District VI — Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri
Contact
- Randy Cameron, Vice President
- Email: [email protected]
- Address: 2134 S. Hillcrest Ave., Springfield, MO 65807
- Tel.: (417) 830-9211
- Website: www.amadistrict-vi.org
Positive publicity
Please be thinking of ways to produce positive publicity for your club and our hobby this coming year. Many clubs do a lot for their communities, such as a Branson, Missouri, club that gathers toys each year and donates them to the local hospital’s children’s ward at Christmastime.
National Model Aviation Day has become another great way to generate good public relations for the hobby. I know there are many other clubs in the district doing things that are newsworthy.
Don’t be afraid to blow your own horn. Submit news releases to the local and national media. Let them know of the good things you are doing for your community. We need all the positive attention we can get.
Public perception and FAA investigations
There has been a large amount of negative publicity lately, much of which has been driven by FAA investigations of drones or sUAS near airports or full-scale aircraft.
Of the 194 sightings recently made public, many are not actually a safety concern as the news media would have you believe. Many incidents have inconclusive data, yet they still make it into the news as negative publicity for modelers.
To date, none of the incidents have been associated with modelers following AMA safety guidelines. Fortunately, no full-scale aircraft has had a collision with a model.
We need to find ways to educate what many of us consider 'non-traditional modelers' — those who buy easy-to-fly quadcopters at the mall or order them online. These people may not understand the damage they can cause. I'm open to suggestions.
Indoor flying
Indoor flying has become popular during the winter months. I recently spent some time at the Jefferson City Radio Control Club’s indoor flying venue.
The club has worked out an arrangement with the local YMCA to use a basketball court and an area that houses four indoor tennis courts. This allows for two areas to fly in. They can also turn out the lights in one of the rooms to simulate night flying. The sessions draw fliers from as far away as St. Louis and Springfield, Missouri.
Approximately the time this issue reaches you, it will be time for the Hobbico-hosted E-Fest indoor event, held at the University of Illinois Track and Field Armory in Champaign, Illinois. I plan to attend again this year, so if you happen to be there, swing by the AMA booth and say hello.
Social media and contributions
Donald Way has been doing an outstanding job maintaining and updating the District VI Facebook page: www.facebook.com/AMADistrictVI. If you haven’t visited it, you are missing out on plenty of good information.
You’re welcome to add event flyers to the page. Facebook is all about likes, so feel free to 'Like' the page as well as the postings.
Don, thank you for all the work you do on not only the Facebook page, but also the District VI website. It is much appreciated.
I need photos and articles to help fill this page.
Closing
Until next month, happy modeling!
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
