On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:39:30PM -0700, Paul Emerson wrote: | ME: Hey what channel are you on? | PFG: I dunno
Personally, the usual funny response I get is not `dunno', but `um, 27?' (And it's always 27, because their box says 27 MHz.) Though really, most of the park flier people around Austin at the local parks seem to understand frequency control and even practice it. Perhaps because we explain it to them when we go up and introduce ourselves and try to be friendly? | ME: Well you might be interfering with our club field across the | street, you don't want to shoot down one of those $2000 planes do you? | PFG: Meh. I've gotten that response. It's not typical, but I've gotten it. A better angle is to also point out that it would probably crash their plane as well. I've also seen these discussions get somewhat hostile. Telling somebody that they _can't_ fly in the city park near the AMA field tends to not go over well, especially when people start citing laws and rules that either don't exist (AMA club fields do not get `special rights' to the R/C band) or don't apply (AMA rules don't apply to non-members.) And the last thing you want to do is piss somebody off -- they can cause trouble for your club (call in noise complaints for powered clubs, get the local parks department involved, etc.) or could even go around deliberately interfering with the channels that are in use. I've not personally seen it happen (at least not where it could be proven), but I've heard of it ... | ME: Well you could join our club and enjoy frequency control and the | shared knowledge of 100 fellow pilots. Around here, the powered plane club has very little to offer your typical park flier. Sure, it's a nice field, but there's all sorts of rules that the park flier doesn't like (sure, they're good rules, but that's not the perception) and the other fliers really tend to look down on his `little toy plane'. (If it's one of the < $150 jobs. If it's a more expensive plane, with real gear, then people aren't so dismissive.) The local soaring club has a better attitude (since most of the members have a park flier or two), but still, they don't have that much to offer. At least not for the price, at least not what the park flier actually wants. | PFG: How much? | ME: Our club is only $20 a year, but of course you would have to | become an AMA member for $60 a year. You're certainly right about that -- it's quite a deal breaker. Many clubs will even let the $20 slide ... but the $60 generally can't be ignored. Nobody wants to pay $100/year just to fly their plane that they got for less than $100. Especially to fly it with a bunch of people that really aren't that nice (and I've heard this, over and over, from people that I've talked to with park fliers), at a field that's even further than the local park, with all sorts of `silly' rules. (I could talk about `not being nice' to the park flier people at some length, and I've even brought the issue up at meetings of the local powered club, but ultimately there's a very strong feeling of `entitlement' and `superiority' that tends to run people off very quickly. But that's where I'll leave that issue for now.) Really, the only real solution to the frequency control problem with park fliers is spread spectrum. And it looks like the first installment (which isn't perfect, but it looks like a really good first shot) is due out in about a month, called the DX6. (It's not perfect because it's not sutiable for those $2000 planes, not yet, and you can't control the radio gear that the park fliers flying nearby will use. But hopefully soon they'll come out with the next version.) -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] If God didn't want us to eat animals, then why'd he make them so tasty? --Homer Simpson RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
