President's Perspective
Dave Brown AMA president
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 is a day most of us will never forget and probably will never completely recover from.
I was impressed with the reaction to the events from most modelers. They seemed to react to this tragedy in a very positive way. Nowhere was this more inspiring to me than when I attended the Radio Control (RC) Helicopter World Championships at the Muncie site the day after the attacks. I found the flags from all of the countries flying at half-staff.
My first thought was that we had perhaps made a protocol error, not knowing the traditions for such situations in the rest of the world. My concerns turned to immense pride and a lot of emotion when I was told that those flags were at half-staff alongside the US flag at the request of the teams themselves. In fact, I was told some of the team managers insisted on lowering their own flags.
In my last column (November 2001) I mentioned how there were no "average" aeromodelers, and that I thought they were better than average. September 12 provided all the proof I'll ever need.
The aftermath of these attacks created a lot of questions among aeromodelers, and in some ways we proved to be our own worst enemy.
When the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all aircraft and only let them back into the air a few categories at a time, some of the modelers—and actually some of the FAA's own personnel—thought the ban applied to aeromodeling as well. It didn't, but that didn't preclude a few airport sites from closing down any aeromodeling activity on the closed airports.
Unfortunately, many modelers started calling the FAA in various districts, and, as could be expected, got conflicting information. Some district offices were telling the modelers the grounding applied to them, while others properly said there was no restriction on flying model airplanes.
AMA's contact with the FAA at the national level confirmed that there was no regulation that would apply to aeromodeling. The real problem was that these repeated calls to the regional FAA offices could well have inspired the very restrictions the modelers feared.
In a few cases, clubs were told by the airports where they flew that they couldn't fly. Per the FAA rules, this wasn't necessary, but those airport managers were certainly within their rights to make this decision, and we need to accept those decisions.
This is a case where the squeaky wheel gets the attention, and this was not the right time for us as aeromodelers to attract any more attention than necessary. It is obvious that we all, as a nation of people, need to be vigilant about what we see and do. This would seem to be common sense.
Anything can be dangerous if it is misused, and our hobby is no exception. I look at what has happened to the crop-dusting industry since it was discovered that the hijackers had shown an interest in that subject, and I thank God that the investigators didn't find any aeromodeling magazines in the homes of these criminals.
Ironically, I'm writing this on the one-month anniversary of those attacks, and I'm doing so from Lost Hills, California where we have teams from more than 30 countries gathered for the Free Flight World Championships.
As during the RC Helicopter Championships, the modelers from all over the world are united in their sport and universally abhor the violence of those attacks.
I have been very involved with various World Championships events during the last few months, beginning with RC Aerobatics in Mallow (County Cork), Ireland. If anyone had told me that the Irish would run one of the best World Championships I've ever attended, I might have believed them, as I know these guys well and know how much work they put into this event.
On the other hand, if you had tried to convince me that this World Championships would be blessed with the best weather I had ever seen at an RC Aerobatics World Championships—well, let's just say I would have thought you were a fool.
Guess what? They did, and it was!
I'm sure you will read some articles about this event, so I won't go into the blow-by-blow, but I would like to congratulate our team that finished second despite some real problems and the Model Aeronautic Council of Ireland for a great event.
One detail—and you might find this information helpful in the future—was responsible for one of the biggest challenges to the US team. When we arrived, Sean McMurtry's model box was missing and it wasn't located for a few days. That was only the beginning!
Sean had wrapped his primary model in bubble wrap to protect it in transit, and the bubble wrap had expanded sufficiently to crush the model when the box was taken to altitude! I thought I had heard of every way to lose a model, but this one was new to me.
Sean borrowed a spare model from Christophe Payant Le Roux of France, the defending World Champion and ultimately this year's winner, and used it for the first open round, before switching to his own backup model to finish the contest. Thanks to Christophe for this show of sportsmanship—the type of act that makes this sport so attractive to me.
The RC Helicopter World Championships in Muncie got off to a great start, but the events of September 11 sure complicated things. Despite the tragedy, the event went very well. The US team finished second, and we have a US individual World Champion in Curtis Youngblood.
Congratulations to the team and to the people who worked hard to put on this great event in trying times.
As I write this, the Free Flight World Championships is going on just a couple of miles down the street. I don't know the results yet, but the US team is doing well and the organizers, led by George Batluk and the SCAT club, are doing a bang-up job. Lost Hills has to be the closest thing to heaven for the Free Flighters.
Those last two World Championships, held
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
