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General control line discussion => Open Forum => Topic started by: Mark Romanowitz on December 06, 2024, 02:02:43 PM
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This is a topic that I think is probably on everyone's mind, but may or may not be a topic of much conversation.
I know at the Nats I and others had numerous conversations regarding bringing new folks into the hobby, getting old ones back into the hobby. And there are a number of ideas that I heard floated about, some viable, some not so much, but all of them requiring a lot of dedication and effort to make happen.
I had gotten back into Stunt in 2016 after being out of it since 1984 when I went into the Navy. Much (the non-technical) was the same, much (technical) had changed.
A comment I made in another thread touches on this:
"The hobby has refined to the point where all of the non-essentials and less effective ways have been boiled out. The "creative" designs of Old Time Stunt are gone, because there was a formula that was more competitive.. Just like full size Aircraft.. The technology has changed, and tightened the margins of the competition.. And the competition has driven the technology change."
The gains in the technology has driven up the costs of fielding a competitive airplane. This is true not just for Stunt, but other events as well. To fly F1G (Coupe d' Hiver) the standard balsa stick model is a thing of the past. It's all carbon-fiber/aluminum/titanium high dollar equipment.. An entry level plane, prefab, is $2000. To build one yourself will require tooling to the point where you need to be really serious and committed to the event and then it's a good investment, but you will spend at least that much... Even Indoor FF F1D models are refined to the point where you really need to focus on that event and go all out if you are going to win.
And I have several friends who are serious about stunt and have been very involved in learning composites and molding carbon fiber, etc.. for their planes next year.
Much of the societal backdrop has also changed in that time. Video games, Cell phones, etc.. Noise tolerance (or intolerance) diminishing places to fly force seriously considering going electric, which isn't as forgiving for newbies learning to fly and who are still crashing a lot.
On Thursday of Nats week I ran into Igor Burger and his son at the Laundromat. I asked him about how stunt was going in Europe. He told me there are lots of teenagers involved, some clubs that are predominately teens..
I know he has put a lot of effort into teaching youth about Control line, and his indoor stunter is really something.. But I know materials are now a problem.
When I was doing indoor FF in 2021, I met Dave Lindley, President of NFFS and he is heavily involved in the Science Olympiad program though high schools. I volunteered to help officiate and tomorrow I'm going to a local high school event to "learn the ropes" and also try to build some bridges..
I started https://controllineflying.org and a general Control line sport flying site.. I've got myself a bit committed with other things so building it out has been stalled..
Not sure where I am going with all of this.. But I want to reignite the conversation and begin to get some traction on growing control line..
We are all getting older, and there are fewer and fewer who still fly..
In worst case, who is your widow going to sell all of your stashed kits and engines to when your last flight is over?
It has to be more than that though.. I'd hate to see this event die on the vine in my lifetime.
It's too much fun. And to me it is a "complete hobby", particularly if you are into trying your own designs and experimenting..
It builds motor skills, you learn materials, have to learn to deal with chemicals, paints, glues, electricity, internal combustion engines, practical aerodynamics.. A whole lot of things that really go far beyond a wind up rubber powered plane they are currently building in the Science Olympiad programs..
Thoughts? Ideas? Discussion?
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No, no, no!
As long as the pattern remains difficult and hard to master, flyers will continue to try to achieve their goal. Goals are often personal oriented.
Not any different than other competitive sports.
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No, no, no!
As long as the pattern remains difficult and hard to master, flyers will continue to try to achieve their goal. Goals are often personal oriented.
Not any different than other competitive sports.
Floyd,
What are you reacting to here? Your comment is totally unrelated to anything I said..
I didn't say anything about trying to make the pattern easier. Nor did I say anything to the effect of goals shouldn't be personal.
Nor did I say anything to the effect that we should not have technological advancements.
I'm saying things have changed a good bit and that there are technological and societal barriers to getting into this hobby that were not there when you and I were 12, 13, & 14..
And I'm asking what we as a community are going to do to bring new folks into this hobby before we all get so old none of us care anymore.
Or are we at that point already, and we are all just going to ride this ship as long as possible and then when it finally sinks, "Oh well"..
I'm talking about the future of control line itself.. And asking for ideas to do something about it.
A "Fire, Ready, Aim" response is not helpful.
Thanks,
Mark
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We can't change others, but we can change ourselves.
With the FAA clamping down on R/C model flying activities, I look back at simpler days and life, getting back to C/L flying, free flight, rubber powered models, and etc. Through that, there will be some new comers, maybe not many but some. We be a catalyst to help them along.
Rick Nelson before he passed away wrote a song named, Garden Party. It has a chorus saying,
It's all right now,
Learned my lesson well,
You can't please everyone so you,
You got to please yourself.
Those who are interested in C/L, we encourage. With all the problems in the world today, it makes no sense in getting caught up into things that cause worry. We focus on what is right, keep our loved ones happy, and enjoy the hobby.
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We can't change others, but we can change ourselves.
With the FAA clamping down on R/C model flying activities, I look back at simpler days and life, getting back to C/L flying, free flight, rubber powered models, and etc. Through that, there will be some new comers, maybe not many but some. We be a catalyst to help them along.
Rick Nelson before he passed away wrote a song named, Garden Party. It has a chorus saying,
It's all right now,
Learned my lesson well,
You can't please everyone so you,
You got to please yourself.
Those who are interested in C/L, we encourage. With all the problems in the world today, it makes no sense in getting caught up into things that cause worry. We focus on what is right, keep our loved ones happy, and enjoy the hobby.
Amen
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On Thursday of Nats week I ran into Igor Burger and his son at the Laundromat. I asked him about how stunt was going in Europe. He told me there are lots of teenagers involved, some clubs that are predominately teens..
Thoughts? Ideas? Discussion?
Hello
I found this point interesting, that places exists where there are more young people involved in flying then us old ones!
As others have said just keep going and enjoy the hobby and hopefully others will find it too or return to it.
Regards Gerald
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As they say 'hope springs eternal' but I admit about all we have left is hope. Young folks are simply not interested in aviation. Even the airlines wonder where the next crop of pilots, mechanics and rest will come from. The brunt of our hobby emerged from vets returning from WWII who were growing up in the golden age of aviation with few other distractions-not even television. Hundreds of thousands were involved with aviation in some way during the war and were easily captivated with the model hobby later. Many of their children also caught the 'bug' from their parents-that accounts for a lot of us reading this. However the fascination faded quickly in later generations and became something of a fad, something which had a time span in the general population. IMHO the die was cast when two major things happened: 1. The large mail order hobby houses appeared which in fact put most the local hobby shops out of business. No longer did every city and town have the local hobby beehive and source of MANY supplies and information. Sort of what Walmart did to small town mom and pop stores. 2. The internet. These days we ALL spend a great deal of time absorbed in the screen. There are far too many other things of interest to consume all of us but especially the young-and they don't have to invest much time or money for gratification.
I know over the years most everything has been tried by so many smart and well-meaning people but frankly you can't row this boat upriver. Quite a few of us have kids and grandkids. We were mostly unable to get or keep our own family involved so how are you going to expect too many others to do so? We MAY be able to prolong our sport just a little longer-in my own opinion- by targeting either RC guys who are put off by the new FAA regulations and/or underprivileged youth who don't have the excesses of modern society. Then you'd also have to supply most of their 'stuff' and a great deal of time which most of us aren't excited to do. The big elephant in the room now is that there are almost no supplies or suppliers left as a source. Even the 'pros' have to 'know a guy' or make it themselves. This leaves the sport in a rough spot. As for me I will be doing this as long as I have breath to do so but I am not too hopeful for what the future holds. I hope something or someone can figure a way to turn that around.
Dave
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My 2 cents
To me the future means youth engagement. And it has been my experience that the average kid today is just not interested in CL.
I'm a member of an RC/CL club. There are a few younger ones that fly and enjoy RC, but we rarely ever see them coming over to our field CL area to take a look at us flying. CL just does not appear to generate much interest today. Our CL team even has a couple of simple CL trainers. We invite anyone try out a few laps, but few takers. A few have tried it out once, but they don't come back and just return to their RC. Not sure why. We encourage them as best we can.
I also don't see much interest in the building process. Almost all of the RCers young and old are flying ready to fly foam models or ARF's. Out of 80+ club members, there are only a handful of craftsmen builders in our club that build models (both RC and CL) from kits, scratch or plans. But not a single young person has any interest in building. They just buy and fly. And I get it. Kids today with school, homework, chores, soccer practice, etc. have little spare time. So, buy and fly makes sense.
I'm sure a lot of us (surely me) started off with our fathers introducing us to CL with Cox plastic 'rubber band heald-together' ready to fly models as a Christmas present. But ready to fly CL models are pretty much non-existent today. No significant market for them. And parents must take the time to help the youth along or they will soon lose interest.
IMO unless there are a few new basic ready to fly CL models available on the market we are not going to attract enough youth to try out CL.
Another issue is flying site availability. As a kid, I flew CL at close by public parks. Nobody really cared back then. But that is pretty much impossible today. All the local parks near me don't allow model aircraft by ordinance. So, I must join a club. And the closest CL club to me is 40 miles away. Parents are not going to drive their kids that distance.
No beginner CL ARF's available the nowhere to fly. Sounds like a problem to me to get the next generation engaged!
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We can't change others, but we can change ourselves.
Rick Nelson before he passed away wrote a song named, Garden Party. It has a chorus saying,
It's all right now,
Learned my lesson well,
You can't please everyone so you,
You got to please yourself.
The late great Rick Nelson pleased himself buying and flying in a worn out airplane that was not airworthy and crashing with his entourage. I make it a point to avoid his advice.
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Well, based on the turnout at the Science Olympiad I helped with today, I think there are still plenty of kids 13-18 who are interested in airplanes, aren't totally engrossed in themselves, TikTok or their iPhone, and are just needing someone to show them there is a whole world here they know nothing about. Seeing the enthusiasm of these kids when their rubber powered helicopters rose up to the ceiling and stayed there for 45 seconds before descending was very encouraging.
David Lindley, President of NFFS told me today that they now have about 20 new junior indoor and outdoor FF flyers over the past several years who have found out about model airplanes (free flight at least) through Science Olympiad.. One of them (Daniel Guo) won the Junior F1D title this year.
David told me there are 8500 students in Science Olympiad program. And only 1200 or so in NFFS membership and only a small percentage are involved in Science Olympiad.. The three Science Teachers I helped today had no knowledge whatsoever about Free Flight outside of what the Olympiad has, and had never heard about Control Line. That isn't their fault.. Who is showing them, telling them? There isn't anyone.
All of the Control Line SIGS are focused on their specific area of competition. Someone is going to need to start putting some emphasis on getting new blood into the hobby to feed into all of these events.
I'm going to give it a try and see what I can generate.. Even a couple of flyers added would help.. How many juniors did we have at the Nats this year? Three, I think..
So, all of your comments are well taken, and sure, it probably won't work and will be a colossal waste of time, but maybe it will work.. Regardless, I think it's worth a try.
Thanks for your inputs.
Mark
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The late great Rick Nelson pleased himself buying and flying in a worn out airplane that was not airworthy and crashing with his entourage. I make it a point to avoid his advice.
And, your point is?
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As a reminder .... in the 70's 80's Doc Jackson wanted to form a "control-line coalition", and he had begun a newsletter of such (NCLC) mainly racing stuff...... invitations to the stunt community and the combat community both resulted in the opinions that "we" didn't want to dilute "our" own newsletters with material from "that other" discipline.
Later, John Brodak, started and published a monthly unified magazine that covered all phases of control-line flying. But "we all knew", didn't "we", that John was just using us and was just in it to make a buck.
"We" have been our own worst enemy.
Robotics is big in middle schools. There are some of the kids still today that are mechanically inclined and looking for a place to "build". IMHO, AMA should have somehow treated control-line and free flight with a special emphasis.
One source for kids is to piggyback with the scout rocket programs.
But, who am I to talk, my grandson, with his free time, plays with something called Oculus. Maybe port a cl sim to Oculus. Can you build a "Little Wizzard" in Oculus? Probably could, he builds castles and moats and stuff, what do I know. He'll never know the joy though of eating dried Ambroid off his fingers.
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ed and published a monthly unified magazine that covered all phases of control-line flying. But "we all knew", didn't "we", that John was just using us and was just in it to make a buck.
It's possible that the baby was thrown away with the bathwater, but, if his only goal was to "unify" control line, he chose a very strange way to go about it. And made very questionable choices for advisors. With John gone and unable to defend himself I am not willing to rehash the arguments.
I might also add, while probably quite a few people thought of a unified newsletter (in particular, Doc Jackson's), I and several other people suggested to John that he start his own "house" newsletter (a la Estes "Model Rocket News") long before the "unpleasantness", and I know at least I volunteered to help out. But apparently that didn't go over too well with some of the people whispering in his ear, and all the people who were willing and capable of helping were nearly immediately alienated.
Brett
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So... delete my response "no, no, no" Sorry if that was confusing. To convey thoughts in a minimum number of words is often inadequate.. longer explanations often necessary.
The rest of my comments will stand
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Well, we can go back and try to understand how we got here.. And I'm sure we can find a lot of reasons, or factors.. And i am sure that they are all legitimate..
The issue is that it takes time.. Potentially a lot of it.. And diligent, consistent effort over time (years not months) to cultivate a "farm team" so to speak, unless it can become part of the culture and then becomes self-sustaining, but even that takes considerable time and effort to change/create.
And given there are a lot of competing demands on our time (family? work? other things we happen to like to do?) it is probably too much to expect that there could be a long term concerted effort even within a region, let alone nationwide.
I can't dedicate the rest of my life to save Control Line, let alone Stunt from eventual die off, and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do that either.. But I will give it some of my time, because it is worth that.
At the Nats, Mark Weiss reiterated that the purpose of PAMPA was competition Stunt, with the goal of high level competition. And it needs to stay that way, and ditto for the other CL event SIGs.. Which event SIG would not see the addition of this effort as a dilution of their purpose?
Every one would view it that way, and it would be that. So asking the SIGs to band together isn't the solution and it would only promote resentment within the SIG and animosity between them.
Maybe there needs to be a general/sport Control Line SIG, the purpose of which would be to just create a pool of control line fliers.. With exposure to the various events, there are bound to be fliers who would choose and event learn it and sooner or later compete.
