Lots of "Karens" and "Kevins" these days... 🤦♂️🙄
They're why I don't fly at such sites. However....
Nothing but good comments at the county parks I fly at.
I think that is actually one of the values of flying in public spaces - it gives visibility to the hobby. Some official agencies and their ilk may soon be enlisting “the public” to watch for “suspicious drone activity” as part of the nanny-state - so we should be letting the public see us as normal people - not simply hidden away in clubs.
My club is operating out of a field provided by the City of Nashville under the Parks and Rec Department. We literally have
two public parks dedicated to model aviation within an hour's drive of my house that support fuel planes and a third that's electric only!
As part of this, we will get dog walkers out there, especially during the workweek when most of the pilots aren't around. I showed up last friday after work and had run of the place so I was there chaining flights with my twinstar when I hear a car pull up, hear dogs barking. 'course I don't wanna startle the dogs with the engines of my plane so after I refuel it I mosey over to chat up the guy working with the puppers. He tells me the dogs actually like the planes, will sit there and watch, that he'll record them doing this and send it to their owners. Needless to say my TwinStar was airborne within 30 seconds hahahahaha.
I normally get complaints that i am too young to be flying 5” race drones and FT planes. I have had encounters with police, rangers Karens and all that jazz.
I mainly get told of by me ‘spying’ on them however… my goggles dont have DVR and my drone doesn’t have a memory chip. Sooo I normally get away scott free.
Sometimes when i am flying planes, i get the inquisitive boy and father who ask my questions about the plane im flying or my fleet beside me. It happens every 3 flights probably so i put up signs saying dont talk to me when flying CAA registered and my flyer id. My pet hates is children asking id i can fly my planes. All of them are over 250g so I calmly say what is your flyer id and operator id number and may you present your license to me. They run off and there comes the dad. I land and taxi back the my pile of planes. It’s normally dad: why wont you let my son fly plane, me: if he has a registered license and if he has experience with these crafts then he can use them. Dad: you fly the where is your license. Give it to me or im calling the police. I recite my flyer id etc and he walks away defeated.
Edit: i also dont let people fly my scratch built planes as they are verg squirrely and most of the time have the ability to stall as soon as it takes of so some skill is needed to fly my planes
The only way anyone's ever getting the sticks of one of my models...even the cars...is if I'm training them at my club field. If I'm not buddyboxing then I'm not sharing; these things are too delicate and too irreplaceable(A lot of my fleet is decades old balsa stuff; my Hobbico TwinStar is literally irreplaceable and unrepairable because no plans are known to the public for that ARF and it's been OOP for over a decade now) for me to even consider it. If they do want to fly, then if I have my trainer, buddy cord, and student transmitter handy I'll take them up that way, but if I don't have the gear on hand then I'm not letting them fly my planes.
If I crash one, oh well, my own damn fault. If they crash one...
Correct. That's why I never refer to any UAS as a "drone." It's a multi-rotor, a helicopter, an airplane, etc.
I have had kids just walk up and start handling whatever plane/quad that was next to me. I've also had them run out on the field to retrieve my belly landers. I guess no one teaches kids (and adults) any boundaries. Whatever happened to "don't mess with other people's stuff?"
Nobody has any respect for anyone else anymore. I know it's not model aviation, but I'm a fan of Junkyard Digs on YT(And a myriad of other similar channels; I love watching a guy resurrect 30+ year old dormant claptraps and get them on the road again with minimal tools and clever tinkering!) and he put a PSA in his latest episode. Apparently some fans know where his shop is and just barge in like they own the place, give themselves tours of it, even pop the hoods of the vehicles he has in there.
I was reading all of your posts about how no one has really gotten in the bad of trouble (that’s good). Something that used to happen to me a lot when I was flying at the field (a straight up to fly potato field) I had a lot of people cone up to me, almost always good things. Thing like, that’s cool, my son/daughter thinks that’s cool, how much does of cost to fly crazy now. I’d answer them and talk to them for a bit. There were a few of these incidents that I will probably remember for a while.
1- “can I fly?” Some kid was curious and thought it was cool, I was flying my tint trainer And had my dxe backup in my bag. So I let him finish off the pack. Once he made first lap I didn’t need to take instructor control back. It’s a shame it was a week before I moved so I never got to bring him more into the hobby
2- this was when I was doing “aerobatics” with my explorer and I got a crowd of 10ish people to stick around. Felt good
3- was when I was out flying and a cop pulled up and kinda scared me to death, but he said that he wanted to just get a better look. I thought that was gonna be a warning not to fly because one of our friends does photography on the side and he be told that he was not allowed to fly there by the police if I remember correctly the day before for illegal flying (he told me he had his TRUST and was in airspace but had made sure that he could fly there will the FAA and the airport that was near by, so he doesn’t know why he was told to stop flying). So I thought that was gonna be me having to register with the local flying field (didn’t want to because it was really expensive) but he just wanted to watch
That tends to be the comments I get at my club field. Again, it's provided by the city and is part of the Parks department, so we get visitors there who aren't aviators. I have on more than one occasion put on a show for such visitors. A memorable moment of this? I had my FPV plane on hand...
... when a couple of adults and young(5-8yo) kids had showed up on bicycles, decided to rest in our pit area for a bit. We got to chatting about planes since the table they sat at was adjacent to mine. I explained a few obvious differences(Balsa/foam, fuel/battery, et-al), how Peeler's happy to help them become a model pilot if they wanted, then decided to take my bird up. Now I'd been having problems with my FPV system so I was flying LOS, but I decided to turn the FPV system on anyway and hand my goggles to the kiddos...I use EV-800d so I slid the screen off the headset to make it easier for the two boys to both watch...then fuel up, fire that Saito up, and hotdog it for a bit. They loved the impromptu airshow! My TwinStar also gets a ton of positive comments in part because it flies so nicely and in part because there's nothing quite like the sound of a pair of OS 25FX engines running in harmony with each other at full chat!
That’s why you have a perfect 4 acre pasture that’s kept mowed nice and short plus a 100+ acre cotton/peanut field to fly over😁
Livin' the dream. If life ever grants me the finances to move I'm buying up several dozen acres of desert in Henderson, Nevada and building myself a hobby paradise all to my lonesome.
