Breaking Barriers ♀♂️ Unmasking Misogyny in FPV 🕊️
- Thread starter choppergirl
- Start date
Mr NCT
Site Moderator
This post has been reported as "inappropriate" and "spam". Let me address those two areas individually:
Inappropriate - It was posted in an appropriate forum with a truthfully descriptive thread title. There was no name calling or inappropriate text in the post. The video expressed a point of view straight forwardly, with no anger or vitriol, without using "adult" language or inappropriate imagery.
Spam - I didn't see any links to anything except the subject matter in the youtube video. I didn't see any misleading or hidden links or advertising to sell something or misdirect.
While some may not agree with the content, the forum member posted in an appropriate place a concern that is very real to her.
Inappropriate - It was posted in an appropriate forum with a truthfully descriptive thread title. There was no name calling or inappropriate text in the post. The video expressed a point of view straight forwardly, with no anger or vitriol, without using "adult" language or inappropriate imagery.
Spam - I didn't see any links to anything except the subject matter in the youtube video. I didn't see any misleading or hidden links or advertising to sell something or misdirect.
While some may not agree with the content, the forum member posted in an appropriate place a concern that is very real to her.
FishbonesAir
Active member
Welcome aboard. I'm Dave, aka Capt Fishbones. I like building crazy designs that rarely fly as intended, and cats.
stereodreieck86
Active member
I wonder what are people or organizations posting this crap trying to accomplish?
Mr NCT
Site Moderator
Cats rarely do ANYTHING as intended!!
Welcome back @choppergirl . It's been a while since we have seen you on here!
FishbonesAir
Active member
Here I thought she was new, joined 2019!?!
Flying Monkey fab
Elite member
Interesting, and I'm 100% for inclusion in all facets of RC but I saw a lot of claims with no evidence backing the claims. Maybe it is self-evident to those into multirotor FPV but to present this to those on the outside looking in there needs to be evidence and examples for me to be convinced the problem exists in any degree more than throughout society.
FishbonesAir
Active member
Dear Choppergirl.
There's one thing that kinda bugs me about your post.
You've technically been a member here on Flitetest since 2019. But looking at your posting history, you have never really become a part of this community, due to lack of effort.
Yet you feel it's appropriate to zoom through, drop this bomb, and leave again?
You don't appear to have replied to any of our comments, pro or con. You dropped and bugged out.
That's why, in my opinion, this video should be flagged as SPAM.
Edit: after discussing this with a Mod, this doesn't quite meet the definition of SPAM. Baiting perhaps, but not spam. 🙂
Feel free to tell me why I'm wrong, Choppergirl? 😎
Dave Steele, known also as Capt Fishbones
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tesseract
Master member
people like Choppergirl don't become a part of this 'community' not due to a lack of effort on her side, but a lack of effort from users like you to welcome her
WillL84
Active member
She's been around since 2019. Made first post in 2021 which was just a comment on a post about "edgy" soundtracks for OpenTX transmitters. Interestingly that post was made by "Choppergirl2" who joined in February 21, made that post (and a few comments on that post) and hasn't been seen since March of 21.
It seems Chopper girl hasn't done much to try to actively engage in the forums either. There's one post that isn't on the "soundtracks" thread but that's it.
Someone shows up, drops soundtracks for a transmitter, makes one other comment on a different post and nothing else and it's us who haven't welcomed her?
FishbonesAir
Active member
I did welcome her; read the whole thread. Also, don't bloody blame me for "not welcoming" someone who joined two years before me. 🙄
Then later I looked at her profile, and realized I was being conned.
Please note also, she never replied to my greeting, even with a like.
If she wants to become active and participate, I'll be the first to welcome her (again.) 😊
However, dropping a "woe is me, I'm a girl" video, and bugging out again ain't cool. I'd love to discuss what happened, where, when, how can we make it better? But she's not here.
Dave
choppergirl
New member
I might think recording a sound pack with 800+ sounds for RC radios right before I went almost totally blind and posting them for free to Flighttest was... participating?
It took me a few months to make. It was the last semi-altruistic thing I could do for humanity that I thought might matter before it was lights out for me. It's hard to explain, but when you're checking out, you want to say goodbye to the world on a positive and benevolent note. The world is pretty mean, so... the last thing I wanted to do was create something for the world.What else is a blind girl going to do to stay in the hobby? That was my idea at the time. I got some hostility about it, which was perplexing... so I was like okay, well, I made it as something just utilitarian for myself, and then took the extra time to dress it up a little bit to share with others. I guess I'm from an older time, when sharing and show and tell was just a way you made friends. Now for some reason posting links to things you make is considered spam and self promotion but it wasn't back in the early days of the net. My though is if it's not something that would be useful to you, well just scroll on by, no harm done. *shrug* Here it is if you can use it.