Maybe a SIG isn't the right idea, and we should just ask generous minded individuals to take it upon themselves.. To me it seems that would be difficult to sustain.
I'm sure that idea a) has been thought of before, and b) has had a lot of verbal artillery rained down upon it.
One of the guys in my clubs (he's a member of both, as I am) is a retired College professor who has been involved in teaching model airplanes in after school programs.. We discussed his efforts today and one of the things he mentioned is the need for an inexpensive, electric, indoor control line plane that is easily built, can use a capacitor motor and be, in a sense, the 2024 version of the Sterling sheet balsa 1/2 A models we probably all flew when we were 12. It doesn't have to be able to stunt, it just needs to be something a 12 year old can build (with some supervision) and then fly roundy-rounds for a few minutes, and be rugged enough that if he/she smacks it into the gym floor it won't shatter, or catch fire.
So I'm going to work on developing that, and over Christmas when I'm able to build out Controllineflying.org, I'll post it there..
The Tree Town Modelaires Club president came up with a Yard Sign 1/2A trainer.. Powered by a Cox Babe Bee.. Almost indestructible, but being a Cox (no muffler, of course) it would probably remind local authorities that they had banned model airplane engine runs in city limits back in the late 1960s/early 1970s timeframe..
I'll post that also..
So it's a sticky issue.. Which I'm sure has, as I said earlier, generated a lot of opinions..
But I don't think we can continue kicking the problem further down the road, either on purpose or unintentionally.
It's only going to remain, and become bigger until it can no longer be ignored.
If you have genuine interest in helping or have constructive ideas feel free to PM me..
Thanks,
Mark
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So... delete my response "no, no, no" Sorry if that was confusing. To convey thoughts in a minimum number of words is often inadequate.. longer explanations often necessary.
The rest of my comments will stand
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As long as the pattern remains difficult and hard to master, flyers will continue to try to achieve their goal. Goals are often personal oriented.
Not any different than other competitive sports.
That's fine, Floyd, but the rest of your comments still have nothing to do with anything I said. So in this case a longer explanation would have been appropriate because I sill have no idea why you are so strongly making a point that is completely unrelated to what I was saying, and one that I agree with anyway.
With that in mind, there really is no need for you to explain or comment further. Whatever I do or don't do to try to bring new flyers into the hobby won't impact you in the least bit.
So please, Floyd, don't waste any more of your time. Go fly your planes and have fun.
For Everyone else:
I'll try to say it as plainly and simply as possible:
Who is going to fill our shoes and keep the hobby going then when you and I are not longer able to fly?
And what can we as a community do to get new folks into the hobby to keep it going?
You may not care.. I do.
You may think it's hopeless, that the ship has sailed, it's sinking and there is no way to save it. I'd like to at least try.
if you have constructive ideas or input, please send them to me. If you want to help, let me know that too. It can't be done alone.
Mark
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My wife and I homeschooled our four sons. She did the humanities, I did the Math and Science. Since I was working full time as well, I relied on a lot of prepared curriculum.
That said, because I was at the time a Network Engineer, I developed a computer programming and networking course for them, and we built a fairly decent sized computer network in my basement, with a DNS server, file Server, Domain Controller, etc..
I spent a ton of money on chemistry and biology materials, Leyden jars, dissection kits.. We dissected earthworms, and frogs, and then some bluegill we caught. But I had the BJU Science and Biology curriculum, and the Thames & Kosmos Chemistry manuals to guide that.
I had developed a spreadsheet called "What Every Boy should know" that covered all of the practical things I wanted my sons to have had experiences with, besides just the required school subjects. I used a lot of Boy Scout merit badge books to make sure I covered the bases for each topic.. When a storm blew down our Bradford Pear tree in 2005, we cut it up, I bought a bunch of rope and twine and used it for a Boy Scout Pioneering Lab based on that Merit Badge book. (A curriculum, of sorts, I could follow)
My .15 sized Yard Bird (see Flying Models, June, 1981) was hanging on the wall the whole time, with an OS Max 15 on it..
That was in the early 2000s, before I had gotten back into model airplanes.. But the main reason I didn't teach them model airplanes at that time, frankly, is that at that time I thought control line was already dead. I didn't know that there were any clubs at all in my area..
It wasn't until I 2016 when I bought a set of Nobler plans (figuring I would have to drive to Muncie in order to fly it) that I even found out there was a club in the area.. Lee Cooke, who sold me the plans contacted the Tree Town Modelaires Club Secretary, told him "Hey I just sold a set of Nobler plans to a guy in your area" and Lee gave Fred my name, who then contacted me.
Homeschool groups seem to me at least to provide the best opportunity for this. Many fathers are involved. And I think that is the key. And if the fathers aren't involved, My wife and I have met a lot of homeschool moms who want their sons to grow up as capable men, they would probably be involved too.. But, there has to be a curriculum.
Some sort of curriculum that ties in practical aerodynamics, structures, mathematical equations, how to build the thing and then fly it, along with a list of materials and sources to purchase them, making it something that lays it out, that would be something an involved parent ( and there are plenty of those in the Home School groups) could follow and then guide their children, That could then be taken to a Home School convention (ICHE - Illinois Christian Home Educators has them yearly in my area) and demonstrated, I would be willing to guess would get a number of people who, even if they didn't stick with it, would at least try it.
It was interesting to note that there was a Home School team at the Science Olympiad event yesterday. There were 20 different events, so that means that there were at least 40 homeschool kids there.
Food for thought.
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Here is the spreadsheet.. I found it on my wife's computer.. Also another copy I gave to other homeschool dads.
I'd be willing to guess that we would uncover some Dads who used to fly control line, or did model airplanes in some way, or always wanted to., in the process.. Making it a two for one deal. The son/daughter gets involved and the dad gets back into it..
But this should give you an idea of how dedicated these folks are to the education of their children.. What I did here isn't an anomaly.. It's pretty much par for the course..
Could be used by Grandpas too to help their grand kids..
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Yardbird, in case you were wondering... https://store.flying-models.com/product/product-82/
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Mark,
I wanted to chip in on this matter. When I was a kid, my first serious plane was a Ringmaster ($6.95) and a McCoy 35 ($12.95). This was the late 60's. Costs were much less than they are today.
That said, I now sell Ringmaster kits for $120. One consideration is that the "Gold Kit" does contain most all the hardware other than wheels and tank and is made with all contest grade balsa. It is not hard to build a 23 ounce Ringmaster this way. These days, the costs are way up but you do get what you pay for.
As far as competitive planes go, I have way over 277 designs on ACAD which I can laser cut to fill most any desire. Many of these are super competitive and will do the job for any good flyer. Perhaps the top five at the NATS may need something a little more competitive, but for 99.99% of the guys around a regular balsa plane will suffice quite nicely.
I think you have brought up a good subject here. I am trying to do my part for helping keep the flyers and builders active.
Pat Johnston
Idaho Skunk Works
P.S. I just posted design #277, the Sentimental Journey 502. Creativity and design are still alive.
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Pat,
Thanks for the input and the resource information..
Would you be willing to design/spec out a 1/2 A all sheet balsa design similar to the Sterling kits of days gone by? Something that could be powered by a Babe Bee or Golden Bee or similar, with an electric option?
I'm not interested in making any money on this, that could be your deal..
I just want to have some resources tailored to the curriculum I've decided to develop. And they don't have to be super cheap either.. Take a look at this link.. Most of the competitive kids were flying the helicopter on the left.. Kit of two sells for $77, but it has all that they needed to build a good flying model (which they had to build themselves, by the way) and fly..
One kid had a flight of over a minute with a 17' ceiling!
https://freedomflightmodels.com/kits.php
There wouldn't be the need for kits just yet. The ICHE conference is generally the last week in May or first week in June..
But what I would want to have is the following by then, realizing I would need to put the educational materials together:
- Course outline, subjects taught, crosswalk to practical subjects, skills mastered
- The curriculum itself
- Model Rocket Lab
- Free flight Model Airplane Lab
- Control Line Model Airplane Lab
- The course would have modules (in no particular order here, but in progression in the curriculum) on Basic Aerodynamics, Propulsion Systems (Including internal combustion and electric systems), basic mathematical equations, design considerations, materials, structures, adhesives, building skills, careers in aviation, etc.
Of course there would be information in there on the AMA, finding a local club, events in model aviation, links to SIG websites, etc..
- So why rockets and free flight? Well, skill building.. And some kids will want to do all of them, or more than one.
And you want as many successes as possible at this stage.
Control line would be the capstone project..
And there could even be a certificate of completion that Mom & Dad could sign and present to Junior too..
It just has to be well thought out, and well prepared, and meaningful..
To us the crossover skills to other areas are patently obvious.. For those outside of our world here, it needs to spelled out.
Mark
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Mark,
I may have you covered already. Here is a shot of a little flat winged trainer based on My Shark designs. We used it to get a bunch of boy scouts flying. The photos show the top and bottom of each. The electric motor powers the larger plane really well, the easy equivalent of a 290 port Golden Bee. It Swings a 6-4 prop with ease. In fact, the motor inspired me to build a 595" B-17G with four of these. It is capable of flying the full stunt pattern with the electric motors. Back to the subject. Call me at (208) 871-9031 and we can talk.
Pat
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Here is a shot of a little flat winged trainer based on My Shark designs. We used it to get a bunch of boy scouts flying.
Pat, your half-A profile Shark is a good way for us to introduce adolescents to the hobby of building and flying their own creations as you have demonstrated in action. H^^
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I guess it was about time for this to come around on the play list again. It is not a new subject or problem. I can show you editorials and letters to the editor in the old magazines about getting kids involved and new blood into the hobby going all the way back to the late 1940s and early 50s. Also complaints about how the then new feature of a lot of kits having pre-shaped and machined balsa parts as not fitting into the Builder of the Model Rule!!. I have been down all the roads that you mention. I volunteered at the Kid Venture venue at Oshkosh for 17 years, and I have had thousands, yes literally thousands of kids on the handle of a 1/2A control line model there and also at our local flying field. Spent many, many hours talking to people and to kids of all ages. I helped design the trainer we used which we called the TuffBaby, which was built largely from hardware store materials Coreplast plastic ans strips of hardwood and powered by a Norvel .061. We went this route because one thing that people would ask us is where they could buy the airplane, and since it wasn't commercially produced, we would email out plans for it free of charge. It is more or less indestructible and of the 5 we built and took to KidVenture in 2010, at least 4 are still flying. I also keep a smaller trainer powered by a Cox .049 Black Widow made from Coreplast and yard stick fuselage that is based on SIG 1/2A Skyray outlines and it flies quite well, is fairly aerobatic and weighs less than a Cox PT-19 and is also indestructible. I take these with me frequently to the Buder Park flying field in case an interested party shows some interest and I can have them airborne with one in a matter of minutes . I have had hundreds of people, kids and adults, on the handle there also. The common thing amongst all of this is that rarely, almost never, has anyone come back or contacted me with any further interest.
At Oshkosh, people will line up and wait in line to fly a 1/2A trainer primarily because it's free. I have met many, many adults that flew C/L models as kids but their kids showed no interest. And this is at a venue that is the worlds largest airshow and aviation convention and is a week long!! People have to be interested in airplanes if they are there! It has to start with some one having that little "something" inside them that makes them stop and look up at any kind of airplane that might be flying over when they hear it. I can't explain why that is lacking in kids these days, or adults either for that matter. But if there is one thing I think I have figured out after a lifetime of building , flying and demonstrating models airplanes of all kinds, is that you CAN NOT make some one want to get involved in this hobby. They have to want to get involved, and have to have that little "something" or "spark" inside them.
I am also convinced at this point in life that the focus does not need to be on kids. Kids just have too many other easy things to do that distract them and are more instant gratification, also called cell phones and Ipads. We didn't have this when we were kids, and neither did the kids of the 70s, 80s, 90s and up until the computer age and electronic game came into full swing in the early 2000s. I firmly believe that the target for any new blood should be the 20 and 30 something adults with kids. If you get a Dad or Mom interested that might have had some exposure to the hobby in their younger days, and now they have the house, job, bank account and minivan/SUV that it will require, you will also get their kids!! If a kid sees what we do and gets interested, he can quickly get over ruled by the parents for any one of many reasons. Too expensive, not enough time, too much involvement in stick and ball sports already, etc., etc. I have been down that rabbit hole already We have given away airplanes, engines, kits and such and maybe a kid comes back out once or twice when the parents see fit to bring them, but then disappear never to be seen again. What happened to the airplanes, kits and engines?? Who knows, probably in the landfill by now. I have done countless Scout Blue and Gold banquets and gave talks and demonstrated indoor rubber powered models at these and had R/C, C/L and free flight models displayed at each one. People seemed impressed but there was never any follow up from any one attending. I did these at the same schools and churches for years because I didn't charge anything and all I ever got out of it was a chicken dinner. But if someone were to contact me today, I would still jump at the chance to do it, just in case i could get one family interested. But i haven't been contacted by any of these organizations in years. Do they even do these any more? Look at the state of Scouting these days, and you have to wonder if that is main cause.
So yep, everything you have mentioned, I have been down those avenues of endeavor. I live in the St. Louis area, and this area has always been hit hard by economic downturns going way back. When companies cut back or even close down, people leave the area and take their next generation with them. I saw many examples of this when I first hit the stunt contest circuit and ran into many people that used to live here but had to leave when their Dad or parents had to in order to find a new job. Some areas benefitted from that same situation. While the club I was a member of has been shrinking due to deaths, retirements with relocation, and simply ageing out of interest and ability to do it, others were growing a bit because the retirees were moving there. Lots of guys went to the Dallas, Texas area for one, but I think Father Time is starting to catch up with those also. One modern convenience that helps a bit is the computer and the internet with saving some data and information from being completely extinct and make for some kind of low level participation and ability to stay in contact with old friends.
