Very good post, guys! Don't think that your comments go unseen! I try to pop in and read them from time to time. I am one of the new VP's on the EC. I am still learning my way around, but I am trying to put new ideas forward, even when they are unpopular with some EC members. I won't win many battles, but I will try. I supported a term limit proposal that failed. I'm sure that will come up again, and maybe we will get more support the next time.

If you want change, you need to make sure your fellow AMA members vote during the EC elections. If you don't like the guy there, vote them out! I know how frustrating it can be. I worked hard 4 years ago to try to beat an incumbent, and lost by 85 votes out of 4000+! I did win this last time, but was it only because the incumbent died while in office? I don't know. I know it is hard to beat and incumbent!

Tony Stillman
AMA District 5 VP

Mr. Stillman:

Great to see an AMA EC member on this forum. You compliment carwood 444 on his post about publicity. He said:
In his main point that AMA should have an informational publicity program, I fully agree. You seem to like it, however where was all this thinking last year? I ran for AMA EVP and proposed a plan to use available means to really educate all levels of government, and news media in the applicable areas from the State Department (FAI) right down to local city/townships, plus media, about what AMA and aeromodeling is all about. NONE OF MY PROGRAM WOULD HAVE COST AMA ANYTHING OTHER THAN just maybe A VERY FEW $$ POSTAGE AND MAILING AS I WOULD HAVE TAKEN CARE OF THE PROGRAM MYSELF.
As EVP I would have been a working individual that does a _ell of a lot more than repeat the PAID AUDITING TEAM's reports for about 8-9 times a year.
I never saw or heard of any support for such a plan, yet now there is this thing about herding up the "park fliers" which as a group are really a long way from ELECTRIC modelers.
So while you and Mathewson are probably the only two rather level-headed individuals currently on the EC, I still think you are barking up the wrong tree if you want to re-energize AMA. There are thousands of real modelers out there that don't bother with AMA for many reasons, and a big one is ignorance of AMA as an organization. If the local governmental recreational people, along with the news media knew just what AMA and modeling could really do, then I feel confident that AMA could see a turn-around in its membership numbers, however the first thing to turn around is the EC's direction, and making a magazine staff even bigger and able to lose more money 'ain't' one of those directions to go.

So AMA twice had an opportunity to really obtain a true publicity program at little or no cost. You blew it big time because you circled the wagons around a non-productive member of your own. Loyalty is a great thing, but for what cost? [:@] So be it.

11 years ago, after getting nowhere with AMA, I called the local college and asked if I could speak to someone in the journalism department. I asked if a journalism student would like to do a piece on RC aeromodeling for a school project. A young lady called and I made arrangements to meet her at the flying field. I explained everything I could think of about our hobby/sport, including the AMA brick wall I kept banging my head against. I also had her fly my Eagle 2, just for the experience.

She wrote a very nice article for our local newspaper which was immediately printed. My point is, doesn't anyone know anyone in the local or national media who would do a story on everything about RC aeromodeling, including all of the good, bad and ugly? I mean, I've seen everything on national TV from arm wrestling to power sander racing. Isn't our hobby/sport a bit more interesting than that?

CCR

fliers1 makes a pretty strong point. We shouldn't expect AMA to cover all the publicity any more than we should expect AMA to organize all our events. Inviting a journalist or reporter to come witness a special event can do wonders for your publicity in the city.

Come to think of it, my old club USE to do that. My Dad still has newspaper clippings of the assorted events. Somewhere along the line, we stopped doing that....hmmmmm......

Ever seen the Aces High comercial on wings... er, MilitaryChannel.
an online Computer Game gets adds out nationally, where are the AMA adds on The Channel Formerly Known as Wings

That costs a lot of green to get airtime on that channel. What would AMA say? It's more cost-effective with a higher rate of return to present at schools and hobby stores.

How about contacting a local cable TV station to promote RC aeromodeling?

