Club is trying to launch a drone program!

[sprzout]

Our club, the Palomar RC Flyers out of San Diego, is trying to get an interest in drone flight and attract pilots to the field. We've had pilots come out before, loved the field and area that we have available, but after flying once or twice, they haven't come back out. I'm rather mystified as to why they don't want to continue flying, so I thought I would put it out to various forums and ask:

What would attract you to flying multirotors at a club field?

I know, pretty simple - but it's not something I've been able to nail down on why people don't want to come out and fly multirotors.

I KNOW there have been pilots who have been chased out of locations because they've been diving office buildings and people have nearly been hit; I know there have been people who have been banned from flying in parks or open areas because someone crashed and started a lipo fire. I know there's also been the random "Karen" who's gotten upset at the potential "spying" being done, and law enforcement has been called to chase people out.

So I'm asking (and it doesn't matter whether you live here in California or in another state or even another country - I'm trying to figure out what we can do for our club that would attract and KEEP pilots at our field. We already have a separate drone area, so we don't have to worry about accidentally flying into a helicopter or fixed wing pilot's flight path, and we have gates to fly through if you want to pursue racing. We've got plenty of varied terrain that you can fly over as well, with bushes and trees that you can loop around, over, and under, if you're a freestyle pilot.

So we have a great location, and we've been inviting - but nobody seems to want to fly at our field. So I ask - as a multi rotor pilot, what would attract you to flying at an established flying field?

 

[PsyBorg]

Flat out.... you see it here... EVERYONE is poor, no one has the money to do anything and if they cant do it free or on someone elses dime they dont want it. So having to pay for a club membership to fly somewhere that is static and unchanging works out in their minds to be less then just flying in your own back yard.

Its a sad reality but people these days are bred and raised to get what ever they can from others and not work or pay for anything. They no longer understand the concept of team or community. Its all about the me me me, and being in a club where they would have to do things in a way that doesnt fit that whole "I do what ever I want where I want" the world owes me mentality thing just doesnt work for them.

Make it free and unregulated and they will flock there.. Have rules and dues not so much. That is until regulations make it so formal clubs are the only place left to fly without going to jail..

Addendum... You also in most cases cant sit around drinking or smoking weed at an organised club so that rules out a lot of people too.

EDIT WEEEE you are the lucky winner.. this was my 8888th post on the forums!!! Man I talk too much..

 

[skymaster]

maybe alot of people are not into drones. maybe they just want to fly a cheap foamboard plane, and maybe they read all about the FAA and it's regulations that it becomes like Damm all that to get a little fun. so one day i am at the park and i see this little kid flying a quad from wall mart or some other store. the kid if maybe 6 or 7 years old and the park is only like five block away from an airport. he is not flying high just above his head and having fun. so what do i say you can fly the toy here because the FAA is gonna come for your. what would you do. I did explained it to some older kids and told them were to get some info before they got in trouble. and maybe this is why people are loosing interest in the rc hobby.

 

[JasonK]

note - I wouldn't call myself a multi-rotor pilot (I do have a 'walmart special' multi-rotor from way back when that my kids fly) - at least yet. The more I fly, the more interesting multi-rotor's start to look (mostly because I can get intresting flying as smaller areas vs my fixed wing stuff).

1. Does your Club require an AMA membership?
   If so, maybe your potentials looked up the AMA rules on FPV flying and decided it wasn't for them. I was FPV flying a fixed wing at my local club and ended up having a talk with one of the other members about plane markings (AMA wants you to put your AMA number on your planes... took me a solid 10 minutes looking for that rule to find it... doesn't apear that it is that important if it is buried that well through layers of documentation to me). But along the way I found AMA's _much much_ more restrictive idea of FPV flying at all. let me itemize what I remember (The combination doesn't make the AMA feel very friendly to FPV quad flying):
   1. Train buddy boxed with someone who can LOS fly your craft
   2. VLOS spotter has to be close enough to hand the TX and they have to be able to 1) fly your craft LOS, 2) LOS is defined as both seeing the craft _and_ knowing attitude of it [which in my experience, you can see a quad much farther away then being able to tell which way it is facing] - which if your free-style flying, keeping track of the attitude of the plane sounds rather challenging LOS.
2. Above comments about 'interesting places to fly'
3. Above comments about 'cost'
4. Above comments about 'FAA Regulations'
   

 

[LitterBug]

Pretty much the same result at our club. People come out once and never come back. I have been out to the places they fly too. Most of the quad guys like to have stuff to fly/race around and they like to explore new places. A static field just isn't what they are looking for. We have a very cheap club fee until you add the AMA requirement on top of it. It's kind of a why pay for a static environment when you can go other places for free thing....