I have even gone the Science Olympiad route in it's early days, and that of the Minds Eye STEM competitions. I worked at a local hobby shop for over 35 years, and who knows how many people I talked to and counseled in that amount of time and on all disciplines. The bridge builders were first. We would get huge bundles of 1/8" square balsa from SIG to sell to these kids. I coached one teacher who would listen intently when I talked to him into building structures well within the rules that simply would not fail under the weights used at the competitions. I feel I am responsible for about half the rules that they developed along the way as to what could and could not be done!! But it really was all basic model building skills that I taught them such as proper fit up of parts and tight glues joints, double gluing the ends of the parts, picking and choosing proper density wood for specific parts of the structure and so on. He really did go to several competitions and had structures that held over 200 pounds and had the official scratching their heads trying to figure out what was different and what they should outlaw next!! I thought this might lead into models but didn't. The Science Olympiad thing started about the same time and kids came in asking questions about what they needed and how to build and I told them all the same basic steps, and some of them did quite well at at it, but once it was over, that was it, they never came back to see what might be next, and yes I did mention other areas of the hobby and how this all would apply to them. They just simply never came back.
I still believe that there are people out there that may be interested, but after all this time I have no idea what it would take to reach them. I think it is kind of a regional thing, worse in some parts of the country and better in others I think some people aren't interested in or understand the time it takes to progress in the hobby from the raw beginner stages. The kids of 20 years ago are the adults and parents of kids today so what have you got to work with. People of today are just plain different, (no pun intended) and I don't know what you can do about that. I think people will still participate in the model airplane hobby in some way as long as they have access to materials and supplies. I have all I need, and my son Sean is still active in free flight and flies C/L whenever he comes home. He lives in the Colorado Springs area and there is no one in that area that flies C/L, but it is also home to the Magnificent Mountain Men free flight club and a very good outdoor free flight site. He has been down a lot of the same roads I have mentioned already also trying to get people interested, engaged, and involved. He parlayed his modeling experience into a career in the Army flying SUAVs as an extension of the hobby, and through that has made a wide network of friends across the country and I think I have enough stuff for him also!! As far as stunt is concerned, I think internationally, it will become like R/C pattern where everyone flies the same look alike airplane with the same powerplant. I think we will stand alone here in the US as the lone holdout of the Builder of the Model rule for the NATS. Local contests have all but dried up from lack of attendance and membership of the clubs to run them. If things are going to rebound, it will take along, long time and I think have to take place naturally and organically, like it grew and expanded originally, and look how long that took. As I said before, you can't hold a gun to someone's head and make them like and want to build a model airplane, and todays kids can be easily overruled by their parents if they won't commit to and support their interests.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Who has been there and done all of that!
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Well, Dan,
What can I say..
I'm thankful you took the time to write all of that out, with well reasoned points and experience to back it up.
I appreciate well structured, thought out argument, rather than emotional knee jerk response.
And I do not have the life left nor the inclination to repeat the process just to learn the same lessons you learned because I was too stubborn to take good advice.
You likely just saved me a ton of effort, time and frustration.
With that I'll just be happy with what we have, go fly my airplanes and have fun while I'm still able to do so.
Thanks again..
Mark
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Mark,
I may have you covered already. Here is a shot of a little flat winged trainer based on My Shark designs. We used it to get a bunch of boy scouts flying. The photos show the top and bottom of each. The electric motor powers the larger plane really well, the easy equivalent of a 290 port Golden Bee. It Swings a 6-4 prop with ease. In fact, the motor inspired me to build a 595" B-17G with four of these. It is capable of flying the full stunt pattern with the electric motors. Back to the subject. Call me at (208) 871-9031 and we can talk.
Pat
Pat, I am interested having something like this on hand. I am the control line instructor for Woodland Aero Modelers, but I don't currently have a club trainer plane, so when we do have Boy Scouts or a Club Open house I haven't had anything to use.. I was going to mock up a Flite Streak Trainier, but the kit I got from eBay was completely warped.
So I'm not going to go down the curriculum route and do the ICHE convention, etc.. Dan McEntee added some cogent perspective on that whole idea.. But I am interested in getting a plane or two from you.
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I guess it was about time for this to come around on the play list again. It is not a new subject or problem. I can show you editorials and letters to the editor in the old magazines about getting kids involved and new blood into the hobby going all the way back to the late 1940s and early 50s. Also complaints about how the then new feature of a lot of kits having pre-shaped and machined balsa parts as not fitting into the Builder of the Model Rule!!. I have been down all the roads that you mention. I volunteered at the Kid Venture venue at Oshkosh for 17 years, and I have had thousands, yes literally thousands of kids on the handle of a 1/2A control line model there and also at our local flying field. Spent many, many hours talking to people and to kids of all ages. I helped design the trainer we used which we called the TuffBaby, which was built largely from hardware store materials Coreplast plastic ans strips of hardwood and powered by a Norvel .061. We went this route because one thing that people would ask us is where they could buy the airplane, and since it wasn't commercially produced, we would email out plans for it free of charge. It is more or less indestructible and of the 5 we built and took to KidVenture in 2010, at least 4 are still flying. I also keep a smaller trainer powered by a Cox .049 Black Widow made from Coreplast and yard stick fuselage that is based on SIG 1/2A Skyray outlines and it flies quite well, is fairly aerobatic and weighs less than a Cox PT-19 and is also indestructible. I take these with me frequently to the Buder Park flying field in case an interested party shows some interest and I can have them airborne with one in a matter of minutes . I have had hundreds of people, kids and adults, on the handle there also. The common thing amongst all of this is that rarely, almost never, has anyone come back or contacted me with any further interest.
At Oshkosh, people will line up and wait in line to fly a 1/2A trainer primarily because it's free. I have met many, many adults that flew C/L models as kids but their kids showed no interest. And this is at a venue that is the worlds largest airshow and aviation convention and is a week long!! People have to be interested in airplanes if they are there! It has to start with some one having that little "something" inside them that makes them stop and look up at any kind of airplane that might be flying over when they hear it. I can't explain why that is lacking in kids these days, or adults either for that matter. But if there is one thing I think I have figured out after a lifetime of building , flying and demonstrating models airplanes of all kinds, is that you CAN NOT make some one want to get involved in this hobby. They have to want to get involved, and have to have that little "something" or "spark" inside them.
I am also convinced at this point in life that the focus does not need to be on kids. Kids just have too many other easy things to do that distract them and are more instant gratification, also called cell phones and Ipads. We didn't have this when we were kids, and neither did the kinds of the 70s, 80s, 90s and up until the computer age and electronic game came into full swing in the early 2000s. I firmly believe that the target for any new blood should be the 20 and 30 something adults with kids. If you get a Dad or Mom interested that might have had some exposure to the hobby in their younger days, and now they have the house, job, bank account and minivan/SUV that it will require, you will also get their kids!! If a kid sees what we do and gets interested, he can quickly get over ruled by the parents for any one of many reasons. Too expensive, not enough time, too much involvement in stick and ball sports already, etc., etc. I have been down that rabbit hole already We have given away airplanes, engines, kits and such and maybe a kid comes back out once or twice when the parents see fit to bring them, but then disappear never to be seen again. What happened to the airplanes, kits and engines?? Who knows, probably in the landfill by now. I have done countless Scout Blue and Gold banquets and gave talks and demonstrated indoor rubber powered models at these and had R/C, C/L and free flight models displayed at each one. People seemed impressed but there was never any follow up from any one attending. I did these at the same schools and churches for years because I didn't charge anything and all I ever got out of it was a chicken dinner. But if someone were to contact me today, I would still jump at the chance to do it, just in case i could get one family interested. But i haven't been contacted by any of these organizations in years. Do they even do these any more? Look at the state of Scouting these days, and you have to wonder if that is main cause.
So yep, everything you have mentioned, I have been down those avenues of endeavor. I live in the St. Louis area, and this area has always been hit hard by economic downturns going way back. When companies cut back or even close down, people leave the area and take their next generation with them. I saw many examples of this when I first hit the stunt contest circuit and ran into many people that used to live here but had to leave when their Dad or parents had to in order to find a new job. Some areas benefitted from that same situation. While the club I was a member of has been shrinking due to deaths, retirements with relocation, and simply ageing out of interest and ability to do it, others were growing a bit because the retirees were moving there. Lots of guys went to the Dallas, Texas area for one, but I think Father Time is starting to catch up with those also. One modern convenience that helps a bit is the computer and the internet with saving some data and information from being completely extinct and make for some kind of low level participation and ability to stay in contact with old friends.
I have even gone the Science Olympiad route in it's early days, and that of the Minds Eye STEM competitions. I worked at a local hobby shop for over 35 years, and who knows how many people I talked to and counseled in that amount of time and on all disciplines. The bridge builders were first. We would get huge bundles of 1/8" square balsa from SIG to sell to these kids. I coached one teacher who would listen intently when I talked to him into building structures well within the rules that simply would not fail under the weights used at the competitions. I feel I am responsible for about half the rules that they developed along the way as to what could and could not be done!! But it really was all basic model building skills that I taught them such as proper fit up of parts and tight glues joints, double gluing the ends of the parts, picking and choosing proper density wood for specific parts of the structure and so on. He really did go to several competitions and had structures that held over 200 pounds and had the official scratching their heads trying to figure out what was different and what they should outlaw next!! I thought this might lead into models but didn't. The Science Olympiad thing started about the same time and kids came in asking questions about what they needed and how to build and I told them all the same basic steps, and some of them did quite well at at it, but once it was over, that was it, they never came back to see what might be next, and yes I did mention other areas of the hobby and how this all would apply to them. They just simply never came back.
I still believe that there are people out there that may be interested, but after all this time I have no idea what it would take to reach them. I think it is kind of a regional thing, worse in some parts of the country and better in others I think some people aren't interested in or understand the time it takes to progress in the hobby from the raw beginner stages. The kids of 20 years ago are the adults and parents of kids today so what have you got to work with. People of today are just plain different, (no pun intended) and I don't know what you can do about that. I think people will still participate in the model airplane hobby in some way as long as they have access to materials and supplies. I have all I need, and my son Sean is still active in free flight and flies C/L whenever he comes home. He lives in the Colorado Springs area and there is no one in that area that flies C/L, but it is also home to the Magnificent Mountain Men free flight club and a very good outdoor free flight site. He has been down a lot of the same roads I have mentioned already also trying to get people interested, engaged, and involved. He parlayed his modeling experience into a career in the Army flying SUAVs as an extension of the hobby, and through that has made a wide network of friends across the country and I think I have enough stuff for him also!! As far as stunt is concerned, I think internationally, it will become like R/C pattern where everyone flies the same look alike airplane with the same powerplant. I think we will stand alone here in the US as the lone holdout of the Builder of the Model rule for the NATS. Local contests have all but dried up from lack of attendance and membership of the clubs to run them. If things are going to rebound, it will take along, long time and I think have to take place naturally and organically, like it grew and expanded originally, and look how long that took. As I said before, you can't hold a gun to someone's head and make them like and want to build a model airplane, and todays kids can be easily overruled by their parents if they won't commit to and support their interests.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Who has been there and done all of that!
Dan an interesting read.....I haven't really gone the organized event route you did but I have sure attempted to take MANY under wing over the years and provided them with engines and airplanes, etc. only to have nearly every one vanish into the ether with the stuff and never return. My only real modelers-made ended up being two son's in law and they are truly committed to the sport. They are now my flying/travel partners and I'm grateful for them. I have pretty much given up on recruiting but I do have a couple trainers I keep around and occasionally carry to the flying field in the event someone happens by showing interest. I've mused that one needs to have the model airplane 'gene' to become really involved and these are as rare as albinos these days. You can't force your interest upon someone else. They get it or they don't. And, as I alluded to earlier, if you get folks interested then what? Where do you send them for kits, engines etc. that are reasonably priced when they aren't even sure how much they want to do this? Ebay I guess. These days you need a Rolodex (yes I remember those) of where to mail order , glue, dope, and just about everything it takes to build an airplane and the stuff needed to fly it. Can you convince people all this is worth the effort to fly a model airplane once in a while? You'd have to be a pretty good salesman.
Dave
-
I guess it was about time for this to come around on the play list again. It is not a new subject or problem. I can show you editorials and letters to the editor in the old magazines about getting kids involved and new blood into the hobby going all the way back to the late 1940s and early 50s. Also complaints about how the then new feature of a lot of kits having pre-shaped and machined balsa parts as not fitting into the Builder of the Model Rule!!. I have been down all the roads that you mention. I volunteered at the Kid Venture venue at Oshkosh for 17 years, and I have had thousands, yes literally thousands of kids on the handle of a 1/2A control line model there and also at our local flying field. Spent many, many hours talking to people and to kids of all ages. I helped design the trainer we used which we called the TuffBaby, which was built largely from hardware store materials Coreplast plastic ans strips of hardwood and powered by a Norvel .061. We went this route because one thing that people would ask us is where they could buy the airplane, and since it wasn't commercially produced, we would email out plans for it free of charge. It is more or less indestructible and of the 5 we built and took to KidVenture in 2010, at least 4 are still flying. I also keep a smaller trainer powered by a Cox .049 Black Widow made from Coreplast and yard stick fuselage that is based on SIG 1/2A Skyray outlines and it flies quite well, is fairly aerobatic and weighs less than a Cox PT-19 and is also indestructible. I take these with me frequently to the Buder Park flying field in case an interested party shows some interest and I can have them airborne with one in a matter of minutes . I have had hundreds of people, kids and adults, on the handle there also. The common thing amongst all of this is that rarely, almost never, has anyone come back or contacted me with any further interest.
At Oshkosh, people will line up and wait in line to fly a 1/2A trainer primarily because it's free. I have met many, many adults that flew C/L models as kids but their kids showed no interest. And this is at a venue that is the worlds largest airshow and aviation convention and is a week long!! People have to be interested in airplanes if they are there! It has to start with some one having that little "something" inside them that makes them stop and look up at any kind of airplane that might be flying over when they hear it. I can't explain why that is lacking in kids these days, or adults either for that matter. But if there is one thing I think I have figured out after a lifetime of building , flying and demonstrating models airplanes of all kinds, is that you CAN NOT make some one want to get involved in this hobby. They have to want to get involved, and have to have that little "something" or "spark" inside them.