A few years ago, we had no problem getting a half hour of airtime: http://www.wnytonight.net/id20.htm

Scroll down 11 spots to #569

CCR

Publicity? Local clubs here in Northern Ohio seem to get mentions in local papers several times a year. Sometimes, it's because a reporter contacts a club officer, and sometimes, someone from a club makes the contact. Also, there can be quite a bit of good publicity just by taking part in community activities. Just from my club's 2006 activities calendar, on Tuesday, 5/23/06, several of us are going to put on a extemporaneous program for a group of CAP cadets at our field. We were contacted by their aviation education officer. In June, we will be putting on a small program at one of the local MetroPark locations for a civic group. Later this year, we have been invited to put on a demo for a Boy Scout encampment at the County Fairgrounds. August will be our Model Mania, an annual flying demo at our field for the general public. There have been several other inquiries.

Over the years, we have had many such shows, both at our field and at other locations. We have even put on flying demos and static shows at local airports and at large area parks for community and civic groups. For several years, we participated in a Community Days event at our local Commmunity College until construction in the area reduced the available space to an unsafe margin. Some of our members have even gone to schools for talks and flying shows where space was available.

Can this help overcome noise or other problems? Who Knows! It certainly can't hurt. And these contacts can't be made by the AMA. The AMA staff just isn't that big. Unless, like a number of our club members, you consider yourself part of the staff for the purpose of promoting model aviation. And that wouldn't actually be working to support the AMA. It would really be enlightened self-interest kicking in to help you protect something you like.

A For Profit game (free game, pay for online) with 2-4 thousand players at $15 a month can do it, but the few hundred thousand AMAers cant afford it? Doesnt DIY channel have a show for modeling.... Does an AMA comercial go there? Would that be a target audience or Preaching to the Choir

Fortunately the hand over fist deluge of new members from the current marketing strategy makes changing advertising models unnecessary.
Is the membership heading toward 2 Million, or 2 Thousand in the current course of advertising?

Back to the subject at hand, is noise really the problem? Yes and no. Being in boating, we have self-regulated oursleves to lowering our maximum dB level down to 92dB. Now go to a site and have the local police called on you during a race. That could give a rat's wazoo about our self-imposed ruling if a neighbor in the area called complaining of the noise of those little boats.
One boat club in NE Ohio has some members that fly also. One day while flying GLIDERS, the cops show up in answer to a noise complaint of the planes overhead.

If your local cable TV has Public Access type of stations, they are always looking for events to show on their channels. Most of the people are in training for future TV work so they'll come out and tape anything for experience and to fill airtime. Watching R/C anything would beat a lot of the other garbage that they air and ours has some really lame stuff on them.

I live in a city where they don't seem to have a problem with R/C. We have 2 county parks that have dedicated sites, one for planes and another for scale ship modelers. I have been approached by the city Parks and Recreation Dept. as one of their employees saw my fliers at a LHS. They called ME to see what they could do for US to acquire a suitable racing site. They have also allowed the local car and trucks racers use of a skating rink to use as a track during the summer.

[quote]ORIGINAL: Ron Olson

Back to the subject at hand, is noise really the problem? Yes and no. Being in boating, we have self-regulated oursleves to lowering our maximum dB level down to 92dB.
[quote]

Hmmm, 92 dB can be pretty loud depending on the distance at which it's measured. We air modelers generally use 90 dB at 9' measured over concrete.

CR

A dB level by itself is pretty meaningless unless you also specify weighting method, response method, and especially distance. When our club purchased it's sound level meter, we also specified that all measurements be in 'A' weighting, fast response, and at the AMA recommended 9'. I check it periodically against our instrumentation lab calibration standard. Some people were surprised to find out just how loud the "quieter" large size gas engines actually are (Example, a ST piped 60 showing worst case 94 dB at 9' vrs a Quadra 42 on a Byron quiet mount showing 125 dB at almost 100'). Ambient background noise was a constant 64 dB, so it wasn't factored into the measurements. I think I mentioned here before that after 4 years at our current location, we have only been approached by one neighbor who was hearing one of our planes, and it was a large 1/4 scaler with a 3.6 cu. in. engine.

BTW, last week one of the members found an old club newsletter giving a brief history of our club. We will be 50 years old next March! Current field has been in use about 5 years, previous field was in use from about 1968 through 2001. There were only about two other fields before that. Only one temporary field has been lost because of noise, development took the others.

