Sorry if I'm being negative, but those are the facts.
You're not being negative. You're being realistic.
My brother and I were talking about this a while back and he brought up a very good point I had not thought of.
In the 60s, 70s when RC started to become a little more accessible to the average Joe it was still an "Art" so to speak. You had to "know how" to get it to work when it came to RC. That meant you needed some form of knowledge about it and some extra interest in your pursuit of success in flying RC. Many guys built their own radios and were also into electronics as a hobby. You had to have some of the VooDoo it took to make it all come together. The early on success rate was probably pretty darn low.
At that same time, 60s and 70s, everyone and I mean everyone who was flying IC powered model planes at the time knew how to get a control line plane or a free flight plane going. It was a "given" skill that everyone had gained at some point in time. I heard it said many times in the 90s when I was learning, "When are you going to move up to RC?" Haha! Even in the 90s control line was still well known by many RCers. I gave a demo once at an RC fun fly and many of them knew about it and made various comments, most if not all were positive. They knew about it and how it worked. But after that demo, I went back to doing what I do and they kept on doing what they do. That's just how it works.
Fast forward to today. People are starting out with 5 and 6 channel radios on RC models they can fly in their front yards. They can fly them at the park or school yard. I know because I often fly my small heli and or my foamer at the school yard while my kids play on the play ground and I am not the only one out there either. I know of a local RC club that meets a local high school and flys all day on Saturdays and Sundays. The school gave permission as long as they dont use nitro. Literally 20-40 models out there at any given time with at least 4 or more in the sky at any given time all having a great time and tons of fun and fellowship. The local LHS or HobbyTown puts people in easy to operate setups at a minimal cost that have a high success rate and the person either gets hooked and goes in deeper or hands it off to someone else. (by the way my first attempts at CL were not even close to success. Our objective was to get a complete flight.) What these new breed of model airplane fliers don't know about and most likely will never know about is a control line model or a free flight model. And much more so how to get it going. Many will never see a nitro motor run, let alone try to start one. There isn't even the slightest clue CL/FF exists let alone how it works or the VooDoo needed to make it go.
The sad truth is what we "do" is a dying art. I know people have been saying it for a long time but now it's actually true. Simply because it is no longer known about. The HobbyTown near my house is an actual place where you can buy hobby stuff not just toys. The staff is very knowledgeable and understands this stuff as a hobby and not just a point of sale. But 95% are college aged kids with an interest in this stuff. The manager started flying RC helicopters about 12 years ago and actually quit his job selling insurance or some such to work with customers and sell RC stuff at that HobbyTown. He just flat our loves all things modeling. He had not much knowledge of CL. While he is around age 50 he didn't start modeling until about 12 years ago. I started talking to him about CL and he came out to a contest of ours a few months later. He was blown away by it to say the least. He is a pretty good modeler and can fly RC stuff, of any kind, extremely well. But he had no clue about what we do and he pays his bills in the modeling world. There is no doubt in my mind had he started modeling 25 years ago he would know all about CL, and probably be good at it. But as of late it is not on the radar. At least when those guys in the 90s were asking me "when are you going to move up" they knew about CL and had most likely participated in what we do at some point. The new generation does not know about what we do and their exposure is limited at best. Joe Nall and Kid Venture give people great hands on exposure and we can only hope a few will stick with it from their experience. But in real life after the Joe Nall is over and Kid Ventrure has passed almost all of them will go back to what they know. Just like we do. That's not to say Kid Venture and Joe Nall should not offer what they do. They most certainly should and we should all be grateful that they do what they do.
There is nothing or no one to blame. It's just progress. It totally SUCKS that we can only get people involved 1 or 2 at a time and usually that is a family member. It sucks but it's the truth. If anything we should thank the AMA for keeping CL and FF in MA. The mag is full of advertisers because those advertisers know this stuff goes out to about 150K people. Not a bad subscriber base if you ask me. It only makes sense to advertise there.
I hope flying models does come back. And if you see quad thingies and various FPV ads throughout don't be frustrated by them be happy and excited because that means the magazine sold some advertising and that is what keeps it going. If those who fly those things are also reading these articles with interest maybe will help expose our form of modeling a little but further...
Topic: Flying Models Good News (Read 3575 times)