I am also convinced at this point in life that the focus does not need to be on kids. Kids just have too many other easy things to do that distract them and are more instant gratification, also called cell phones and Ipads. We didn't have this when we were kids, and neither did the kinds of the 70s, 80s, 90s and up until the computer age and electronic game came into full swing in the early 2000s. I firmly believe that the target for any new blood should be the 20 and 30 something adults with kids. If you get a Dad or Mom interested that might have had some exposure to the hobby in their younger days, and now they have the house, job, bank account and minivan/SUV that it will require, you will also get their kids!! If a kid sees what we do and gets interested, he can quickly get over ruled by the parents for any one of many reasons. Too expensive, not enough time, too much involvement in stick and ball sports already, etc., etc. I have been down that rabbit hole already We have given away airplanes, engines, kits and such and maybe a kid comes back out once or twice when the parents see fit to bring them, but then disappear never to be seen again. What happened to the airplanes, kits and engines?? Who knows, probably in the landfill by now. I have done countless Scout Blue and Gold banquets and gave talks and demonstrated indoor rubber powered models at these and had R/C, C/L and free flight models displayed at each one. People seemed impressed but there was never any follow up from any one attending. I did these at the same schools and churches for years because I didn't charge anything and all I ever got out of it was a chicken dinner. But if someone were to contact me today, I would still jump at the chance to do it, just in case i could get one family interested. But i haven't been contacted by any of these organizations in years. Do they even do these any more? Look at the state of Scouting these days, and you have to wonder if that is main cause.
So yep, everything you have mentioned, I have been down those avenues of endeavor. I live in the St. Louis area, and this area has always been hit hard by economic downturns going way back. When companies cut back or even close down, people leave the area and take their next generation with them. I saw many examples of this when I first hit the stunt contest circuit and ran into many people that used to live here but had to leave when their Dad or parents had to in order to find a new job. Some areas benefitted from that same situation. While the club I was a member of has been shrinking due to deaths, retirements with relocation, and simply ageing out of interest and ability to do it, others were growing a bit because the retirees were moving there. Lots of guys went to the Dallas, Texas area for one, but I think Father Time is starting to catch up with those also. One modern convenience that helps a bit is the computer and the internet with saving some data and information from being completely extinct and make for some kind of low level participation and ability to stay in contact with old friends.
I have even gone the Science Olympiad route in it's early days, and that of the Minds Eye STEM competitions. I worked at a local hobby shop for over 35 years, and who knows how many people I talked to and counseled in that amount of time and on all disciplines. The bridge builders were first. We would get huge bundles of 1/8" square balsa from SIG to sell to these kids. I coached one teacher who would listen intently when I talked to him into building structures well within the rules that simply would not fail under the weights used at the competitions. I feel I am responsible for about half the rules that they developed along the way as to what could and could not be done!! But it really was all basic model building skills that I taught them such as proper fit up of parts and tight glues joints, double gluing the ends of the parts, picking and choosing proper density wood for specific parts of the structure and so on. He really did go to several competitions and had structures that held over 200 pounds and had the official scratching their heads trying to figure out what was different and what they should outlaw next!! I thought this might lead into models but didn't. The Science Olympiad thing started about the same time and kids came in asking questions about what they needed and how to build and I told them all the same basic steps, and some of them did quite well at at it, but once it was over, that was it, they never came back to see what might be next, and yes I did mention other areas of the hobby and how this all would apply to them. They just simply never came back.
I still believe that there are people out there that may be interested, but after all this time I have no idea what it would take to reach them. I think it is kind of a regional thing, worse in some parts of the country and better in others I think some people aren't interested in or understand the time it takes to progress in the hobby from the raw beginner stages. The kids of 20 years ago are the adults and parents of kids today so what have you got to work with. People of today are just plain different, (no pun intended) and I don't know what you can do about that. I think people will still participate in the model airplane hobby in some way as long as they have access to materials and supplies. I have all I need, and my son Sean is still active in free flight and flies C/L whenever he comes home. He lives in the Colorado Springs area and there is no one in that area that flies C/L, but it is also home to the Magnificent Mountain Men free flight club and a very good outdoor free flight site. He has been down a lot of the same roads I have mentioned already also trying to get people interested, engaged, and involved. He parlayed his modeling experience into a career in the Army flying SUAVs as an extension of the hobby, and through that has made a wide network of friends across the country and I think I have enough stuff for him also!! As far as stunt is concerned, I think internationally, it will become like R/C pattern where everyone flies the same look alike airplane with the same powerplant. I think we will stand alone here in the US as the lone holdout of the Builder of the Model rule for the NATS. Local contests have all but dried up from lack of attendance and membership of the clubs to run them. If things are going to rebound, it will take along, long time and I think have to take place naturally and organically, like it grew and expanded originally, and look how long that took. As I said before, you can't hold a gun to someone's head and make them like and want to build a model airplane, and todays kids can be easily overruled by their parents if they won't commit to and support their interests.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
Who has been there and done all of that!
I agree with games diverting attention from models. In the 1980s I got one of the first Atari 2600 consoles. It was the first home game system that was close to arcade machines, like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, etc. It was enjoyable because it took real skill to master. Then came the Coleco Vision console, which was even better. Then in the early 90s came PCs. I remember having a 486 with early windows. A really great and difficult game was "DOOM." DOOM 1 and 2 was intense and took a lot of quick reflexes and memorization of the controls. The graphics and sound were amazing for the time. Then around 2000 the Sony Play Station 1 came out. It had Grand Turismo, which was light years improvement over any home game that far. That consumed a lot of my evening, building time. Even today, my RC simulator takes time away from actual models. I really think it is ALL good because it keeps your reflexes sharp, helps your memory and is FUN.
I started flying models in 1962. It was much easier then to participate in modeling then because there was numerous hobby shops and clubs with people who, like Dan, would help. Today, in my area, there isn't any shops and very few with any ability to build even an ARF.
I think the future is bleak. The pockets of places where there is CL activity may continue, but outside of that, NO. Who is going to go online to Brodak and order all the stuff to fly CL and attempt to build and fly with no help or experience?
Then one has to look at the cost vs reality. Kits that used to 4.95 are now near 200.00. Engines are getting hard to find in new condition. Fuel is astronomical in price.
If I didn't start young and have a lot of stuff, obtained when it was reasonable, I would not start the hobby.
Recently, I GAVE a doctor a Mark's Models P51 kit, engine and some supplies. I spent HOURS coaching him and helping him to build it. He won't fly it, saying he spent too much time and money on it to just crash it. I gave the club vice president a GB Hobbies, Wild Thing 15 kit, building board, T pins, wax paper, covering, iron, exacto knife, etc. He never tried to build it. I offered to give other club members a kit. No takers. They want Eflight foam planes that a plug and play.
Sadly, I think CL is never going to be what it was in the day. There will be no MCLGA.
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I really don't want to rain on anybody's parade here but why all the doom and gloom? So what if there is no one to take up the endless pursuit of the perfect pattern. We will all still be trying as long as we are here. We should not be so focused on pulling people into the hobby that we are instead driving people who show interest out. Can you imagine the effect on someone who shows a spark of interest finding this thread? How many active fliers read this and start to say "what is the point"? Somehow, we have forgotten that we do this because it gives US pleasure and satisfaction, not because it is the popular thing to do. So don't worry if the hobby as we know it survives past our rapidly approaching departure. Enjoy it and each other until that day comes.
Ken
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Until the control line hobby is buy and fly the hobby will stagnate.
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Until the control line hobby is buy and fly the hobby will stagnate.
There is some merit to this. There will be some who will buy ready-made airplanes and fly them. But then there has been some of that in the past and it didn't last well enough to support itself. Think Cox and Wen Mac. Now it would take marketing at Walmart and Target. The investment would be enormous and little assurance of payback. Also I'd bet the corporate lawyers would have a say in it when they discover the past major lawsuits that nearly killed control line in the seventies when a kid died by hitting power lines with his airplane. The insurance liability is huge. Anything short of major mass production would I think still leave the cost pretty high. You might stand a chance with a foamy, electric about Ringmaster size or less flown on fishing line.
Dave
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There is some merit to this. There will be some who will buy ready-made airplanes and fly them. But then there has been some of that in the past and it didn't last well enough to support itself. Think Cox and Wen Mac. Now it would take marketing at Walmart and Target. The investment would be enormous and little assurance of payback. Also I'd bet the corporate lawyers would have a say in it when they discover the past major lawsuits that nearly killed control line in the seventies when a kid died by hitting power lines with his airplane. The insurance liability is huge. Anything short of major mass production would I think still leave the cost pretty high. You might stand a chance with a foamy, electric about Ringmaster size or less flown on fishing line.
Dave
If any type of new product offering were to materialize, it would depend on one thing, and that is people WANTING and looking for something like that. The main credo of a successful business is "supply and DEMAND." The demand for any product goes hand in hand with customer interest. A great example of this was the Bratco Skybaby and Hexdrone plastic RTF airplanes that came out in the late 90's or early 2000's. I had heard and read a small blurb about these coming on the market in a hobby retailer magazine at the time. At the SIG contest that year, some guys from the company were there from the company with examples of each for us to test fly. They really thought they had something new and unique. The Skybaby was a large model powered by the Norvel .061. The construction was vacu-formed shells that were glued together, and this is what the company reps thought was innovative, but were stone faced when I told them that Cox had a model like this , the TD-3, back in the late 50's and it was very short lived because it was too fragile. It turns out that the Skybaby was like a flying eggshell also. It would fly fairly well, and was mildly aerobatic, but as we discovered at Oshkosh, they could not survive the slightest impact. SIG was the main distributor of these, and sales were worse that dismal. They were listing at a street price of $125 and their main competition was Cox who were still offering the PT-19 and a few other models for $75 to $85 and already had an established market. The best thing about the airplane was the Norvel .061 engine but people had problems with those also, and production ceased and SIG pulled them from the market. They donated the remaining stock to the KidVenture program, and we figured out how to beef them up and repair them so we could get more that two flights out of them. We had one guy ( the late Art Johnson ) who's main task was to prepare the airplanes for use and repair them after a crash. When we developed the TuffBaby trainer, we reused the engines on those with great success. The Hexdrone delta/combat style model was just hideous, if you have ever tried to fly one you know what I mean. I could barely keep up with the controls and there was nothing stable about the design, and again, the only decent thing about it was the Norvel .061 engine. The current thought among many people is that something powered by an electric power plant would be ideal, but i think would would suffer from some of the same problems as all the others, and again, there has to be some kind of demand for it, and that gets back to customer interest. I have been watching this trend from both the flying field and from behind the counter at the hobby shop until I retired from there in 2015. The shop I worked at has done a pretty good job of adapting with current trends and such and is still in business but is nothing like it was when I worked there. The R/C department is mostly Traxxis other brands of R/C cars and some boats. They have not stocked a balsa R/C kit of engine of any kind in a long time, and have the foam RTF planes to satisfy that end of the hobby. No C/L stuff and just a few Guillows kits and a half empty balsa rack. It's gonna take some sort of big society change to get people back involved with any kind of hobby, and who knows what that would take and how long or how many generations that would take. But that is just my observation from looking at this closely for a long, long time.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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Well, Dan,
What can I say..
I'm thankful you took the time to write all of that out, with well reasoned points and experience to back it up.
I appreciate well structured, thought out argument, rather than emotional knee jerk response.
And I do not have the life left nor the inclination to repeat the process just to learn the same lessons you learned because I was too stubborn to take good advice.
You likely just saved me a ton of effort, time and frustration.
With that I'll just be happy with what we have, go fly my airplanes and have fun while I'm still able to do so.
Thanks again..
Mark
Well, it certainly was not my intention to discourage you from what you have in mind, I just thought it best to point out that some of us have already been there. You said that you were out of the hobby for a while and just getting back to it, and there is a lot that you have missed out on. I did not come to my conclusions over night. Like I mentioned, things may be different where you are, and it may indeed be a regional thing, but from what I know of the Chicago area clubs they are not too much different from what we have experienced. You have a much larger population up there to draw from than we do. I haven't 100% given up, just not as enthusiastic about it as I used to be. These days I want to see some kind of commitment from any person that shows interest. I have a whole lot more runway behind me than I have in front of me, and do not feel that wasting any time is in my best interest!! I kind of crash landed and slid backwards into retirement due to the pandemic and still figuring things out, but I think it's time for me to pay attention to me for a while! I wish I could have a better view of even the smallest possibilities of getting some new blood involved, and like I said, I haven't fully given up on trying, just getting old, tired and slowing down these days.
Type at youlater,
Dan McEntee
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I agree with Ken and that is exactly what I am doing. I am using what I have the best I can. What happens after that, is up to the estate sale company.
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" I want to see some kind of commitment from any person that shows interest. "
I think that is a good litmus test..
I was on the phone this morning with Mark Feist, Associate VP of AMA District III (Ohio) whom I had met at the Nats..
He was telling me about the kids that his R/C Club was helping.. He explained further that it was an organic group that was started by two kids who were already in the club. They contacted their friends, set up a Slack group, and they meet every Saturday at 10:00 to build and/or fly..
When it got to about ten kids they asked the club if they could form a group and if the club would consider purchasing a trainer.. So the club spent $500 and bought a trainer for them. The kids then combined their funds and bought a couple of Old School Model Works R/C kits and are building those.. They had 17 involved by the time of the Nats.. Mark told me this morning they now have 25.. This is in the Cincinnati area.
There are a couple of distinctives here:
- It was started and has been grown entirely by the kids.
- The Dads are involved, but not the ones driving this.
- It is R/C, and given that most hobby shops themselves if they carry airplanes at all they are R/C ARFs, so the kids have some awareness of what is out there.
Most hobby shop folks I've talked to lately have never even heard of control line.
But the main point here is that there is a "Want to" in the kids themselves and they are driving this.
And before you can have "Want to" you have to know it even exists..
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There are a couple of distinctives here:
- It was started and has been grown entirely by the kids.
- The Dads are involved, but not the ones driving this.
But the main point here is that there is a "Want to" in the kids themselves and they are driving this.
Yesterday I had thought pretty much the same thing but I was not going to comment because I thought I might be a bit too far outta the box.
I remembered back to the early 50's in the Tulsa area that it was the KIDS that were driving OTHER KIDS into model airplanes in general.
R/C was not reliable enough even for 'grownups'...not even considering the increased expense.
Free flight was certainly possible but....most of us did not have a ride to the field.
That left control line!
My mentors were guys like Charles Gilliland and Jack Hamilton who were only 3 years older than myself and were incredible modelers.
Determined guys like me were driven by guys like them...I went over to Charles house a couple blocks away every single day of summer in 55', 56' and 57' watching like a hawk how he scratch built those free flight models....he won the 58' NATS in BC Senior Free Flight.
Model Airplane News March 1958 page 45.
Of course he flew c/l as well and we all flew a LOT on Tulsa vacant lots back then.
