President’s Perspective - 2004/11
Dave Brown, AMA president
“What do you do about unavoidable incompatibility between types of models?”
The Nats is over in Muncie, Indiana, and it was a great year. Pre-entry was down slightly; we surmise this might be because gas prices were near a peak around the pre-entry deadline. Late entries balanced the loss, so overall entry levels were relatively normal.
I attended a number of events including a couple of new ones, such as Cross-Country Soaring with big-scale sailplanes. Windy days plagued much of the contest, including this event, but people persevered and everyone had a great time.
As the Nats grows in size and length, a problem keeps cropping up that is not as easy to solve as one might think. Closing the National Flying Site to all flying except for the particular Nats event scheduled creates animosity among those AMA members who would like to use their national site for sport flying. During the actual competition, closing the site would seem to be an acceptable practice, but what if the scheduled event is CL (control line) and someone wants to fly RC (radio control)? Realistically, the problem is focused on RC flying, and only occasionally is there a problem for FF (free flight) or CL.
Generally, the Nats events use assigned frequencies to allow multiple events to take place simultaneously. The original frequency-assignment scheme we established divided the available frequencies into three groups, but those groups have not been kept “pure” through the years. As a result, the frequency distribution varies daily during the Nats as events begin and end.
Events generally run 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the evening hours are inactive except for practice flying. Part of the problem is that the events do not necessarily end at the same time. It’s common to see one event end at 2 p.m. while another runs until 7 p.m., so converting the field to open flying is not as easy as it seems.
It has become easier for those who run the Nats simply to leave the field closed to anyone except Nats competitors. Competitors are allowed to practice into the evening on the site they flew on that day. This has proven to be safe because those competitors are flying on frequencies assigned to that particular event and site. There is little likelihood of their creating a problem with other events that may still be in progress. Frequency control on a particular venue is fairly easy and can be self-policing because competitors are aware of the frequency assignments.
Consider the circumstance of an AMA member who comes to the Nats as a spectator or simply shows up and wants to fly, not realizing the Nats is in progress. Most would accept that they cannot fly during the competition, but why can’t they fly in the evening? It sounds simple: let them fly wherever the frequency they are using is located for the Nats event, but how do we ensure that they know where that is? What if the site to which their frequency is assigned has a competition course set up on it? This would make the site inappropriate—or even unsafe—for sport flying. What do you do about unavoidable incompatibility between types of models? Can’t you just see the chaos if a modeler tried to set up to fly his hi-start glider in the middle of the Pylon course while Pylon competitors were practicing?
The problem isn’t going to be easy to solve and may have to be resolved in steps. What we tried to do this year was make up frequency boards on which a modeler reserved his frequency by inserting his AMA card for each venue at the flying site. (For those who may not realize it, we have four RC locations at the Muncie field.)
This may be better than closing the site to all sport flying, but it is not the best long-term solution. It requires daily effort to prepare the frequency boards in concert with the frequency mix of the day, and it does not resolve the issue of incompatible model types or facility configuration. If a flier who wanted to fly a hi-start glider would be flying it at the 600-by-600-foot grass site, but his frequency was assigned to the Pylon site—you can see the problem.
The challenge is to make the site available to the maximum number of members while maintaining the operations of the Nats and any other competitive events on the site. Ultimately, an integrated, automated frequency-control system is needed, but that will take time to develop.
In the meantime, we must do as much as possible to ensure that a member who travels hundreds of miles to the Muncie site has the opportunity to fly at the field if he or she wants to. Until an integrated system is developed, this will involve much work. Some members may be unable to sport-fly certain types of models on some days, but we owe it to the members to do as much as we can to make the site available whenever possible.
Dave Brown AMA president dbrown@dbproducts.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