I couldn't fly any more, except in the sim sitting close to it on a big screen TV... not because I couldn't see the horizon, but because if lost a model in a field, bushes, or woods, I'd never be able to find it. Literally, if you parked a plane or quad on the ground at my feet, I wouldn't see it. That, and I couldn't read the OSD in the goggles any more... so what if I made something to move all my telemetry reporting (stuff like vbat+) over to audible reporting bound to a switch.
About a month ago I got surgery on one eye, so I can see again out of one eye, and see colors. So, I'm back? I never left the internet, but mostly hang out on Youtube. I've made thousands of post before I went blind on another forum, HomeBuiltAirplanes. If you do a Google search on "choppergirl airwar", you'll find me all over the net, including other RC forums.
People who are blind, aren't completely blind. For me, it was like looking out a frosted car window on a winter day. You can see out, but you can't see. If someone held something right up against the window outside you could see it, but you wouldn't be able to see a stop sign down the street. Bright and blurry, like looking through a wax piece of paper. I could still use a computer when it was in dark theme mode, if I put my face right up to the screen, but looking at white piece of paper with black printing on it appeared as an absolutely blank piece of paper to me. So while it is possible to read computer text while blind with your face up to the screen when it's in a dark themed mode, scrolling through forums and replying to them isn't particularly fun or doable any more.
I have a few nondescript RC and control line planes, five aerobatic or long range quadcopters (7", 6", 5", 3", 2.5"), two TX-16s's highly modded and blinged out, several pairs of goggles, about $250 in batteries, $200 in chargers, and three RC trucks.
I have 3 full sized antique ultralight projects, a Volmer Jensen VJ-24w, a Chotia Woodhopper, and a Poorboy Ultralight. You can see pictures of them on the net ( http://air-war.org/ ) . I built a 20ft flatbed trailer to move them about, which involved quite a bit of welding and drilling of hard tower steel (from our windmill).
The plans for my VJ-24w were given to me by Mac Hodges, a name you may be familiar with from running a hobby store Hodges Hobbies back in the day and flying a B-24 with Bell X1 Glider. Mac is always threatening to take me flying every time he flies up to my town to visit his daughter. The Poorboy Ultralight was built by David Gates, a custom built to order balsa RC plane modeler (for many decades) in Illinois.
About 15 years ago (2008-2013) I highly modded a FPS post apocalyptic (free to play demo) game called Battlefield 2142, to give it an aerial dogfighting combat spin, because I was enamoured by the futuristic VTOL gunship and aerial transport that noone else seemed to care about. I spent 5 years working on that day and night, off and on, it was my passion and my baby. According to the logs 100,000 plus players came through my Air War server doors. You could say my Air War server was the proto prehistory first quadcopter flight sim and popularized flying like that. My gunships flew faster and wilder, much like a 5" quad does today. It was a wild party, until a company called GameSpy that ran the login authentication master servers went bankrupt, and pulled the plug, ending the game for everyone. EA didn't step in to buy it up to keep their games running as they had moved on to consoles and grifting from newer titles.
Quadcopters have been around since the 1990's. They didn't start taking off until around 2015. The folks who had got a taste of flying on my server, started building tricopters and quadcopters with balsa sticks and ducttape because they missed the experience, and the rest is history. There's a reason it's called FPV... because... the resurgant interest in VTOL exploded... not over here in RC land... but in FPS land.
I myself hella missed the experience and still yearned to fly fast and low like I had done in many a ground attack, but I took a different route to try and get back in the air. I started looking at full sized ultralights and bringing them home and spent a lot of time on aviation and glider forums. Which is how I ended up with three airplane projects. I got rather adept and scoring planes nobody else wanted or would touch with a ten foot pole for next to nothing (I was dirt poor broke at the time). Two of them are highly collectible antiques. When someone tried to give me a forth for free, I had to pass on it.
Mostly today I enjoy flying aerobatics in the half a dozen simulators I have. Convenient, fun, and with none of the hassle or headaches of messing about with physical hardware. Double click and you're in the sky. I've flown every week... sometimes every day... for the past 3 years. What else are you going to do while blind?
Anything else you want to know, just ask, I'm pretty accessible ( choppergirl@air-war.org ) .
And oh my god yes is aviation and the rc hobby rife with misogyny.