LB

EDIT: FYI, Psyborg hit on one other thing, A lot of the races and other organized events for quads around here have a disclamer that no "smoking" or "drinking" is allowed on site, and anyone deemed less than sober will be asked to leave. Not that everyone partakes in such activities, but there are a few....

 

[clolsonus]

My club is full of great guys who would love to increase our total membership. But I still feel like any person who comes out with a multirotor, or even a fixed wing with a pixhawk or ardupilot gets more than a few side glances from the airplane guys. If the emphasis is on "club" then it is more of a social gathering, not just a dedicated place just to fly. A new person is trying to break into a new social group, trying to figure out the unwritten rules, and the way things are done. For people like me who tend to be more introverted, it can be daunting, and if you get even the smallest hint that people aren't really sure they want you and your particular toys there, why come back?

Here's a thought: if you want to attract multirotors, host a dedicated multirotor event once a month (or a couple times a summer.) That gives multirotor pilots specific permission to come out and fly their stuff, it gets them in the habit of coming out there, they can get to know a few of the other people, and hopefully get them gently broke into a new social group and wanting to come back. I think you have to go all in, realize a multirotor subgroup will form, and it will probably change your club dynamics, and most of your guys need to be ok with that.

Not to be negative, but our club has a guy or two that is trying to preserve the 80's. Our club rules were written probably in the late 70's to early 80's, written around 80's style airplanes and 80's style flying. One guy in that club has it nailed perfectly and if you come out with an electric foamy (versus a balsa 4-stroke) and you stand in the wrong spot for flying, you get treated to a 30 minute conversation about club rules. And he's totally in the right -- the club has designated 5 flying station spots ... but if I was the only one at the field until he showed up so I was careless about where I was standing and posting my membership card on the board ... ugghhh. So I let him do his thing and I'll just come back a different day.

One time i was looking for a new club to fly at (needed a longer runway for one of my difficult to fly planes.) I showed up at this place and literally just got stares, can't remember if anyone even said hi. Apparently I drove in wrong, parked my car wrong. From before I even got out and tried to say hi it was clear that this wasn't a place that was interested in seeing me there.

So my point is that we really need to be tuned into the social aspects of clubs if we want to grow them. I'm an engineer/computer guy so I have low social skills on the giving side, but I see how I'm treated on the receiving side. Flite test totally gets that with their emphasis on family, fellowship, and making memories. It takes very very little to ruin the experience for a new guy and then they probably won't be back.

 

[JasonK]

@clolsonus - I wish I could give you 100 likes for that post. You hit it right on the head. even going to the 'local' [nearest at 1 hour away] with fixed wings, I get a bit of that, given that my planes are FT foamboard style stuff, really light/etc/etc. I just happen to choose to 'push past it' as there isn't a whole lot of choices for places to fly were I am at. [I have to drive ~ 20-30 minutes depending on traffic, just to get outside the "you can't even get permission to fly a 25g toy in your yard" no fly area I happen to be in]

 

[PsyBorg]

@clolsonus I think you hit a good point there too.. The good ole boy balsa AMA snobs drive away many potential members by not being flexible and accepting the various other aspects of flight and people pick up on that "vibe" when around these type of people. If a club wants to grow then those type people need to accept new things or the club has to wait until they die off... simple as that. The AMA doesnt get it which is why the tried to back door multirotor pilots in their dealings with the government and that mentality is passed down to clubs.

Flite Test is more acceptable about many things but they also have rules. Having fun on video doing crazy stuff is MUCH different then owning property people fly at and being responsible for over all safety regardless of what waivers are in place. Two or three people goofin around doing things vs a full flight line plus spectators changes the enforcement of rules a lot as well.. that whole time and a place for everything circumstance.