There were other young experienced guys around here who were mentoring other young INEXPERIENCED guys...like me...and a good many are still building and flying.
Charles is still around and still has that 4' tall 58' NATS trophy...saw it a couple of years ago.
I should also say that....there were NO parents or grownups involved back then other than the hobby shop owner...Harold F 'Bud' Marr.
Bud did not have any kids and he made it possible to have a well stocked shop and took us to several C/L contests in his station wagon.
A contest in Ft. Smith near the FOX Mfg company location....comes to mind.
So yeah Mark....you're right....we WANTED TO.....
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There are still 'model airplane people' being born and created in 2024. The big question is, what is the value proposition for control line these days? Put another way, if someone does have the desire to get involved with aero modeling, why would they choose CL over something like RC these days?
I have my own ideas here but I wanted to hear what others say to this question.
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If any type of new product offering were to materialize, it would depend on one thing, and that is people WANTING and looking for something like that. The main credo of a successful business is "supply and DEMAND." The demand for any product goes hand in hand with customer interest. A great example of this was the Bratco Skybaby and Hexdrone plastic RTF airplanes that came out in the late 90's or early 2000's. I had heard and read a small blurb about these coming on the market in a hobby retailer magazine at the time. At the SIG contest that year, some guys from the company were there from the company with examples of each for us to test fly. They really thought they had something new and unique. The Skybaby was a large model powered by the Norvel .061. The construction was vacu-formed shells that were glued together, and this is what the company reps thought was innovative, but were stone faced when I told them that Cox had a model like this , the TD-3, back in the late 50's and it was very short lived because it was too fragile. It turns out that the Skybaby was like a flying eggshell also. It would fly fairly well, and was mildly aerobatic, but as we discovered at Oshkosh, they could not survive the slightest impact. SIG was the main distributor of these, and sales were worse that dismal. They were listing at a street price of $125 and their main competition was Cox who were still offering the PT-19 and a few other models for $75 to $85 and already had an established market. The best thing about the airplane was the Norvel .061 engine but people had problems with those also, and production ceased and SIG pulled them from the market. They donated the remaining stock to the KidVenture program, and we figured out how to beef them up and repair them so we could get more that two flights out of them. We had one guy ( the late Art Johnson ) who's main task was to prepare the airplanes for use and repair them after a crash. When we developed the TuffBaby trainer, we reused the engines on those with great success. The Hexdrone delta/combat style model was just hideous, if you have ever tried to fly one you know what I mean. I could barely keep up with the controls and there was nothing stable about the design, and again, the only decent thing about it was the Norvel .061 engine. The current thought among many people is that something powered by an electric power plant would be ideal, but i think would would suffer from some of the same problems as all the others, and again, there has to be some kind of demand for it, and that gets back to customer interest. I have been watching this trend from both the flying field and from behind the counter at the hobby shop until I retired from there in 2015. The shop I worked at has done a pretty good job of adapting with current trends and such and is still in business but is nothing like it was when I worked there. The R/C department is mostly Traxxis other brands of R/C cars and some boats. They have not stocked a balsa R/C kit of engine of any kind in a long time, and have the foam RTF planes to satisfy that end of the hobby. No C/L stuff and just a few Guillows kits and a half empty balsa rack. It's gonna take some sort of big society change to get people back involved with any kind of hobby, and who knows what that would take and how long or how many generations that would take. But that is just my observation from looking at this closely for a long, long time.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
I had suggested the electric route, not that I'd prefer it, but there are no engines to speak of being made today that would be suitable and the fuel issue. Beginners don't want to buy gallons of fuel-if they can find- nor mix it themselves. Also electric might be more acceptable noise-wise on the school ground or park.
Dave
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why would they choose CL over something like RC these days?
I fly with guys that fly both RC and CL. They like them both. One is not better than the other, just a totally different experience. A newbie to CL just has to have the chance to fly CL a few times with some type of basic trainer. So they can 'feel' the model in the air.
Our club has a 25-size solid wing profile trainer. But we use a very small 1 oz fuel tank so it does not fly very long. Just a minute or so in the air. Any more than that and the new pilot will surely get too dizzy.
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Mark R: please don't let anybody interested in CL read this thread. What a downer!
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I had suggested the electric route, not that I'd prefer it, but there are no engines to speak of being made today that would be suitable and the fuel issue. Beginners don't want to buy gallons of fuel-if they can find- nor mix it themselves. Also electric might be more acceptable noise-wise on the school ground or park.
Dave
The electric power plant is viable, but offers it's own protocol for proper feeding and care. Cox models came with or required the simple starter kit, and if the directions were followed, it all worked and was relatively safe. I would think that you want an electric power system that would at least equal what a Cox .049 puts out so that would require a lithium battery, charger and motor to fit that bill. Think about what previous FRT electric models have been like, from the Stanzel Electromic to the carious early attempts that Cox put out. You want some performance that is better than that. Proper use of the charger and battery and storage when not in use is the big thing here. I just keep thinking of all the videos of fires started by people charging hover boards, electric bikes, lawn and garden equipment and the like. People are burning their houses down by not reading instructions and heading warnings. I know most would look on a control line model as a toy airplane and not give it the respect it deserves to stay safe. I saw it at the hobby shop with NiCads and Nickle metal hydride batteries for R/V vehicles, abusing the batteries by over charging and causing melt downs, and you know lithium batteries could be much worse. I dealt with people at work on how to use and charge material handling equipment with lead acid batteries. Trying to use a device while it's being charged it asking for disaster. It took a battery in an electric pallet truck exploding in the bindery one day before anyone would listen to me. Have you ever seen a car battery blow up when it was charged improperly or the alternator in the car stuck and the owner ignored it? There was a discussion on FB one day this week about whether a cell phone charger could start a fire or not. I would wager it would, if the user spent a lot of time talking and using the phone while connected, and pulling all the current that the phone required through the charger and cord and did that often enough to damage the charger. They can get quite warm when doing that. It's just that there are people out there that could screw up a 2 car funeral and they are starting to outnumber the rest that have any common sense!! But it's like you said, who is going to make the investment and do the research and development on something like this in an unknown market. I would be tickled to see it happen, really I would, but I just don't see it happening.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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" I want to see some kind of commitment from any person that shows interest. "
I think that is a good litmus test..
I was on the phone this morning with Mark Feist, Associate VP of AMA District III (Ohio) whom I had met at the Nats..
He was telling me about the kids that his R/C Club was helping.. He explained further that it was an organic group that was started by two kids who were already in the club. They contacted their friends, set up a Slack group, and they meet every Saturday at 10:00 to build and/or fly..
When it got to about ten kids they asked the club if they could form a group and if the club would consider purchasing a trainer.. So the club spent $500 and bought a trainer for them. The kids then combined their funds and bought a couple of Old School Model Works R/C kits and are building those.. They had 17 involved by the time of the Nats.. Mark told me this morning they now have 25.. This is in the Cincinnati area.
There are a couple of distinctives here:
- It was started and has been grown entirely by the kids.
- The Dads are involved, but not the ones driving this.
- It is R/C, and given that most hobby shops themselves if they carry airplanes at all they are R/C ARFs, so the kids have some awareness of what is out there.
Most hobby shop folks I've talked to lately have never even heard of control line.
But the main point here is that there is a "Want to" in the kids themselves and they are driving this.
And before you can have "Want to" you have to know it even exists..
This is good to hear, and really is to the point I was trying to make. This is the way it would have to grow. It's no surprise that it's R/C oriented, as that is what grabs most people, no matter what the age. I really don't care, as it's at least getting them involved, and then they can discover and explore the other disciplines as they go along. But here is the real thing to look for,,,,,,,,,, continuity. It's great that the students are the main driver behind it, that helps a lot, but check back in another 5 years and see where it stands then and who is still engaged and involved once the newness and uniqueness has worn off. Do they have the desire and curiosity to to keep at it?? A key ingredient now is the same as when I first tried to build a model when I was 5 years old in 1960. I thought airplanes were cool ( actually I thought they were "neato!!" ) and I wanted to build one!! Is there a way to make it cool, or rad and gnarly or whatever the current terms people use to describe what they like??
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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Then there is also the other draw, as a former boss of mine used to say: "He's discovered cars and girls"..
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My three kids were all active in control line to varying degrees, none are active. One was a multi time Nats Scale Champion, one just soloed her Stunter, and one was another Scale competitor that went on to fly RC which he still does.
Dan has been a great worker for the hobby.
I get enthused and compete in Stunt for periods and then have tapered off through the years.
Chris…
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Mark R: please don't let anybody interested in CL read this thread. What a downer!
As the old saying goes, "it is what it is." This is the reality these days. You might not remember, but lots of people, including Mark R., thought C/L was dead in the late 70's to early 80s. Then a generation or former participants retired and these guys rediscovered what they had in their basements and attics, and the fire was rekindled and then burst into a flame! Look at the attendance of VSC as an indicator. Look at what it was in it's first year, along with other contest attendance and results in the same time period. We road a pretty big wave of growth for the next 30 years fuels by a lot of the people who were there in the early days. Some people on the sidelines saw the fun we were having and jumped on the wagon, and then got off further down the road. Then, Father Time started to catch up, and we are where we are today. If some kind of turnaround does happen, regardless of how long it might take, a whole new industry needs to be rebuilt as far as suppliers. Look at all the manufacturers and former giants of the hobby industry that are gone now. That's gonna be damn hard to replace, and I don't think Brodak could handle things by themselves. These posts that I have made are just my opinion, but it's based on my experiences and observations in many levels, and I wish that it were not this way, but like the saying that I started this thread out with, "It is what it is."
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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Scott I have always admired your optimism and the spirit in which you wish to look at situations. However I also feel you can't be blind to what is in front of us. The hobby has risen and fallen in waves for as long as I've been involved (60+ years) but now it is quite different than before. As Dan pointed out now there are few to no sources of supplies left to work with and frankly with no substantial market. Who would want to start up a business dedicated to what we have left. It's not just control line. RC is actually a shadow of what it was in terms of airplanes.. I'm not too close to it but I'd have to say free flight can't be much better if for no other reason than there are very few possible places available to fly them. I live in Kansas of all places-the Great Plains- but the few locals have to drive nearly three hours to a suitable recognized flying site for free flight. If the other parts of the hobby were still healthy so then the hobby industry itself would also be. Instead it's virtually dead save for a few garage operators who do it mostly as an extension of their own hobby enjoyment. Are we done? NO. As long as there are we few who love what we do and support what we have left then the hobby will go on awhile longer. If we can sprout a few new buds on the way and find ways to encourage and support the efforts then lets for sure do that! It just seems a little foolhardy to think a new revival is just ahead. There is nothing we can see to support that. Experience tells us something different.
Dave
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Like I said: please don't let anyone read this thread that might be interested in CL.....
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Then there is also the other draw, as a former boss of mine used to say: "He's discovered cars and girls"..
I was lucky in my early romantic distractions. I discovered a girl with a car! She liked going flying with me. Should have kept her, we would have had a female on several US teams.
Ken
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I spoke with Mark Feist this morning.
He has been asked to look into member retention and growth.
He told me we have been averaging 12,000 new AMA members over the past several years, but there has been only a 19% retention rate beyond 2 years.
The issue is people are not connecting with clubs.
He said when as new member connects with a club, that retention rate goes up to 90%.
So.. He has been asked to try to fix that problem..
I don't have time to add more, need to go to an appointment, but I thought that would be a good piece of info to add to the discussion..
Mark
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I wish I could be more optimistic about the future of CL, or model aviation in general, but there is nothing to convince me to be optimistic.
Things are very different today, as has been mentioned. When I was a kid, we rode our bicycles to the nearby fields and parks to play baseball. Or, we walked there, carrying our planes and flight boxes. We had no internet, no social media, no video games, to entertain us. We did just fine with what we had and we had a great time.
One time, some years ago, while visiting family, I was flying alone, off a stooge, at a park near where I grew up. Several boys rode up on bicycles, asked me where I got the plane. I told them I built it. They asked "how did you do that"? I told them. I bought balsa wood, some plywood and other materials, had a set of plans, and built the plane. One asked me if he could get one at Wal Mart. When I said no, he said "come on guys, let's go." That should tell you something about the future of our hobby. Those boys showed no interest whatsoever in creating something with their own hands.
At the club where I fly, there are only four or five regular CL guys. I bet most at that club would love to see us go since they would like to use our circle as a heliport. Every now and then, one of the RC guys will come over, look at the planes we have, and make comments regarding the build quality and workmanship. None are interested in CL. They have neither the time or desire to build something like that. It is far too easy to get an RC foamy RTF or ARF.
Another thing to take note of is age of members. Even on the RC side, I rarely see anyone under age 40 anymore. If I do, it might be someone's son who tags along for a while, but none of them come to the CL circle to see what we are doing. I bet many of the RC guys still think CL is below their social status. Who in their right mind would fly one of those when you can "move up to RC"? Move up? To what? A piece of foam that took about three hours to make flight ready? The older RC guys know better since they had to build, years ago, because nothing else was available. But, they will not fly CL, even if they did it before getting into RC.
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I bet many of the RC guys still think CL is below their social status. Who in their right mind would fly one of those when you can "move up to RC"?
That's the result of AMA's years-long campaign about "moving up to RC" bearing fruit. They are no longer quite so open about it, but every once in a while it reveals itself in what they say.
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I'm letting this idea go..
I appreciate all of the inputs.
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I was wondering if there are still shop classes offered in places like high schools. I remember wood shops, metals shops, etc. A kid could learn how to make things. These days, mastering a video game is the thing to do.
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I was wondering if there are still shop classes offered in places like high schools.
Yes there are. At one of the local junior high schools we had an after-school activity in their shop area building simple rubber-powered free-flight. It ran for 7 years until Covid came and they shut down the after-school activities. Every year we had at least 10 kids show up for these sessions. Kids in Junior High are about as "flighty" as they come - some sessions we'd have 4 kids show up and then the next session we'd have 20! The only support we had was from the lady that ran after-school activities, but no support or recognition from anyone else in the school system.
During all this, we had a similar train of discussion on StuntHanger about how "kids aren't interested in model airplanes." I posted that, on the contrary, there were some that had an interest. Amazingly, instead of support I got a bunch of postings about how I was wrong and challenges like "oh yeah? Well, how many of them did this or that?" trying to prove that they actually weren't interested. And when I started posting pictures of the kids building the airplanes a lot of people got very upset about it. I was ruining their narrative.
