deck U certainly don't think things through very well. JMHO

Again I'll bet that the people pointing lasers at air craft and flying QUADS on approach paths to busy airports are not AMA members.
Pointing a Laser at any aircraft is a felony and is subject upon conviction to 5 years in federal prison and/or 250 thousand dollar fine.
Now it time for the AMA to partition congress to add Intentional flying of sUAS's in the path of aircraft with the same prison term and fine.
This Threat of Imprisonment and large fine has not deterred people from shining lasers at air craft. What it has done is to make the individual responsible for their actions. The news media commented that there on average 11 laser pointing incidents per day in the USA. The ones that happened most recently where were directed at planes 30 miles from the air port and at 8000'. Incidents of sUAS's interfearing with aircraft are at a miniscule amount and happen at much lower altitudes but all or most have been reported by Landing aircraft and most at an altitude around 2000' AGL.
Again Banning all R/C TOYs from flying over 400' no mater where in the NAS is just competently LUDICROUS. It's akin to closing all places that serve alcohol, for all but the lunch hour, so we won't have any more drunken driving accidents. Or Banning all cars from exceeding 20 MPH so accidents are not so severe. Or Killing all Canada Geese and other birds, in the USA because they cause millions in damage to aircraft and endanger millions of the flying public every year. OH I suppose we should ban all GUNS too, because they are used by individuals to commit crimes and kill people.
Again limiting ALL R/C TOY flying devices to 400' AGL is simply Ludicrous and will not stop the IDIOT.
What it will do is eliminate a large segment of Model Aviation and accomplish NOTHING in the way of sUAS vs maned Aircraft because those that now are causing the problem won't stop or obey the law. Criminals and HOT DOGGERS don't care about the rules and Laws.

Let me ask who here on RCU that are AMA members have flown their R/C TOYs anyplace but an AMA field except indoor and float flying, in the last year?

I have only flown at AMA fields as there are not a lot of other suitable options in my area.

Speaking for myself I am not willing to advocate for more restrictions against us modelers for two main reasons, 1. they will not help IMO. 2. they will be difficult to enforce.

i think people who talk about drones are instigators they must set on ther brai ns and think things up

The challenge for the modeling community is that we can't conclusively prove that these aren't our members. Any number of us have seen AMA members violate one or more safety rules at fields, and I'm talking substantial rules like intentionally flying behind the flight line, distance to spectators, etc. So I for one would not go on record and say none of them are AMA members. The F4 sighting down in Florida (I believe) was concerning enough to the AMA that they sent a communication to their clubs in the area. Again, if you're so confident that your members follow the rules, no need for the note from HQ. On the other hand, the note from HQ indicates they're not 100% sure it wasn't a member.

The problem in all this is that local law enforcement will be the most likely to respond, and lawmakers will want to give them easy to use and easy to interpret tools. Geographic is easiest. Heck, even FAA is producing an app to help with that. The next most difficult is altitude. There's a couple ways that could be handled, but easiest is a laser range finder. For less than $100 you can get one good to over 500yds, more than enough to determine altitude. Obviously there will be some need to catch folks in the act, but that problem will exist with any enforcement method, so it's not a discriminator. Unfortunately, if it turns out to be too difficult to define and enforce where you can't fly, then the only other method available to lawmakers (save expensive technology solutions) would be to define where you can fly sUAS. That way, any sUAS ops outside defined areas is, by definition, not lawful.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't want to see that happen. So I think we AMA members have all the incentive in the world to solve this ourselves lest the solution be taken out of our hands.

Despite the sarcasm and mild personal attack, I don't totally disagree. However, I do understand how lawmakers solve problems, and they use a sledge hammer to put in a finishing nail. If we allow it to become such a problem that they solve it for us, who knows what we'll see. Remember when AMA practically broke an arm patting themselves on the back for section 336? Well, now that it's gone into the rulemaking process, I'd be willing to bet they wish they'd had different language. I fear the same problem, but much worse, if we don't find a way to stop this ourselves (or at least show we're taking strong steps to ensure it's not AMA members).

Why not just make all R/C TOYs illegal and all go back to CL flying.
Hey why not make it mandatory that all receivers have a or connected to a sensitive altimeter or veriammiter with a explosive charge that detonates at a predetermined altitude i.e. 401' higher than the device was turned on. Now we can all wear hard hats to prevent BRAIN DAMAGE from falling sUAS parts. Those with obvious conic BRAIN DAMAGE will be exempt from the hard hat provision. Makes about as much seance as laser range finders 400' cealings or any other restrictions not already implemented by the new FAR's and #336.

OK here's a viable answer as viable as not discharging a fire arm in the city limits or Drag racing on the city streets. It's all aginst the law. So let's make it against the LAW to fly any R/C TOY anyplace but a Designated field, park or Flying area. If found guilty of flying anywhere but the above the first offense would be a $250 fine Second offense $2500 fine 3rd offense 25 to life in Leavenworth..
My point is that no mater what laws rules safety code is passed or penitlys are imposed there are those that are doing wrong will continue doing wrong. Rules and laws are only for the law abiding. Sorta like Congress the laws don't apply.