If you have no clue, you haven't walked a mile in my shoes.
If you doubt me, count the number of black female pilots at your next event or group meeting.
So bang, let's start a conversation about it, which was the purpose of my video.
On topic and I think, in line with FlightTest values.
I fly every day, here is me flying yesterday...
Choppergirl's SoundPack for Open-TX / Edge TX:
❤️️ Choppergirl's Edgy Sound Pack English for Open-TX transmitters ❤️️
I just released a new "Edgy" Sound Pack for Open TX transmitters. ❤️️ Some neat things about my Sound Pack: ❤️️ --Drop in replacement for other English Sound Packs --750 new audio files, more than any other sound pack --Unlike other Sound Packs, you can browse in Windows Explorer and see the...
forum.flitetest.com
Just because someone doesn't say a word while they are at an RC event, doesn't mean they aren't... participating.
Some of us prefer to spend our time actually... flying. That's why I left aviation forum posting and popping rivets behind.
In my case, flying a catetgory I invented (well, sort of, my little buddies dragonflies and hummingbirds beat me to it by several million years) and which I throughly enjoy, PAD/ Proximity Aerobatic Dance.
Flying of sorts anyway... for the last 3 years... to nothing more than a blurry soup mess on the screen as if there were a piece of wax paper between me and the screen.
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Mr NCT
Site Moderator
Glad the surgery helped. Everything I do- work, hobbies, etc. - is sight based and I've wondered from time to time what I'd do if I lost my sight. Must have been devastating. Cool videos.
I should think recording a sound pack with 800+ sounds for RC radios right before I went almost totally blind and posting them for free to Flighttest was... participating?
What else is a blind girl going to do to stay in the hobby? That was my idea at the time. I got some hostility about it, which was perplexing... so I was like okay, well, I made it as something just utilitarian for myself, took the time to dress it up a little bit to share with others, I'm just sharing. I guess I'm from an older time, when sharing and show and tell was just a way you made friends. Now it's considered spam. My though is if it's not something that would be useful to you, well just scroll on by, no harm done. *shrug* Here it is if you can use it.
I couldn't fly any more, except in the sim sitting close to it on a big screen TV... not because I couldn't see the horizon, but because if lost a model in a field, bushes, or woods, I'd never be able to find it. Literally, if you parked a plane or quad on the ground at my feet, I wouldn't see it. That, and I couldn't read the OSD in the goggles any more... so what if I made something to move all my telemetry reporting (stuff like vbat+) over to audible reporting bound to a switch.
About a month ago I got surgery on one eye, so I can see again out of one eye, and see colors. So, I'm back? I never left the internet, but mostly hang out on Youtube. I've made thousands of post before I went blind on another forum, HomeBuiltAirplanes. If you do a Google search on "choppergirl airwar", you'll find me all over the net, including other RC forums.
People who are blind, aren't completely blind. For me, it was like looking out a frosted car window on a winter day. You can see out, but you can't see. If someone held something right up against the window outside you could see it, but you wouldn't be able to see a stop sign down the street. Bright and blurry, like looking through a wax piece of paper. I could still use a computer when it was in dark theme mode, if I put my face right up to the screen, but looking at white piece of paper with black printing on it appeared as an absolutely blank piece of paper to me. So while it is possible to read computer text while blind with your face up to the screen when it's in a dark themed mode, scrolling through forums and replying to them isn't particularly fun or doable any more.
I have a few nondescript RC and control line planes, five aerobatic or long range quadcopters (7", 6", 5", 3", 2.5"), two TX-16s's highly modded and blinged out, several pairs of goggles, about $250 in batteries, $200 in chargers, and three RC trucks.
I have 3 full sized antique ultralight projects, a Volmer Jensen VJ-24w, a Chotia Woodhopper, and a Poorboy Ultralight. You can see pictures of them on the net ( http://air-war.org/ ) . I built a 20ft flatbed trailer to move them about, which involved quite a bit of welding and drilling of hard tower steel (from our windmill).
The plans for my VJ-24w were given to me by Mac Hodges, a name you may be familiar with from running a hobby store Hodges Hobbies back in the day and flying a B-24 with Bell X1 Glider. Mac is always threatening to take me flying every time he flies up to my town to visit his daughter. The Poorboy Ultralight was built by David Gates, a custom built to order balsa RC plane modeler (for many decades) in Illinois.