I never said it was easy. And I never said that they sent out the cheer-leaders to dance around at our flying sessions. But we have an awful lot of people who seem to be happy to play "Debbie Downer" with the result we see here: Mark R gets convinced it's a lost cause and essentially says "oh well, never mind."
Good job guys!
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..Mark R gets convinced it's a lost cause and essentially says "oh well, never mind."
It's all good, Scott.. If it had only been this site I probably would have said:
(to quote Fantastic Mr. Fox) "I understand what you are saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm going to ignore your advice."
But there were a lot of other factors that played into this, and there were also lot of conversations over the phone the past few days, and many today, that weighed into this decision.. There were plenty who said "It's a great idea, go for it!" And some who had reasons not to that were not mentioned here.
A General/Sport Control Line SIG was discussed, one that part of the charter would be to get new folks into the Hobby. As I said, that isn't the focus of PAMPA, and it shouldn't be. It isn't the focus of any of the Control Line SIGs..
Numerous discussions on who the target demographic would be for pulling folks into the hobby were also kicked around..
One novel suggestion I hadn't thought of was current aviation industry employees (predominantly engineers). We have had several airline pilots in the top 10 consistently (Al Rabe, Ted Fancher and David Fitzgerald) and Engineers (Paul Walker, Brett Buck come to mind immediately) although there are others I'm sure that I just don't know they fit into that category..
With the construction methods and technology levels of upper echelon competition, this is the demographic (as well as business owners) who have the technical background, love of aviation and means to be potential high caliber stunt flyers..
So maybe the demographic that should be targeted would be men between the ages of 25 and 45, instead of kids..
I even had some discussion with my wife about it, because this sort of thing can quickly become life dominating, and as I said earlier, one person isn't going to turn this around.
There were a lot of valuable inputs..
Personally I don't buy the "Kids these days.." comments.. We are just going to have to agree to disagree on that one..
Yes, there are more options.. Yes, they go play computer games a lot, but I've seen enough who are engaged in the real world and hungry to learn and try things like this that I cannot overgeneralize and write them all off..
I grew up in a neighborhood of about 20 boys my age.. There were only two of us, me and a friend named Will, who did model airplanes. The rest may not have had as many options as kids today, but what they did have were enough. They were into football or basketball, and maybe fishing..
And even Will wasn't all that persistent with model airplanes.. He went off into minibikes and go-carts and the model planes collected dust in the garage, and then he ended up moving away.
I was the airplane nerd.. I doubt the other boys could tell the difference between a Hellcat, a Wildcat and a Corsair. David McCampbell, Joe Foss, John Thach, Alex Vraciu, Ira Kepford, Don Gentile, and Francis Gabreski were my heroes, not Roman Gabriel, Joe Namath or Pete Maravich..
And then of course were the kings of stunt: Les McDonald, Al Rabe, Billy Werwage, Bob Hunt and Ted Fancher among others.. I still want to build a Stiletto and a Juno..
The guys in my neighborhood just didn't have the "want to"..
Regarding all of the feedback, if you strip away the emotion and editorializing and just look as close to the factual data as possible, which does include people's experiences, you get a pretty good view on the effort necessary to make this work. And then you have to ask yourself if you can realistically pull that off.
And that ultimately was the deciding factor. "Given all of the other things I have on my plate, what do I realistically have time for?"
I am still working and won't be retiring for another ten years at least. So do I realistically have the bandwidth to take this on and drive it for 3 to 5 years?
To be honest, I don't. And that was really the only deal breaker.
Thanks again,
Mark
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......So maybe the demographic that should be targeted would be men between the ages of 25 and 45, instead of kids..
Now that is an idea worth perusing. What is true about that period in your life? You have finished school and you are starting a career and most likely a family. It is perhaps the most stressful time in your life. And what is the one stress reliever we know? ........ sanding. Seriously, introducing our hobby to a person who has a need and means is brilliant. I was 5 when my father asked his partner at the time what he did in his spare time and my father brought home a "Lil Stinker" kit. We spent weeks putting that stupid plane together. He was able to get that stubborn OK Cub .049 to run long enough to crash it soundly (did any of those "log" planes actually fly?). That led to a series of Gillows stick and tissue kits that we did get to fly and by the time I was 7 I had built every Comet $.10 kit the little store across the street had. I was hooked. He never flew control line but was there for me whenever he could and even offered to start a hobby business with me. Uncle Sam had other plans for me and it never happened.
We think we need kids but we really need people. So when a friend or business colleague asks what you do to relieve stress hand him/her a Baby Ringmaster kit. One thing you should tell them as a caution. Most women can smell dope from 100' upwind in a hurricane and even though it smells just like fingernail polish, they can't stand it!
Ken
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Oh Dear!
This discussion has a terminal odour about it that wont go away. Put simply, this hobby does not cut the mustard with most young folk today. There are too many distractions and easier options to get to the beach partyi n their vertual world or social media network reality. We may as well enjoy the orchestra and yake pleasure in our control line culture until we slip below the waves. No point in rearranging the deck chairs- unless we can get the young folks to fly CL with their face glued to a gaming screen. D>K
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I live in a college town 8 miles from another college town.
20 years ago, there were 3 hobby stores that carried items for RC planes and building supplies. Now they are all closed.
Now there are 6 recreational marijuana shops.
Society changes. Interests change.
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Rick Nelson before he passed away wrote a song named, Garden Party. It has a chorus saying,
It's all right now,
Learned my lesson well,
You can't please everyone so you,
You got to please yourself.
Thanks for bringing up this song.. It's stuck in my head now and I cannot seem to shake it.
When I was younger they played it WAAAAYYYYYYY too often..
It's the Flower Child/Hippy Gen's equivalent of Lynrd Skynrd's Free Bird.
Thanks, Pal...
**) **)
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So maybe the demographic that should be targeted would be men between the ages of 25 and 45, instead of kids..
Thanks again,
Mark
This is the point I was making in my original post, 3rd paragraph. I have been pointing this out for several years in many of these discussions. If a kids does show some interest at all, he can be easily over ridden or put off by the parents for any or all of a lot of reasons. They depend on the parents for everything. The 25 to 35 year old adults are the parents of the kids most want to target their focus on, but they never showed any interest when THEY were kids, so there is no continuity. But by the time they get to this age, they can become more aware of other things to be interested in, and if they already have an interest in anything mechanical in nature, it fits right in. How many of us out there are musicians, even luthiers? Quite a few. How many are mechanics or technicians of some sort? Quite a few. Now many are into motorsports of some kind? Quite a few. I think when people get to this 25 to 35 age group, they can be a bit more sophisticated and receptive to new interests and experiences. Like I said before, they already have the vehicle, bank account, and some sort of home and hopefully stable home life and they might be looking for something like what we do, or maybe not even looking, but if they stumble across it out on a drive or surfing the internet, that could create the spark. I agree with the statement about clubs and organizations. It's more appealing to some if they know where they can get help. Everything is usually more fun in a group. And if you get an adult thinking along these lines, you get the kids also. Maybe not right away, but once they see the parent get some success and having some fun, that may be all the kids need.
And again, this is not a new problem, and has been discussed in the magazines for 50 to 60 years. But these times we live in are just sooooooo different, I think a new approach is needed if a person wants to pursue this. I'm several years retired now, have the usual aches, pains, and other maladies that go along with aging and, as I mentioned, I have put forth a lot of time and efforts in these areas over my entire adult life, and I'm just kind of burned out on it all in recent years. I have not given up hope completely and if someone stops by the fence at Buder Park, I'll make the effort to chat them up a bit just to show that we are approachable, willing to help, and try to make them feel welcomed. I worked in industrial maintenance for a living, and also part time in retail at a local hobby shop for over 35 years, so I am used to talking with people, and explaining things in a simple manor, and try not to over sell the idea. The rest is up to them. They will have to put out a little more effort to get started these days when it comes to finding supplies and such, and that may be a turn off to some. To the plus side of this, almost all will already be familiar with buying stuff on line. The other side of the sword though is the cost of what they do find these days. These are all complicating factors and will take a certain type of person to deal with that. The whole world is "outside the box" these days!! And it's gonna take that kind of thinking to address the issue.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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I live in a college town 8 miles from another college town.
20 years ago, there were 3 hobby stores that carried items for RC planes and building supplies. Now they are all closed.
Now there are 6 recreational marijuana shops.
Society changes. Interests change.
I think that says it all. Things change. Nothing we can do about it. The "spark" to do something has to come from within. You can't make someone want to do something. People will drift toward things that hold interest for them. And, life is full of other responsibilities. There is rarely enough time for everything.
There are reasons to be optimistic about some things. I have seen some interesting robotics displays. High school or college students working on such things and then competing with what they come up with.
One very interesting competition I was able to see was the model aircraft contest that I believe the SAE sponsored some years ago. I am not sure if this event is still being held. The last time I heard of it, it was held at a local RC club site. College aeronautical students had to build an RC model aircraft within the given parameters, such as max wing area, or other limitations.
This particular event was a "max payload" contest. As I understood it, whoever could make one circuit around the field, with the most payload, was the winner. Take off, come back around, land. Most crashed trying to make the turn to downwind. I did not see anyone succeed, but I was not able to attend on the first day of the contest. Maybe someone made it. The closest I saw was one plane that managed to turn downwind but could not keep enough airspeed to maintain altitude.
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Sometimes there is a unique kid out there.
There is a 12 or 13 year old member of our RC club that flies foamy RC models. His mother, every Sunday, brings him to our field to fly and she hangs out for 2-3 hours while he does so. A great commitment on her part. He is pretty much the only young kid in our 80+ members. So, he continues to learn RC from some very experienced elders that have a great time working with him. He feels so welcome. Especially with no other kids his age around.
What's interesting is that he actually scratch-built a simple RC model (his own design) after learning some of the important aerodynamic basics from the elders and somewhat mimicking the design basics from some of his RC foamys. I think it was part of a school related show and tell project. But he built it, flew it, and trimmed it (obviously with the help and support of the club elders). And strong encouragement from all.
So against all odds, here is a kid who likes to build and fly model aircraft. Maybe a NATS participant someday?
But there is a downside. He flew our CL trainer once or twice, then never flew CL again. Roomer is his patents squashed his CL interest only because he already has a lot of RC 'stuff' around the house and mom and dad just had no desire for more stuff around related to CL. But hopefully someday he will rekindle interest in CL.
We still let him know he can fly the CL trainer anytime he wants?
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Sometimes there is a unique kid out there.
There is a 12 or 13 year old member of our RC club that flies foamy RC models. His mother, every Sunday, brings him to our field to fly and she hangs out for 2-3 hours while he does so. A great commitment on her part. He is pretty much the only young kid in our 80+ members. So, he continues to learn RC from some very experienced elders that have a great time working with him. He feels so welcome. Especially with no other kids his age around.
What's interesting is that he actually scratch-built a simple RC model (his own design) after learning some of the important aerodynamic basics from the elders and somewhat mimicking the design basics from some of his RC foamys. I think it was part of a school related show and tell project. But he built it, flew it, and trimmed it (obviously with the help and support of the club elders. And strong encouragement from all.
So against all odds, here is a kid who likes to build and fly model aircraft. Maybe a NATS participant someday?
But there is a downside. He flew our CL trainer once or twice, then never flew CL again. Roomer is his patents squashed his CL interest only because he already has a lot of RC 'stuff' around the house and mom and dad just had no desire for more stuff around related to CL. But hopefully someday he will rekindle interest in CL.
We still let him know he can fly the CL trainer anytime he wants?
This sounds like our albino..he has the gene. It's rare and should be nurtured. I wish you didn't have to go though thousands to find that one.
These days I believe the place to go hunting is on-line. This is where all the young (er) folks are. We need a Shug making U tube and facebook videos, posting regularly creating interest. You will find those needles in the haystack that way. Then you will just need something to present or offer to any who respond. Traditional approaches will just give us traditional results.
Dave
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Speaking of Shug Emery,
What happened to him?
I thought his videos were great!
Then all of a sudden he disappeared..
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Yeah, that guy was a real clown. LL~
Shug made great videos #^
Maybe he was just clowning around y1
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Speaking of Shug Emery,
What happened to him?
I thought his videos were great!
Then all of a sudden he disappeared..
Shug looked to be a guy that had a lot of interests, and he made some interesting videos on hiking and back packing and such. I think one of the last posts I read was that he was retiring his act from the fair and festival circuit, and might be doing other things. That's all just a guess on my part. I hope he's doing well.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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In today's world, maybe the way to spike interest in CL is get a flashy exciting viral video of a popular "influencer" with a handle in their hand.
At least kids would find out that something "retro" like CL exists.
But there are obstacles. Like, CL is a dangerous hobby!
Parents now might be afraid to let their precious child use something as dangerous as a razor knife. Let alone have little hands near a spinning finger chopper. And the finger bonding glues and toxic paint, oh my...
As a kid, I knew not to play with adult stuff like the table saw. I had good parents, but I also got shoved outside to play and experimentation and personal accountability was used to learn lots. Sometimes the hard way. Today, if junior cut his finger because he was using a double-edge razor blade to cut balsa, the State would probably look at taking the kids away from his bad parents. A lot of protections stand in the way of just doing things now. Heck, spell-check won't even let us spell things wrong. The point being, if a kid were interested, good chance the parent veto's it due to safety concerns. How could they supervise something THEY are afraid of?
A video clip I liked showed a little kid, maybe 5 or 6, zooming by on a tiny dirt bike WFO throttle. Grandma was horrified and couldn't even look. Grandpa was quietly chuckling. We need more "full send" kids.
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"The hobby has refined to the point where all of the non-essentials and less effective ways have been boiled out. The "creative" designs of Old Time Stunt are gone, because there was a formula that was more competitive.. Just like full size Aircraft.. The technology has changed, and tightened the margins of the competition.. And the competition has driven the technology change."
Thoughts? Ideas? Discussion?
