President’s Perspective
An event such as this doesn’t just happen.
What has 17 flight stations, 712 registered pilots, and very hot weather? If you guessed the IRCHA (International Radio Controlled Helicopter Association) Jamboree at the AMA National Flying Site in Muncie, Indiana, you are right.
Before this event, the Joe Nall Fly-In in Woodruff, South Carolina, was the largest gathering of modelers for a single-weekend event. The IRCHA Jamboree passed that by a significant margin.
What was the secret formula for this success? If I knew, I would patent it and spread it everywhere, but all I can do is guess why this event has become so popular. It presents a wide variety of opportunities for people who are interested in RC helicopters to enjoy themselves.
Highlights of the Jamboree included:
- Seminars on a wide variety of subjects of interest to rotor heads, seemingly from dawn to dusk.
- Roughly 40 vendors selling almost anything one could need to build or repair an RC helicopter — some people came primarily to shop.
- An area of flight demonstrations conducted by a large variety of manufacturers and distributors that was constantly operating, showing off the latest and greatest.
- Plenty of open flying for pilots of all skill levels.
- Extreme 3-D pilots flying alongside newcomers just learning the craft.
- A few competition events such as T-Rex pylon and drag racing (these were secondary).
The beauty was that it all flowed seamlessly and everyone got along well. Announcers worked the event nearly the entire time, and the sponsors received much promotion and recognition. This may be partly responsible for the event’s success. Many people are not too thrilled with the commercialization of aeromodeling, but if we are to grow and enjoy the recognition events such as this can give us, we must accept that sponsors are a major key to this aspect of our sport.
An event such as this doesn’t just happen. I had the opportunity to look at the organizational plans and manual for this event, and believe me, IRCHA put a great deal of planning and effort into it.
The manual addressed nearly every detail, and each aspect of the operation was assigned to someone to handle. Dave Milner, IRCHA president, was the "orchestra leader," and the band played some mighty sweet music.
Was everything planned perfectly? Obviously, there were some glitches, but with all of the normal stuff so well planned, full attention was brought to those few areas of difficulty and any problems were hardly noticeable.
This event and similar ones in the future are the epitome of the dream we had years ago when we first started thinking about AMA’s having a National Flying Site. I would like to see more such events with broad appeal, involving a wide range of opportunities for AMA members to learn more and enjoy this wonderful sport. This activity and the people who enjoy it so much deserve it. I hope other organizations will look at this model for success and duplicate it for their aspect of aeromodeling. Thanks to IRCHA, we have a model for how it can be done.
I even got in some flying, so how about that?
Until next month.
Dave Brown AMA president [email protected]
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