 

[Timmy]

Am I too young to join a club?

 

[LitterBug]

Am I too young to join a club?

You may need to have a parent/guardian with you.....
https://www.modelaircraft.org/membe...ns/academy-model-aeronautics-youth-membership

 

[PsyBorg]

@Timmy If you are old enough to be an AMA member probably. if not you would more then likely have to have a parent present at all times. Then there is club membership fees as well as AMA. But that would also depend on the club by laws as to what membership criteria is an that can vary a LOT between clubs.

Theres an AMA free flight club just over the hill from where I live but they wont take drone pilots because we are unsafe yet they post videos of about thirty of their members launching free flight planes still carrying their beers as these planes crash into the crowd of people all over the field.

 

[LitterBug]

videos of about thirty of their members launching free flight planes still carrying their beers as these planes crash into the crowd of people all over the field.

 

[clolsonus]

My club has gotten into foam-board (construction style) streamer combat big time, so now I feel like I'm the old crusty guy showing up with my old-school molded foam airplanes. A club does need rules and structures, emphasis on safety, some ways to fairly share the airspace between wildly different air vehicles, and good ways to take turns flying. The level of technology in our aircraft keeps growing, FAA is a moving target ... it's complicated and none of us quite get it perfectly right. I love the AMA and it's mission, but now in our day and age, most people just download an app for what they want and if that's not available, they just forget about it and watch tiktok videos on their phone in bed for the rest of the night. So many are just lazy consumers, and there is far too much freely available to consume so we are always behind. Back in my day, if you wanted something cool like a model airplane, you had to build it yourself. And then we needed space to fly so it made sense to organize clubs and work together to maintain a field and flying site. AMA helped to coordinate and support all that from a broader perspective. The AMA isn't perfect so it's fair to send some criticism once in a while, but without their leadership we probably wouldn't have most of our clubs and club fields, and if they went away, we would lose so much of that structure and coordination. We'd be left with a few island oasisis like edewater, and not much in between for ordinary people.

 

[clolsonus]

Theres an AMA free flight club just over the hill from where I live but they wont take drone pilots because we are unsafe yet they post videos of about thirty of their members launching free flight planes still carrying their beers as these planes crash into the crowd of people all over the field.

That sounds like the video I saw from the UK, total mayhem, because a lot of these planes had small glow motors on them. But it seemed mostly in good fun.

Momentum = mass * velocity and density is also important, so there's a big different between a 500 gram free flight 0.49 model careening out of control at 15 mph versus a 100mph race quad careening out of control. I admit, those high performance quads make me nervous, but so do pylon racers.

 

[FL_Engineer]

I'm not a multirotor guy but I'm currently weighting my options for joining a club. Everyone on here echos my concerns with joining a fixed flying field with a social group that has well established rules that I must now adhere to. I am still learning and it would be great to have the wealth of knowledge a club could provide but breaking into a group is difficult. Do they fly foam/park flyers? How to they feel about FT builds? Do they fly electric or mainly nitro? Add those issues to the annual cost and the fact that my nearest AMA fields are about and hour away and I'm stuck flying in a random field until I commit to a plan.

 

[sprzout]

Make it free, make it no rules? Not gonna happen. That’s the exact reason why they get chased out of the areas they’re trying to fly in.

Our club realizes that being able to have someone take over if you’re flying and lose FPV video is pretty ridiculous. We still want a spotter, but it’s because we want the spotter to tell you that there are people coming up behind you, or that a car is coming in on the road near the drone area, or that you’re

Am I too young to join a club?

With our club, we have all ages. There's a 7-8 year old kid at our field who flies with his dad, and they absolutely love it. There's also the father an son who are 50 and 75, flying. It's all ages.

 

[JasonK]

Our club realizes that being able to have someone take over if you’re flying and lose FPV video is pretty ridiculous. We still want a spotter, but it’s because we want the spotter to tell you that there are people coming up behind you, or that a car is coming in on the road near the drone area, or that you’re

which is reasonable.