Hi Mark,
I agree with Floyd here. No, no, no. I'm not disagreeing with your whole statement, just this part. My reason is two fold. 1. How many times in the past have a group of modelers felt the exact same sentiment, only to have a new design or technology appear a few years later? (Many times). These new innovations don't appear without someone trying something new and creative. This is evidenced all the time. So less competitive ways are always boiled out, like flapless designs, or thin airfoils, or fox .35s, and on and on. I do not believe the Shark is the culmination of control line technology driving out all other CREATIVE models and approaches. Balsa is still viable, molded is viable, and many are experimenting with foam. Glow is viable, electric is viable, even contra rotating is viable. I just don't think there is a FORMULA. But, many older technologies are no longer competitive at a world class level. But there is still room for creativity, not just room for it, but I believe a MANDATE for those interested in such things.
2. If I'm wrong and there is just one FORMULA, this hobby is not only doomed, it is pointless. At least it would be for me. Isn't a toll house chocolate chip cookie the greatest in the world? Why does anyone still make recipes and experiment in something that has a proven formula?
But, on to the stuff I agree with. The future. As Floyd points out, as long as the pattern is challenging, people will fly and attempt it. Thought. If none of us had a hobby, and we were all introduced to five hobbies. We probably wouldn't all choose the same hobbies, but would any of us choose Stunt? If we wouldn't choose it, then we are training a zebra to race against horses. But given the choice of hobbies, I believe many would choose our hobby, if exposed to it.
How? You are correct about STEM education. Someone else points out that there is no beginner ARF at present. We could have a stem package for schools with a grant listed on the science grant website for people to apply for. But that would require an Arm of Pampa which we don't have. Possibly an individual who wants to make a small forture by starting with a large one. There could be a simple foam arf made available, or RTF. And there could be a STEM project for schools to apply for.
Next, there needs to be kids. I don't mean invite kids to our contests. I mean get some stem kids to compete without ever seeing anyone over the age of 20 besides the teacher/coach. It's just optics, and important ones at that. Then, you get a film company (again, start with a large fortune and turn it into a small one) to create the 6 episode show showcasing the kids competitions and their battle for the national title. They don't know a thing about Pampa, a 15 maneuver pattern, or anything else at this point. Just the simple prescribed competition for the STEM project. Then this show runs on Disney channel or similar channel (think drone racing or battle bots here.) Maybe we never introduce them to pampa or the rest of us and we all rush to join them in the new control line creation.
Okay, that;s all for my creativity. Oh, except there are also video award websites that have small prizes offered by hundreds of different companies. I remember making a Toyota safety video years ago with a high schooler for an award. I also remember making a music video based on an Edgar Allen Poe poem for another one. We could have a video award also. That gets to the kids. Then, while we're at it, Let's make an independent movie staring some actor, how about Danny Trejo as the old wise mentor, and basicially make a Karate Kid remake with control line models? I'll start the screen play when someone shows me the money to produce it. ;D
Now I'm really done this time.
David
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In the morning at every racing contest, we use to have a Jr 1/2a proto profile event. Some kids and dads would show up just for this and not fly in the regular events. Not all of them stuck with it through puberty but some did. Mostly the ones that built their own planes.
MM :)
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A few more conversations behind me and I'm reminded again that growing this is only going to happen via grass-roots one on one..
I'll do what I can locally, but an organizational approach is going to result in making a lot of work for myself with little ROI.
I'm distancing myself from this topic going forward.
Thanks for helping me see the reality of the situation.
I appreciate all of the inputs.
Mark
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Control line will never completely die unless the politicians make laws to prohibit it. I didn't learn or realize it but I would load my kids up and we go to Shawnee Mission Park were there was a reasonable grass circle. They would help me fly and when done I would take them over to the swings and slides until dark or supper time. Finally one asked if they could try it. One of the reasons I always had a Ring Master. Set the needle to where the plane would take off and fly and I would hold their hand and talk to them. in every case about the third time it was start the plane and launch. Invariably if we had time one of the others would want to try. At one time I had all four taking turns. One time while at one of the phone company schools my son took all the girls and the 1/2A Skyray to the school ground and they flew according to the wife. But then I pushed compitition and the fun left us. If I had known then what I know now compitition would hsve been left out until they asked to try it. Loretta the middle girl is the only one that never wanted to fly a contest. Now I hope grandkids be sides James will want to fly control line. Now I have the shop in decent shape I may get my great grand daughter to try and assemble a plane. She makes paper planes now since I showed her how on a couple of designs. now have plans for a rubber powered free flight that uses no balsa. More on that when time gets here. D>K
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I appreciate you explaining to me what Floyd was trying to say.. But I never said anything to the contrary of either of the two points you explained, and I really have no idea how the assumption was made that I had a different opinion.
I wouldn't be interested in flying the pattern myself if doing so wasn't challenging..
And I would also choose this hobby again if given the opportunity to do so..
And I did, in fact, do just that, after being away from it for nearly 30 years. So I'm not sure what the point is here..
And because of all that, I think it's still worth trying to grow.
So I'm going to try.. So yes, hope springs eternal..
If you don't want to help, you can say "I told you so" later.
No one ever grew anything by doing nothing, so if you want to help, let me know.
What you are describing here is the upper echelon of the hobby. The top rung on the ladder. You will always have the people that seek that position and do what it takes to get there. What it takes to get there is more rungs of the ladder underneath. That ladder used to be pretty long and wide, and that is what's missing or at least going away. One constant that has always been there ever since I have have been doing this is people that just want to fly and enjoy the experience, maybe entering an occasional contest, but getting together with their flying buddies to practice, hang out, ask questions, offer help and suggestion, and generally help each other. That is what has always been there, is gone now, and needs to be replaced. The base or foundation of the hobby. These are the people that supported hobby shops, vendors and manufacturers. As that has been eroding and shrinking, so has the others. Competition, especially in the upper echelon of the event, tends to take care of itself. The changes in technology will be driven by this group as they evolve and innovate. But when they move on, who will replace them? They will come up the ladder just like like those before them. Any sport or hobby needs a strong grass roots foundation of participation. people who do it just for the love of it. Until we find out what it will take to reach the next wave of participants, we just have to keep on putting it out there and be ready for any interest that comes our way. That's where the focus should be. Clubs would attract some, but there should be opportunity for those that can't or just like to go it alone but need occasional help. keep the search wide and open to any and everyone.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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One constant that has always been there ever since I have have been doing this is people that just want to fly and enjoy the experience, maybe entering an occasional contest, but getting together with their flying buddies to practice, hang out, ask questions, offer help and suggestion, and generally help each other. That is what has always been there, is gone now, and needs to be replaced. The base or foundation of the hobby.
Exactly right Dan! But AMA is off doing their ARF Foamies and Quadcopter thing, and the group most capable of doing anything about this for CL, PAMPA, has no interest. As long as they can have their Walker Cup competition, well, apparently, that's all that matters. They currently have their most energetic, talented leader ever. He's pointed out the problem very clearly to them (that the PAMPA bathtub is draining out a lot faster than its being refilled....), but yet.....
The NFFS provides a model of what can be done, but are we smart enough or care enough to do our version of it? (And now prepare for the posts attacking NFFS.....sigh....)
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Exactly right Dan! But AMA is off doing their ARF Foamies and Quadcopter thing, and the group most capable of doing anything about this for CL, PAMPA, has no interest. As long as they can have their Walker Cup competition, well, apparently, that's all that matters. They currently have their most energetic, talented leader ever. He's pointed out the problem very clearly to them (that the PAMPA bathtub is draining out a lot faster than its being refilled....), but yet.....
The NFFS provides a model of what can be done, but are we smart enough or care enough to do our version of it? (And now prepare for the posts attacking NFFS.....sigh....)
I don't think we are going to have that, Scott.. If folks start attacking NFFS then they are going after a group who has been very sincerely trying to help solve this problem.
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A few more conversations behind me and I'm reminded again that growing this is only going to happen via grass-roots one on one..
I'll do what I can locally, but an organizational approach is going to result in making a lot of work for myself with little ROI.
So I'm letting this topic go.
Thanks for helping me see the reality of the situation.
I appreciate all of the inputs.
Mark
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here in Brazil every month or so, someone start to talk about "savind c/l and bringing newcomers", most of them hardly fly or build and obviously nothing happens, how could, if themselves are not modelling at all?
Unfortunately we are aging ( better aging then the option) and after promoting a lot of events and competitions with the goal of bringing newcomers or old timers back to the field i gave up. It´s hard to compete with internet, even for otherwise active modellers.
just as a "case study" on the newcomers we have 2 well documented situations with a broad numbers of people:
case one:
at our field ( in the biggest city of south america) we have 2-3 planes ready for flight, a person dedicated to help and we welcomme anyone to try a fly with the instructor. Our filed is within one of the most visited parks in south america so we have plenty people. it´s a few steps of F1 Ayrton Senna´s memorial. Every weekend about 3-6 youngsters (mostly) have a flight or 2, on the last 2 years none of them returned.
case two:
a dear friend and a great modeller teatches modelling in a junior/high school for kids with classes once a week. they start to learn at about age 7 and goes until 17 years old. first with paper models, going through rubber band models, free flight, boats and finish with a control line model ( they can have all of the models after finished). He teatches about 8 classes a day for the last 25 years. When i was inquiring how many of the 1000´s of kids became modellers after this time he was shocked to tell me : just 2, and one left modelling a few years ago.
from my side, i gave up trying and my focus is my learning curve of the pattern and improvement as a modelbuilder. and whenever a friend want´s help i do it, otherwise, i think i´ve lost the battle.
but i still encourage any good soul that try to make it work.
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I read what you guys are saying and agree. What Dan said about local guys offering a helping hand is good. However, I think that is the 2nd step in the process. The first step is the hobby shop. The hobby shops are gone and that is where it begins. When people go in the shop and see models hanging from the ceiling, it attracts them to ask questions. When the store has kits, engines, building supplies it gives people a chance to start. Then the guys at the field come into play.
It is my belief the hobby will continue to decline because the hobby shops are gone. When I had my hobby shop, at Christmas people would come in and buy EVERYTHING that was needed to start for somebody.
How are people going to start the hobby and order everything they need to start by mail order? It's not going to happen. In my club, I have people FREQUENTLY ask me for all sorts of parts to get their plane fixed or going, like props, wheels, spinners, screws, bolts, collars, etc. They express great appreciation for me giving them this stuff because they don't want to mail order it.
Rusty
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Like many on here i have seen the magazine articles and then internet articles “where are the young people” all the way back to the 1950’s. CL had it’s big start in late 40’s with the sound of a model engine running and then flying at local parking lot. That was the draw until the cops chased all the cl flyers away and that was the start of the end.
That is over simple way to explain a complex loss of a hobby but cl started to die when it was no longer seen.
I enjoyed all those early years more than the many contest I have been to.
Eddyr
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I read what you guys are saying and agree. What Dan said about local guys offering a helping hand is good. However, I think that is the 2nd step in the process. The first step is the hobby shop. The hobby shops are gone and that is where it begins. When people go in the shop and see models hanging from the ceiling, it attracts them to ask questions. When the store has kits, engines, building supplies it gives people a chance to start. Then the guys at the field come into play.
It is my belief the hobby will continue to decline because the hobby shops are gone. When I had my hobby shop, at Christmas people would come in and buy EVERYTHING that was needed to start for somebody.
How are people going to start the hobby and order everything they need to start by mail order? It's not going to happen. In my club, I have people FREQUENTLY ask me for all sorts of parts to get their plane fixed or going, like props, wheels, spinners, screws, bolts, collars, etc. They express great appreciation for me giving them this stuff because they don't want to mail order it.
Rusty
being a shop owner for the last 20 years (vinyl records, no model airplane) i know from large that people under 30´s hate to go shopping, they are into online stores ( my shop is online). here we had until 5 years ago the hobbyshop aerobras, open since the eraly 50-s, closed because nobody care to visit, not even the actual flyers...
the younger generations are online natives and seek for information on youtube. if they don´t show up at the field, is because they didn´t feel the call from the airplanes....
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Exactly right Dan! But AMA is off doing their ARF Foamies and Quadcopter thing, and the group most capable of doing anything about this for CL, PAMPA, has no interest. As long as they can have their Walker Cup competition, well, apparently, that's all that matters. They currently have their most energetic, talented leader ever. He's pointed out the problem very clearly to them (that the PAMPA bathtub is draining out a lot faster than its being refilled....), but yet.....
I think this is a little unfair. PAMPA has a very clear charter, it is following the charter. And no one is actively hostile to the idea of promoting general control-line interests. I and many others have looked at the issue and concluded it is unlikely to achieve anything for reasons discussed at extreme length in other threads and off-line. Nothing has changed about it since then so I won't repeat it.
That doesn't mean anyone should not try, but don't be terribly disappointed that it doesn't work. There are plenty of people - many PAMPA members - that would be happy to assist, as long as it doesn't involve undermining the current very good situation for the NATs.
Referring to the previous alleged attempt to promote CL general/"change PAMPA charter" to an equivalent of the NFFS, someone is going to have to explain why the very first actions taken to "promote and grow" CL general involved extensive efforts to undermine the operations of the NATs and changes to competition rules. And verbal and written attacks on the people running PAMPA and the NATS, and a slew of people who were just the ones to assist any such promotion, sometimes in the most hostile and threatening terms.
At the very least, to use the power/influence of PAMPA to achieve some goal, any goal, it would make sense to engage the people involved in it, rather than antagonize them in a variety of ways as your first step, in ways that had nothing to do with the stated goal. That's what happened before, the net result being the stated/alleged purpose was not in any way achieved, but did blow the organization to bits.
Compare and contrast with what Mark Weiss is trying to do. It's very similar to the Brodak's stated purpose, but he didn't start out by trying to antagonize everyone involved as his very first step, and he has done nothing inconsistent with his goals, while maintaining the credibility of PAMPA as the NATs competition group. So, while the underlying situation regarding general CL building/flying is completely unchanged, at least he hasn't destroyed anything, and those people in PAMPA he might need have not been abused or threatened.
PAMPA, the organization, is probably not the right for what you seem to want to do. I don't see where PAMPA is standing in the way of what you want to do in any material way. But PAMPA - the people - are exactly the people who will be needed to make your idea work, if you are serious about it, talk to Mark Weiss, who seems to be of the same mind, and figure a way to build what you want, and use the people of PAMPA and any other organization to accomplish your goal. It is my opinion you are probably tilting at a windmills for the reasons previously stated (which have nothing at all to do wth any organization) but doing nothing guarantees nothing will happen.