Funny how that works, no? The 4-cycle motors seem quieter since the lower tone isn't as abrasive, yet they often pump out more noise. If there is a complaint, it's usually because of some .40-size pylon-racer that sounds like a hive of cyborg bees on nitro. It meets specs, but the sound is so high-pitched it drives people nuts.

In the electric world, this is why so many pilots are using outrunner motors. The gear-drives used on inrunners make a high-pitch whine that gets you noticed at the parks. And those electric ducted fan motors scream at such a high RPM that they might as well be flying glo.

- Jim

And I have a ferrite 400 on a Mirage 2000 that turns a 5.25X4 prop almost as loud as some 049 glow engines. And the plane is faster than some low wing 40 powered sport planes.

Bruell and Kjerr have an interesting booklet on sound measurements and the effects of frequency and pitch on sound perception. Problem is, it comes with a multi-thousand dollar labratory sound level meter.

The "Irritation Factor" is definitely non-linear. A higher frequency sound lower than the ambient level can be more maddening than a lower frequency sound significantly above ambient.

Well, that's stretching it a bit, Jim.

A local club-sponsored Q500 event allows only sport .40 engines with stock mufflers, and 15% nitro. Thunder Tiger .40's are typically turning 9X7 APC props over 17K RPM on the ground. An APC 9X7 at 17K will generate over over 101 dBA at 9 ft, no matter what is turning it. That's about the lower bound on .40 glo-powered pylon racers. With a Nelson turning a 7 inch prop at over 30K, the level can exceed 120 dBA @9 ft. They sound loud because they darned well are loud.

It is true that 4-strokes often put out more physical noise power than 2-strokes producing the same shaft power, and that is easily confirmed (when exhaust noise is dominant) by using the C-scale on the meter, which is essentially flat frequency response. With the A-scale selected, the physical level sensed by the meter is frequency weighted to emulate human hearing response. The weighting curve is quite steep in the usual frequency range of exhaust pulses from our model engines, and the 4-stroke emits them half as often. It is not unusual for a 4-stroke to measure higher on the unweighted scale, yet measure lower on the A-weighted scale that models human perception.

Higher frequencies may seem more abrasive at the same perceived levels, but if so the effect isn't enough, or isn't regular enough in statistics derived from countless field surveys, to be included in environmental quality standards promulgated by ISO, ANSI, HUD and many other such agencies. Virtually all such standards are based on frequency-weighted level measurements, and almost all agree on the A-weighting scale. These standards are what local ordinances are traceable to, and if you are called to respond to a noise complaint, what counts is what is written in the ordinances.

Abel

This is a problem that was addressed with the IMPBA (yeah, boat guy) as the measurement taken at one site could be louder or quieter at another depending on if the noise is reflected or absorbed.
We use 92 dB at 50', 4 feet over the water using the Radio Shack digital dB meter set on "A" fast. I've compared mine to the high-dollar ones and have gotten the exact same readings.
Vibrations from fuselage's or in our case, hulls, can greatly affect the noise readings. Some have even found that the air intaking the carb alone can make a lot of noise itself regardless of how quiet of a pipe that you place on the exhaust.

I once flew at a club that was very heavy into pylon racing. Some of their planes were so loud and high pitch that it was almost enough to make me physically ill. What made it even worse was when they made engine adjustments in the pits, or really any time they started the engines up, because they had no throttle control and were always at full throttle. Those are the kind of planes that will get clubs shut down due to noise.

RCM and Aviation Modeler International have had articles explaining what goes into the sound from the planes (And probably much of the same things go into boats).
Airframe (Hullframe?) resonance, prop speed, intake airflow all contribute. An effective muffler can lower the exhaust sound to the point where these other components are the primary noise source. High speed engines or motors will be loud, no matter what.

The quietest plane, outside of gliders, we ever had at our field was a scale F6F with an unmuffled ST 60 turning a 13-4 prop. The exhaust and intake noise was effectively suppressed by the large cowl with dummy engine forming a sound box and the relatively slow turning large diameter prop. One of the loudest, outside of ducted fans, was an electric weight lifter test flown by a college team. The brushless motor was turning a 16 6-10 prop fast enough to send the tips at least transonic if not supersonic. The tip noise hurt your teeth. The couple turbines we've had seem to measure about the same as some of the sport 45s to 60s, at least while they are in the air at full throttle. They seem surprisingly quiet at idle, but I haven't had the opportunity to measure one yet.