 

[sprzout]

I'm not a multirotor guy but I'm currently weighting my options for joining a club. Everyone on here echos my concerns with joining a fixed flying field with a social group that has well established rules that I must now adhere to. I am still learning and it would be great to have the wealth of knowledge a club could provide but breaking into a group is difficult. Do they fly foam/park flyers? How to they feel about FT builds? Do they fly electric or mainly nitro? Add those issues to the annual cost and the fact that my nearest AMA fields are about and hour away and I'm stuck flying in a random field until I commit to a plan.

So let's talk about rules for a minute, since that seems to be the biggest "negative".

When you fly, whether it's at a park, your backyard, or a club flying field with a runway, there are things you don't want to do - you don't want to hit people, you don't want to hit property (whether it's a car, home, etc.). That's a rule right there. DON'T HIT ANYTHING.

Why?

You don't want to hurt anyone, you don't want to do damage to property, whether it's your own or someone else's.

That's what the rules are about - keeping people safe by NOT flying directly overhead, by NOT flying towards people, by NOT buzzing cars in the parking lot. We have the requirements of having a spotter to fly because we want to make sure the drone pilots are aware of people coming up behind them, out of view, or of the occasional full scale aircraft that flies overhead (we've had several instances recently of medical helicopters flying over our field en route from an accident to the nearest local hospital - hikers who have fallen and injured themselves or been bitten by the overabundance of rattlesnakes in the area this year).

If it's all about "screw the rules", then you won't mind if I intentionally fly my cheap foamboard plane into your drone, right? Or launching my plane directly behind you, and over your head?
0
Yes, I'm being ridiculous to make a point - we keep with rules to keep people safe. The reason we don't have bigger incidents is because we try to follow the rules at our field. We go out there to have fun, and that's what our club is about - which is going to bring me back to my original point of this post:

What would be attractive to drone pilots to get them to come fly at a field instead of constantly having to dodge Johnny Law, the "Karens" of the world, and have fun?

 

[PsyBorg]

That sounds like the video I saw from the UK, total mayhem, because a lot of these planes had small glow motors on them. But it seemed mostly in good fun.

Momentum = mass * velocity and density is also important, so there's a big different between a 500 gram free flight 0.49 model careening out of control at 15 mph versus a 100mph race quad careening out of control. I admit, those high performance quads make me nervous, but so do pylon racers.

Thats understandable. However you may be under that heading of not understanding them. For instance... when a plane fail safes it can glide for long distances. They can even sustain flight without a pilot if caught in thermals and such. When a quad failsafes (not sure on DJI products as most default back to GPS and fly towards Japan) the left rear motor shuts off before the rest do so the quad flips backwards to stop momentum and then drops in a short distance.

As far as the speed goes (I am one of those wild and Ka razie guys) you dont jump into one that fast without having some kind of skill. If you dont have that skill and experience you usually only fly once as you have destroyed the gear beyond repair. Normally by the time you step up to that level gear you already have a decent amount of knowledge to properly tune the quad and you have the flight experience to know when a crash is unavoidable and disarm before said crash even begins in most cases. You learn to sacrifice the gear to protect other things , people, property.... These may look out of control but in fact are more stable and in control then any fixed wing could ever be. They have to be to be able to do what they do.

As a fast / race pilot you also have a MUCH better concept of space you fly in because you are always looking ahead to where you are flying so you can start to turn well before the actual place you need to turn. Thus you usually pick up on other moving objects like people or pets or even vehicles long before you get near them because you look so far ahead of where you actually are at in space.

Its just like driving a car. In a car you only look around while driving if you are changing lanes, making a direction change or crossing an opposed vehicle route. You have mirrors on a car to see what may be coming up behind you. In a quad the only thing that may be coming from behind is another RC aircraft and they like you are looking ahead and already see you.

I would not fly where I do if I remotely did not know I could put my quad down even at these speeds before I got near the building. Also I do not do this at all if people are out and about. (and yes I have arrangements made with the property manager if damage does occur) I go elsewhere to fly or do freestyle practice out over the corn. Once in a while someone will sit at the table with me but I know they are not going to get up in the middle of a flight and walk out in the track.

 

[LitterBug]

What would be attractive to drone pilots to get them to come fly at a field instead of constantly having to dodge Johnny Law, the "Karens" of the world, and have fun?

Find some of their events and show up. Talk to them and get their input. Fly a drone or two and put yourself into their boots.

LB