Club is trying to launch a drone program!

[cranialrectosis]

I consider myself a newbie kinda and I was checking out the website of a local club.

Things that put me off:
-The price
-The sheer amount of rules

Things that made me want to join:
-runway
-lots of new flying buddies

The thing is, why would I pay for something I can do free and walk to in 10 mins? Plus I have two flying pals and that's enough for now. People around here seem to be pretty accepting of us flying. As a matter of fact My friend smacked someone and the victim was "alright" with it. Maybe he was lucky. People do see me on approach and don't move out of the way so I have to go around and with for them to pass which is annoying. People will literally be walking straight into my approach path. its like those mindless pedestrians who cross the street on their phone without looking both ways.

Assuming you fly fixed wing, definitely look at local clubs. Definitely shop around too. Clubs have a culture and some are better than others.

Clubs give you access to decades of experience and they tend to do a good job of keeping spectators off the flight line. The really good ones have trainers and bathrooms and charging stations and BBQs and soda machines.

All of them have insurance which is nice if your plane crashes and the lipo starts a tree on fire.

For the most part, the rules are pretty steep but once you get used to them, safety becomes second nature and they won't be so intimidating. Once everyone is on the same safety path, the environment becomes less risky. No one wants to accidentally hurt someone. Clubs mitigate that pretty well and you learn to anticipate things newbies tend not to think about.

What you are paying for by joining a club is a runway, crowd control, experience, insurance and an education.

I loved our club. To me it was well worth the money and all the work to get it running and maintain it (lots and lots of mowing).

We had lots of people including a bunch of high school kids in the STEM program flying Tiny Trainers all the way up to the 80 year old guy flying a $5,000 DJI Inspire.

@sprzout and FliteTest are right. The camaraderie is just a ton of fun and with the right culture can really inspire.

 

[Boberticus]

You cant believe how disappointed I am with Colorado Springs, and the way they have bullied the rest of the municipalities in El Paso county.

We are literally the city where we train our pilots, the frigging United States Air Force Academy is in El Paso county limits. One of the biggest growing sectors in the city is in aerospace, emphasis on the space. We have the national WW2 Air muesem in the city, with a world class airplane restoration company based on the local airport. The largest "home airport" for experimental aircraft in the country, meadowlake(KFLY), is in El Paso county. We have -i think- the largest drone program here too, military service members fly drones overseas from Scriever AFB.

We have at least Five parks within city limits with not only the room (1acre+) to house a local field, with beautiful scenery that a Facebook video or a Instagram "drone selfie" shot of someone flying around would bring in tourists in droves...

but god forbid i fly a cheap foam plane in a park. Quite literally a disappointingly grassbackwards fascist stance to take, it might be the most disapointing place for model aviation in the country

I'm less than impressed with the AMA club out east, instead of fighting for anything, they are trying to say they are the only place to legally fly and are petitioning for funds to update their field from the park department. they literally cowled under and now that the hobby has suffered in the area they are begging for money. privileged bargaining cowards. If i end having to pay for a membership somewhere ill go to Pueblo...

@cranialrectosis, where is the nearest place i can fly that not the AMA field out east? do you have to pay for dragon man? how do i get permission to fly at the Airport, is there someone i can call?

@sprzout sorry for using your thread to vent, what I really want locally is some sort of league, with "race days". If i was to have a suggestion it would be to have a Set course and a "official" wall/webpage to post leaderboard times, with maybe a event at the start of the summer to kick off the new arrangement for the summer. having a set track to practice on all summer and post times up before the fall and the takedown would be pretty sweet. you could even have ti that new times can only be posted from 'race days' or 'events" or even just use a approved witness(club member) to drive fellowship/friendships/meetups between strangers. Bragging rights and can be just as alluring of a draw as prizes, and wayyy cheaper.

