>If I am not mistaken, they are on 27meg and AMA has had a lot of input in to this (Marc Gellart)
Alas, they're not. There are a lot of models sold with 27MHz radios but there are also a significant number of models sold with 72MHz radios. Those have the potential to be a big source of trouble. Its not the displaced electric fliers at the local park, the AMA guys who know where we are and the potential for interference. Its the person with the electric helicopter or slow flier who's not a member of a club, a person who may be literally flying in their back yard. If their experience is from R/C cars then they will have little idea of the range the airplane radios have and the amount of chaos they can cause. Its not urban legend -- we've got scanners. Unfortunately its a bit late to track down the interference after the plane has gone down. Most channel usage is R/C but we do also share our model band with a church's radio microphone (we get sermons in both English and Spanish)(that took out an Addiction). Complacency was one of the dangers I mentioned in my original post. There are a lot of reasons why the problem tends to creep up on you. One is the nature of radio propagation and the location of your field (if you're out in the sticks then you have nothing much to worry about). What we're seeing is a steady increase in channel useage, I believe we have about 5 out on our field now most Sundays plus the three taken down by the radio microphone. Yes, we can work around it, but you never know when someone goes out and buys something with another radio and takes another channel out -- 'my' channel has been quiet for years, but last Sunday we looked and its now occupied. We're intending to spend a post-Visalia Sunday morning tracking down these fliers to try and get them to work with us -- maybe grab a peg or call in to reserve channels. Our club has been in contact with both the FCC and the AMA, the FCC about the wireless microphone, the AMA about the problem of frequency conflicts. So far the FCC has come back with encouraging statements like "72MHz? Do we allow R/C on 72MHz?" and the AMA seems to be in "Don't talk about it and maybe it will go away" mode. Martin Usher RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