In response to a comment about my measuring the Quadra at 125 dBA, an IMMAC member responded that "Radio Shack told him their meter doesn't hold it's accuracy if it's hot out, so we can't depend on what it says!". I'm tempted to do some temperature testing at work, raising and lowering the meter temperature in one of our environmental chambers and re-testing against our calibration standard. I doubt very much there is any significant difference within our normal summer temperature range. Or I could borrow the lab B&K, which is certified between 20 to 120 F and take that to the field.

Airframe noise certainly plays a part, as you say. It can either dampen or resonate the motor. I saw a .20-size trainer with the foam-coated nose and the "rubber bolts" holding the motor mount. On it was an OS 25FP with the new muffler, swinging a prop that seemed a tad over-propped, but it ran okay. Being that I've been in electrics the past few years, I was amazed at how quiet it flew compared to the other gassers. You could barely hear it in the air. So, it's apparent that gas planes CAN be quiet, and electric planes CAN be nosiy as heck.

It wouldn't suprise me if many future fields simply incorporate stricter noise rules as an agreement to the city. Only the racers would be inconvenienced, since it's apparent we have the technology to run quiet if there is a market for it.

- Jim

Racers, and people who like to turn normal diameter low pitch props like some of the 3D and fun fly flyers.

The English seem to be living with many sound restrictions right now.

The only aerobatic airplane I have seen that was louder than a racer was a DA-100 with stock pipes turning a Menz 27-10 at full throttle in level flight. That was ear-splitting, but also an irresponsible way to fly a plane like that. Racers, on the other hand, live to fly at full power the whole time. Fortunately the aerobatic planes have throttle servos so everyone doesn't have to cover their ears in the pits. Here's a hint to you guys running Nelson engines with no throttle servos - if you feel the need to be wearing hearing protection when flying your plane then everyone else at the field should be too. Please bring extra earplugs.

Sorry about going on a rant about racers, every time I see a picture of one I think about the club I belonged to and cringe.

Some of the mufflers sold for the large engines are only collector manifolds, not really mufflers.

We had a guy with a Zenoah powered Snapper with a 90 degree manifold. On the ground, it was only about 105 dBA at 9'. If the short stacks from the "muffler" got pointed at you from as far as 120', your eardrums felt like they were about to break, and your joints hurt. However, when asked if he couldn't find a working muffler, his statement was that any muffler quieted those big engines, they robbed too much power!

We lost a racer over the muffler issue once. He was running a collector pipe on a ST 40 rear intake racing engine. The club had the muffler rule in place for over a decade at the time. I approached him about it. We had just recently come to a satisfactory conclusion to some noise complaints from neighbors. He got mad and never came back. Didn't we realize that a muffler for the class he raced in would cost him 500 rpm? It was more important for him to keep that lousy 500 rpm than for us to keep the field.

In the 50 year history of our club, we lost one field because of noise, and spent over $4000 to rearrange our last field to keep sound level at a complaining neighbors property line within the community's sound level statutes. After the rearrangement, we lost several members who couldn't understand why they couldn't fly over the area where we had flown for years.

Noise level is only part of the problem. Sometimes minor problems get blown up by some of the personalities that stick their two cents worth into the issue. Aggressive people who "Aren't going to get pushed around" frequently do, and take others with them.

I know first hand whats going on. I recently walked thru a neighborhood asking the home owners what they thought while the chainsaw motor equipped models were airborne The thing that was amazing was that the constant motor noise was readily apparent... even though it seemed far enough away. So these people in this neighborhhood arent lying here about noise in this paticular case. Its not such a great time for our hobby i meant.

Weird hobby you got there, Professor4flight.

Keep your insurance paid up.

Abel

I dont get it. The flyers are negative, or the residents?
Are you're panning to force all clubs to go electric by questionable petitioning the residents against niose?

Just whom is the target of your snuffing out? all Non-Electric Flyers, or Complaining Residents?