[AlaskaRC] Everything old is new again

[Dirk & Alison]

Hello,

I've been reading Do You Speak Model Airplane, The Story of aeromodelling in
America, by Dave Thornburg, which I am finding really fascinating and
discovered some of the events that happened in the middle of the 1930s seem
similar to the events we are experiencing now with the FAA.  

 

In 1922, the Washington based National Aeronautic Association was founded
and charged with governing all aviation in America, full-size and model.  By
1933 the NAA was issuing model flying licenses.  I am not sure how much the
NAA had the force of law behind it because I am sure that not even most
model flyers had a license. 

 

In the early 1930s gas motors were finally being made small enough to be fit
in model airplanes.  There was a huge divide between the traditional rubber
powered modelers and the new gassers.  One segment of the rubber powered
flyers tried to get a federal ban on gas powered models.  In 1937
Connecticut and Massachusetts enacted a gas model ban.  

The arguments for the ban were:

1. They are a menace to persons and property

2. The storing of gasoline in the home is a hazard

3. Gas modelers trespass and violate the personal and property rights of
others

4. Gas models are a hazard to full size aircraft.  

 

Sound familiar?

 

Incidentally, the AMA got its start in 1936 because the founding members
were disappointed in how the NAA was treating model aviation.  They created
the American Academy of Model Aeronautics to be a national scientific body
who would promote research and collect data in the field of aeromodelling.
Not everyone was able to join; in order to do so one needed to have built
and flown a model that met certain endurance times.  It was to be an elite,
science-oriented group of modelers not open to the masses at all.  

 

Dirk 



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