SEN 1992

SEN 1992 – Table of Contents

1. Lost Hills
2. SEN
3. Colorado Comments

Lost Hills Update
The grass that grew because of the small amount of rain this winter has already sprouted, if that’s the right word, seeds so there are now stickers to get in your socks. Heads up for the up coming meetings.

SEN Mailbox
We got a great load of junk mail that filled our mail box again so we had to blow alot away. My mistake we may have got rid of some good stuff again. Sorry about. We have put some measures in place to fix this.

Colorado Comments
Hi Roger,

It seems to me that with so much commentary regarding the F1x “problem” that it isn’t actually crystal clear to me what the problem is. I could guess that the major issue might be the decline in participants but is there data to act upon? Secondly I have read that there are far too many participants making the fly-offs. Perhaps there are other problems as well such as cost but I would like to address these two.

If there is a serious decline in numbers then we share that experience with so many other branches of model aviation. I suspect this comes down to fighting for market share. I can only pose the question, what is the FAI world doing to attract new people to our sport? It seems to me that this isn’t an individual effort only but one that requires organization. I can readily see that there are so many comments about “outsiders” making rule changes when they don’t fly my sport. That I agree with however if we want to stem the loss of competitors or lack of new people then we need to go to those outsiders and ask why. Here in the US there are so many other options in free flight that we should survey NFFS; FAC and AMA people about what could be done to interest them in FAI events. Surveying existing sportsman isn’t going to generate new ideas and one can see that readily in SEN comments…..”everything is fine, leave us alone” We’ll learn more by asking those who don’t participate than we will asking those who do.

Regarding fly-offs with far too many numbers, why not just increase the round max times on fields that could handle it? If I’m correct the three minute max was established back when three minutes was about what the models of the day could attain in terms of still air times. Today the models can almost double the max time but the max has remained stuck in the past.

Now I hasten to admit that I’m not much of an FAI sportsman but I still feel qualified to offer an opinion and others are just as qualified to ignore it.

Regards, Randy Reynolds

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Roger Morrell