 

[clolsonus]

Way back in my day -- I built a 40 sized trainer one summer and then before I had a chance to fly it, my family moved to AZ. So I found a local club that had built a gravel runway in the back-40 of the county fair grounds. There was literally no other place to fly a fixed wing other than the club field. If you landed off field, it was: plane meet rock, and then spend 20 minutes bagging up the balsa bits so you can rebuild over the next 2 weeks. So the club gave modelers a nice place to fly, we had a legit experienced instructor who was great, and a good group of guys to look up to (except for a few things I found out about later ... but you are never old to be young and naive I guess.)

These days we have inexpensive and pretty good small foamie park fliers that you can either build or buy almost ready to go and fly in a park or big back yard. We have electric power that is arguably better than glow, especially for the smaller sized models. And we have quads that can launch and land anywhere.

So do we still need clubs and dedicated flying sites? Yes if you want to fly bigger or more advanced airplanes that need larger spaces and make more noise. Yes if you want to hang out with like minded people and enjoy watching their cool creations. Yes if you don't want to get chased out by the local sheriff. But there are a lot of forces going against clubs now -- from inexpensive small models, to quads, to a new generation that is more comfortable texting each other than meeting face to face or even making a voice phone call.

I think the problem is much broader than RC hobbies (I think so many of the traditional hobbies an activities are languishing.) We live in an age of being constantly bombarded by advertisements everywhere we look. We have a constant barrage of people vying for even just a second or two of our attention, so while they stole our glance for 2 seconds, there is a 1% chance we'll click on their ad, and they'll make 2 cents, but multiply that by 24/7 and it adds up, and everyone is trying to do that to us (by the way, check out www.flightgear.org for a free flight sim download.) We get so overloaded that we are reduced to bouncing around between youtube videos and social media all day and don't get anything done. Hobbies suffer, but it's ok because we can buy so much cool pre-made stuff ready to fly. I don't know if it's all better or worse than 30-40 years ago, but it sure is different. I like to think that the smart and industrious kids are still all out there doing and building and learning, just in other areas and other ways ... I hope.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Well most people down here don’t have a clue about drones, they just don’t know, at least that’s been my experience. I think people are just scared of them because they don’t know anything about them. Just think about it your with you family at the park and then some dude shows up with strange containers and a strange thing with blades on it with some sort of camera on it and it’s loud and fast and then they call the sharif because they are worried about the kids. Which probably means we have to educate our society about them, and how do we do that you ask? I don’t have a clue.

Drones have always been 'evil' here in El Paso County. I was one of those who thought drones should be banned because spying or something... But me being me, I decided to try one out before I passed judgement, so I bought a toy and got myself addicted.

What I think we need is to educate people about not calling the cops for every little thing they don't understand. I don't call the cops on my neighbor because his dogs are barking at 2AM. I go see about my neighbor. I think if we just stopped assuming the worst about people and calling the cops about things we didn't bother to learn about, our world would get much better.

At least, that's a lesson I took away from it.

 

[JasonK]

El Paso County has banned any type of flying or throwing of anything in any park since 2005. I need a permit to throw a frizbee, softball, football or fly a kite in a park here and they only issue permits to leagues (I know because I have called and been denied).

intresting... I wonder if the law is against taking off/landing or 'flying'... because the second could get swashed via FAA has 100% authority over airspace, but they can still regulate taking off/landing.

on the other hand, WTF, no frizbee, softball, kites? then what is even the point of the park? I thought the whole point of parks was to have some were to do these outdoor sports..

 

[JasonK]

What you are paying for by joining a club is a runway, crowd control, experience, insurance and an education.

yah... in my case, I fly hand launched foamies and just needs some grass to land, taught myself... not sure were I stand on the insurance (comes from AMA not the club).

Crowd control is useful (having somewere to fly were you don't need to worry about random people showing up under you)

 

[cranialrectosis]

where is the nearest place i can fly that not the AMA field out east? do you have to pay for dragon man? how do i get permission to fly at the Airport, is there someone i can call?

Dragon man is a shooting range and not cheap. If you want to rent a fully automatic rifle and go to town, that's where you go. However, I don't go to Dragon man because I don't really like the crowd he draws or the safety situation there. I don't need to shoot fully auto and I like Frontier for the 1000 yd range at Hannover. I'll be the guy with the Garand pinging steel at the 500 or 600 yd line on Saturday.