About 15 years ago (2008-2013) I highly modded a FPS post apocalyptic (free to play demo) game called Battlefield 2142, to give it an aerial dogfighting combat spin, because I was enamoured by the futuristic VTOL gunship and aerial transport that noone else seemed to care about. I spent 5 years working on that day and night, off and on, it was my passion and my baby. According to the logs 100,000 plus players came through my Air War server doors. You could say my Air War server was the proto prehistory first quadcopter flight sim and popularized flying like that. My gunships flew faster and wilder, much like a 5" quad does today. It was a wild party, until a company called GameSpy that ran the login authentication master servers went bankrupt, and pulled the plug, ending the game for everyone. EA didn't step in to buy it up to keep their games running as they had moved on to consoles and grifting from newer titles.
Quadcopters have been around since the 1990's. They didn't start taking off until around 2015. The folks who had got a taste of flying on my server, started building tricopters and quadcopters with balsa sticks and ducttape because they missed the experience, and the rest is history. There's a reason it's called FPV... because... the resurgant interest in VTOL exploded... not over here in RC land... but in FPS land.
I myself hella missed the experience and still yearned to fly fast and low like I had done in many a ground attack, but I took a different route to try and get back in the air. I started looking at full sized ultralights and bringing them home and spent a lot of time on aviation and glider forums. Which is how I ended up with three airplane projects. I got rather adept and scoring planes nobody else wanted or would touch with a ten foot pole for next to nothing (I was dirt poor broke at the time). Two of them are highly collectible antiques. When someone tried to give me a forth for free, I had to pass on it.
Mostly today I enjoy flying aerobatics in the half a dozen simulators I have. Convenient, fun, and with none of the hassle or headaches of messing about with physical hardware. Double click and you're in the sky. I've flown every week... sometimes every day... for the past 3 years. What else are you going to do while blind?
Anything else you want to know, just ask, I'm pretty accessible ( choppergirl@air-war.org ) .
And oh my god yes is aviation and the rc hobby rife with misogyny.
If you have no clue, you haven't walked a mile in my shoes.
If you doubt me, count the number of black female pilots at your next event or group meeting.
So bang, let's start a conversation about it, which was the purpose of my video.
On topic and I think, in line with FlightTest values.
I fly every day, here is me flying yesterday...
Choppergirl's SoundPack for Open-TX / Edge TX:
❤️️ Choppergirl's Edgy Sound Pack English for Open-TX transmitters ❤️️
I just released a new "Edgy" Sound Pack for Open TX transmitters. ❤️️ Some neat things about my Sound Pack: ❤️️ --Drop in replacement for other English Sound Packs --750 new audio files, more than any other sound pack --Unlike other Sound Packs, you can browse in Windows Explorer and see the...forum.flitetest.com
Just because someone doesn't say a word while they are at an RC event, doesn't mean they aren't... participating.
Some of us prefer to spend our time actually... flying. That's why I left aviation forum posting and popping rivets behind.
In my case, flying a catetgory I invented (well, sort of, my little friends dragonflies and hummingbirds beat me to it by several million years) and which I throughly enjoy, PAD/ Proximity Aerobatic Dance.
Foamforce
Well-known member
I’m glad you’re in the hobby! We all want more folks in the hobby and I’ve never seen anything but warm welcomes to anybody who has shown up at the field where I fly.
The lack of women flying RC isn’t evidence of misogyny. I’ve personally tried getting a few women into the hobby, but they weren’t interested. Some do, and they are very welcome. If anything, I believe that misandry is more responsible. On a few different occasions I’ve heard women speaking mockingly of men “playing with their toys”. That doesn’t deter me from the hobby, but I’ll bet it affects other women.
Having everyone involved in the hobby only benefits all of us. There’s no reason to believe that men wouldn’t want more women involved. Please look beyond the normal negative explanations for lack of female involvement and just try to enjoy the hobby with us. We can all enjoy this together.
The lack of women flying RC isn’t evidence of misogyny. I’ve personally tried getting a few women into the hobby, but they weren’t interested. Some do, and they are very welcome. If anything, I believe that misandry is more responsible. On a few different occasions I’ve heard women speaking mockingly of men “playing with their toys”. That doesn’t deter me from the hobby, but I’ll bet it affects other women.
Having everyone involved in the hobby only benefits all of us. There’s no reason to believe that men wouldn’t want more women involved. Please look beyond the normal negative explanations for lack of female involvement and just try to enjoy the hobby with us. We can all enjoy this together.
MacClarkNC
New member
The fact that she was targeted here and also held to a higher standard of not "become part of the community". A standard which this forum does not require. Maybe this is the evidence the unhappy posters are looking for. Seems found to me.
