While the Internet has changed a lot of things about clubs and getting together and etc. it can't give you land to fly on. For the next decade, this is the largest challenge our hobby faces. Even park flyers will feel the Pinch as more and more people cram onto smaller and smaller park spaces for more and more of the day's flyable hours. Already I have to forget trying to fly at most of the flyable park land in my area because team sports are using it continually for one sport or the other, and the darn games overlap each other. Yes, you can fly in a driveway or cul-de-sac, the planes getting smaller and smaller... but that's not the only kind of flying I want to do. And as glider folk, I don't think most of you do either.
Access is the real problem looming, with land prices going ever-upward, and "developers" grabbing up farm land everywhere you look, and a more litigious and over-careful society that more and more, looks at our hobby as either an annoyance or national security threat... How much flying will you be able to get in when you will have to drive an hour each way to the field or slope? It's going to happen, just a question of time. This to my mind is the number one goal AMA should have now: getting, and keeping flying sites with a long-term view. And that's a worthy goal no matter WHAT you fly. 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. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