The Springs East Airport (719) 510-6792 had a flying field that was open to the general public. I would call to be sure it's still there. Just land when someone is on approach and stay away from the skydivers.

MultiGP is a drone racing league. We had a franchise here but it closed a few years back. Here is a map of league sites.

We have a street named Kelly Johnson Blvd but you can't fly a model plane legally over public property for a 30 mile radius. SMH.

If you want to be legal and fly fixed wing you go to the only place left. Otherwise, welcome to the underground.

 

[Tin Man]

I fly at home just because it’s convenient and I have no reason to go anywhere els except for more space and maybe more friends.

 

["Corpse"]

I fly at home just because it’s convenient and I have no reason to go anywhere els except for more space and maybe more friends.

Off topic but what do ya' fly?

 

[Tin Man]

Why do any of us fly? Because it’s fun.😁✈️

 

[Tin Man]

I fly the ft mustang and ft spitfire most of the time looking at building a viggen

 

[Tin Man]

What do you fly?

 

["Corpse"]

What do you fly?

5 inch race quad, and I flew a lot of fixed wings beforehand.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Why do any of us fly? Because it’s fun.😁✈️

This answer actually surprises a lot of people.

Most non-copter folks think people fly copters to shoot video. They can't imagine that it's fun.

If I'm out with a copter all anyone ever asks about is the video. No one asks how fast it is or how high it can fly. They just want to know how much I can see with the camera.

If I show them video, the light bulb clicks on and the entire focus of the conversation can change.

 

["Corpse"]

This answer actually surprises a lot of people.

Most non-copter folks think people fly copters to shoot video. They can't imagine that it's fun.

If I'm out with a copter all anyone ever asks about is the video. No one asks how fast it is or how high it can fly. They just want to know how much I can see with the camera.

If I show them video, the light bulb clicks on and the entire focus of the conversation can change.

If I have spectators I always land and show them the quad. Show them the pilot and it shows how the quad will be flown. Safely vs Unsafely.

 

[Tin Man]

Exactly, that’s how we can educate people about this hobby.

 

[Timmy]

Exactly, that’s how we can educate people about this hobby.

....and show off a bit

 

[PsyBorg]

This answer actually surprises a lot of people.

Most non-copter folks think people fly copters to shoot video. They can't imagine that it's fun.

If I'm out with a copter all anyone ever asks about is the video. No one asks how fast it is or how high it can fly. They just want to know how much I can see with the camera.

If I show them video, the light bulb clicks on and the entire focus of the conversation can change.

Hrrmm... the questions asked seem to be different by area. The very first question anyone ever asks me is how much does it cost. Not a single person has ever asked me about the cameras. But 90% of em do state they will get one to spy on people or harass them or in some case some want to harass wildlife or peoples pets. At that point the conversation usually goes awkwardly silent and I find reasons to break out tools and sit there fiddling with the quad til they get the message and go away.

The few that do ask intelligent questions get ride alongs in the monitor I keep with me or in some cases with really interested or cool people they get to put on the goggles while I attempt to make them tip over as I fly LOS freestyle hehe.

Local PD and Sheriffs are usually the most inquisitive and have the best questions as far as them wanting to get into them or them already dabbling with camera drones or toy drones with their kids. Surprisingly non covert and in any way biased against drones in general.

 

[Timmy]

The few that do ask intelligent questions get ride alongs in the monitor I keep with me or in some cases with really interested or cool people they get to put on the goggles while I attempt to make them tip over as I fly LOS freestyle hehe.

I got that treatment before twas fun!

 

[JasonK]

looking at the different reactions... likely has to do with how 'live and let live' the local people and gov't are as to how things work out for various people.

One thing that the 'get your nose in everyone's business' attitude can create is a 'I don't care what you think, I am going to do it anyways' reaction which causes both sides to get grumpy with each other.

Also fall into the duality of "blame the tool for x" vs "blame the person for x"... but taking that one further might require the 'behind the shed' area that doesn't seem to exist any more