Brett
p.s. by the way, in engaging other events, you may already know this, but expect pushback from those people, to. Part of it is resentment for the wild success of stunt compared to the effectively disastrous history of the other events, and even differences inside each event (people who think "shutoffs ruined combat" instead of saving it, etc). This is inevitable with people so highly competitive that they have done it for decades. Doc Jacksons effort was well-intended but naive in that sense, and he quickly found that the different categories either didn't care about each other, or were actively hostile to being associated with the other events, stunt in particular coming in for abuse from the "performance" events.
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Brett:
One problem here is that it seems that every time this topic comes up its "Oh, no! Brodak Round 2!" When it isn't anything of the sort.
This is not about Carrier or Scale or Combat or.... I don't believe that is where most future stunt flyers come from. They come from sport flyers who, for the most part, do not have a serious interest in Carrier, Scale, or combat. Picture in your mind what we might call the "Pyramid of Stunt (or PA) Interest." At the very peak are the handful of flyers who compete for the Walker Cup. Perhaps the next layer down are the Nats stunt competitors, a larger group. Next down from that are contest competitors - the people who go to local contests but not the Nats. A still larger group. The pyramid continues to increase in size as we move down to the base. I'd guess the next level down is most likely the sport flyers who have done a loop and wish to do more. Again, a larger group. Someplace below them is maybe a layer labeled "Stunt-wanabee facebook members." 9900 of them on the Control Line Flying facebook page! When I was running an after-school group at the local Junior High we always had around 10 kids show up to build free-flight. Only 10, but multiply that by the number of Junior Highs across the nation!
When you consider how many people actually comprise the Pyramid of PA who all could potentially be members of PAMPA and/or potential advocates/participants in PA, and the absolute paucity of PAMPA's outreach to them (in fact, the adverse reaction that seems to crop up when anything near this topic is brought up!) it is incredibly disappointing. How can PAMPA have any expectation of growth when its value proposition has been focused solely on the top 2 tiers of the pyramid?
One other point: many folks here repeatedly pointed out how "flight training" rarely creates new participants. Did you ever stop to think "why would it?" About the only times I have seen it work is when a CL retread comes by and wonders if he can still fly after not flying for 20 years, or when an RCer comes by and wonders if this fly-by-wire stuff would be fun for him.
There are all kinds of interesting things that amuse the modern young person. When you compete on the basis of "Gee wilikers, isn't this fun?" You compete on the basis that every other "fun thing" in our modern day society competes on. So....
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Brett:
One problem here is that it seems that every time this topic comes up its "Oh, no! Brodak Round 2!" When it isn't anything of the sort.
Do you take my point about antagonizing the people who might help you? Mark Weiss is doing something along the lines you are interested in, but *without* starting out by p*ssing everyone off as his first step. You are doing nothing like "Brodak 2.0" as far as I can see, and do not have the *extremely misguided* or malicious "advisors" that gave him such catastrophically bad advice.
If you want something done, the first thing you have to do is convince people to help you, and expect to have to stick with it for a long time. PAMPA was very successful by avoiding mission creep, but more so, by having people who would work tirelessly to achieve the goals.
The result, particularly the incredible recovery of PAMPA in the 90s (after Windy got done wrecking it), was largely due to two people - Mike Keville and Tom Morris*, both of whom were utterly dedicated to what they were doing and continued to do it through whatever they were subjected to. Tom, in particular, was like he was 4 people with all he got done, and additionally, he was subject to an absolutely amazing amount of abuse for his troubles. He rarely reacted to it, only when it was absolutely necessary, and kept on as if nothing had happened. The rest of us just benefitted from it.
You and Mark, Mark Weiss, and other people need to be the Tom Morris of your efforts. It is not reasonable to expect other people with at least different interests and goals to do it for you. And, directly to the point, I don't see PAMPA or any of the usual suspects doing anything to stop you, and certainly any assistance you are liable to get is going to come from that group. The president of PAMPA is more-or-less of the same mind as you are!
The tone of some of this is "why hasn't somebody done something"/" why aren't we doing anything"? I get the frustration part, but those "somebody" might have to be you, Mark, and Mark Weiss, and anyone else you can find of a like mind, and any of those who you can convince. I note that I was one of those supporting you, or at least defending you in the previous thread where this came up.
To succeed you are going to have to believe in your cause, and disregard those who think it won't work, even if it is me or some other "name". But I see no one trying to stop you.
Brett
*And yes others - PTG, Don McClave, Ted, etc. but any of them would hasten to point out that without Tom Morris, Mike Keville, Shareen, etc. that the whole thing could easily have collapsed in the late 80's/Early 90s. , or in the ST60 war.
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One of the things that I think about are "the numbers". There was a time when exposing a certain number people to CL would result in more "converts" than what happens today. Maybe there was a time when exposing 100 people (mostly young males) would generate 20 or 30 or 50 new control liners? What ever that number used to be at different points in time, it's dramatically less today for reasons mentioned in this string. Maybe today the number is 1 out of 1000 or 5000 or some other number.
My point :
- Target success "numbers" may need to be adjusted to avoid feeling defeated?
- I wonder if there is a way to scale up exposure? Is that the strategy that deserves focus?
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Like many on here i have seen the magazine articles and then internet articles “where are the young people” all the way back to the 1950’s. CL had it’s big start in late 40’s with the sound of a model engine running and then flying at local parking lot. That was the draw until the cops chased all the cl flyers away and that was the start of the end.
That is over simple way to explain a complex loss of a hobby but cl started to die when it was no longer seen.
I enjoyed all those early years more than the many contest I have been to.
Eddyr
Amen to that. The early years were much more exciting.
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As long as there is a dearth of flying fields in many parts of the country where there is population, control line flying doesn't have a future. I've spoken to the AMA and asked that they use whatever leverage they have to persuade RC clubs to allow us to use some of their property. Of course, they can't force clubs but there are other mechanisms. In NJ, we are down to one dedicated control line facility and four RC fields that will allow it with some conditions. Each of them are far from population(youth) sources. Just go on facebook and see the magnificent fields on the outskirts of cities in South America and other areas.
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As long as there is a dearth of flying fields in many parts of the country where there is population, control line flying doesn't have a future. I've spoken to the AMA and asked that they use whatever leverage they have to persuade RC clubs to allow us to use some of their property. Of course, they can't force clubs but there are other mechanisms. In NJ, we are down to one dedicated control line facility and four RC fields that will allow it with some conditions. Each of them are far from population(youth) sources. Just go on facebook and see the magnificent fields on the outskirts of cities in South America and other areas.
In my experience, it is rare to find an RC club that will allow CL on their site. As I have said before, we are considered "lower class" modelers, crazy people who go round and round. Well, I would not describe most RC fliers as aero modelers. A better description is operators of RC aircraft. Yes, they fly, but that is as far as it goes. Very few of them build what they fly. They do not have the time, the desire, or the ability, to get a CL plane in the air. It is too easy to go to a "toy" store and get an ARF or RTF. If the RC ARF industry ever folded up, there would be very few RC guys flying anymore.
It took many years and much persuasion by one of our guys to get a local RC club to allow him to put in a circle. From what I heard, many in the club at that time did not want CL there. I have no idea if the club contributed anything to get the CL circle operational. I doubt if the club did much, if anything, to help. I am sure they would like to see us go away. I fear that as our numbers shrink even more, the club membership will find a reason to take over our circle due to insufficient use.
Yes, the lack of CL flying sites is a contributor to the decline in CL. With no place to fly, why get into it in the first place? Gone are the days when someone could find an open field, a park, etc. and fly CL planes, without being hassled by someone. With all the legal and safety implications, very few officials in local government are going to allow that. Our only option is to share a dedicated flying site with someone else, namely RC clubs. Unless, of course, someone has private property large enough to put in a circle or two.
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Jim Lee in Topeka was fortunate that the RC club invited him to make a grass circle on their site when they lost their second paved circle in about three years. It worked out well-including a working restroom on site. That wouldn't work here in the KC area. The control line and RC groups pretty openly were at war since the 60s and some of the feeling still remains. However the RC group on the Missouri side has welcomed control line since the major antagonists have passed away. They actually hold a very big combat contest there very year now but not much stunt flown.
Using Google maps a few years ago I combed possible chunks of public park property across the area and found a piece of park property out in the boonies that wasn't used or developed and there is/was no planned development nor even money to do it with in the near future. They only tractor mow it once or twice a year. I got the go ahead to use a piece of it, bought a yard tractor and trailer to mow it and that is what we have. This might be a way to have a field for you to fly if you have no other options-it will cost you some effort and maybe some cash but it's far better than nothing. We even bought a house and moved 5-6 minutes away from the field instead of 40 minutes where we lived before. I guess you gotta want to bad enough.
Dave
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>>>Picture in your mind what we might call the "Pyramid of Stunt (or PA) Interest." At the very peak are the handful of flyers who compete for the Walker Cup. Perhaps the next layer down are the Nats stunt competitors, a larger group. Next down from that are contest competitors - the people who go to local contests but not the Nats. A still larger group. The pyramid continues to increase in size as we move down to the base. I'd guess the next level down is most likely the sport flyers who have done a loop and wish to do more. Again, a larger group. Someplace below them is maybe a layer labeled "Stunt-wanabee facebook members." 9900 of them on the Control Line Flying facebook page! <<<
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I like the stunt pyramid analogy, very nice description. But I think it is a little off. I am a very active member in the Dallas area, fly every weekend when it's not windy year around. Lets use our active weekly CL group as an example. There are exactly ZERO sport fliers that come out and just mess around and fly some laps. (If they are some of those fliers out there please come out we would love to have you.) We have about 5-10 "stunt" fliers on any given weekend and around 3-5 on any given weekday. They all fly the full pattern. We also have a VERY active speed and racing group here in Dallas. They are also out most weekends when the weather is manageable. This can be 3-8 guys working hard at their craft. We also have an active group of combat guys that come out from time to time. They don't keep a regular schedule but they are around. There are NO sport fliers. We are adjacent to soccer fields that are littered with people all the time. About 15 full fields and on a tournament weekend there are 1000s upon 1000s of people coming and going for 2 days straight. We gets lots of onlookers and anyone who comes over a closer look is always welcomed and given all the info they want.
Recently, over the past year, we have had two RC converts. These guys are great! They are avid builders and have been modelers for a very long time. Lots of new ideas and energy. One of them has a CNC router and is making some really cool stuff. When I first met them they were just sport flying. That lasted only a few months. With some instruction they quickly picked up the pattern and are now stunt fliers. It's really great to see our group grow.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the sport flier group is not as large as you may think because typically people do gravitate towards a discipline and fly often and work at it, or stay a sport flyer and makes some laps a few times a year, or quit and move onto something else. My experience here in Dallas over the past 30 years does not show there is a large group of sport fliers.
I have been involved in CL since 1991 or so. I have thought many times about how to grow it. I have introduced it to all 3 of my kids. It hasn't stuck with them but they have been exposed. I have no idea how to grow this and make it stick on people. All the ideas seem valid and so many people make good points but it all comes down the people being pitched CL. Do they have that interest within?
PS Changing PAMPA to take a new direction to grow the general sport of CL will not do it either. People are not exposed to PAMPA before they are exposed to CL. It's the other way around.
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Prior to WW2, free flight was THE modeling activity. It was given a tremendous boost after Lindburgh's trans-Atlantic flight. Kids at the time were very interested in anything airplane and Lindburgh was a national hero. Those kids were adults after WW2 and modeling as a hobby grew. (Detailed in Dave Thornburg's excellent book, "Do You Speak Model Airplanes").
At one time hot rods were the rage, fueled by interest in racing and exciting movies with hot cars.
The space race was another event that led to interest in science, math, and electronics. Also, a whole empire of science fiction movies and stuff. There was science fiction prior to the war, (Tom Swift and His...) but it received a tremendous boost when space came to the forefront.
What is the current thing that cool with young folks?
Video games? Creating video content and becoming a viral social influencer?
Kids interested in science can do STEM activities like build robots or drones. Balsa models do not require heavy math to succeed. You can go far with the ART of building models.
What is a current interest for young folks that encourages or teaches many useful skills like building model aircraft?
I have dreamed of stumbling across some kids at a school yard trying to get a 049 CL to run. I could sure be helpful to the kid that already had the interest. CREATING the interest is for sure the hard part. In the last 40 plus years, I have only one time where I saw someone by chance that was flying a CL model. (Rich McConnel at Carkeek Park, Seattle. He was friendly and a good ambassador for the sport.)
Presenting the opportunity to fly CL to thousands of kids and hoping it will stick with a few is a noble but difficult task. It doesn't continue to generate interest after the event while you sleep.
We need an event to bring CL to the attention of today's kids (that all seem to have some form of ADD).
I bet if you had a Music video with 12 seconds of Taylor Swift flying 3 clumsy level laps with a cox 049, kids would continue to see it for years and Santa would get lots of letters.
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I think this is a little unfair. PAMPA has a very clear charter, it is following the charter.
Not really. This is from the PAMPA website: "The mission of PAMPA is to promote and improve control line precision aerobatics events." Control line precision aerobatics events happen all over the country, not just Muncie, Indiana.
Brett: I may be antogonizing people, but I didn't intend to. I'm simply trying to state my viewpoint.
My point :
- Target success "numbers" may need to be adjusted to avoid feeling defeated?
- I wonder if there is a way to scale up exposure? Is that the strategy that deserves focus?
Good points. A re-look at our expectations might help a lot. And looking at scaling issues is a good suggestion. We seem to understand the necessity (for our training outreach success) of a pre-existing interest in model aviation by young people, but that is something not necessarily being generated in today's youth (with a lot else our youth should be, but are not, getting from our current culture.) And then we assume that the reason "flight training" has no impact is that "kids don't like airplanes, aviation, etc." But maybe it is the wrong approach? In that case scaling up flight training would have little impact. What if we scaled up a different approach? Why not back up to square one and think this through with a different set of assumptions?
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Not really. This is from the PAMPA website: "The mission of PAMPA is to promote and improve control line precision aerobatics events." Control line precision aerobatics events happen all over the country, not just Muncie, Indiana.
I am not seeing how PAMPA fails to support local contests, far from it, PAMPA people run every single one of them, as far as I can see. PAMPA was the very first in removing the BOM rule to allow local participation with borrowed and bought airplanes. This has been fantastically successful and also opened the way for ARFs, ARCs, RTFs to participate locally, long before they existed. Same with clinics, all organized, manned, and attended by PAMPA members.
But the charter remains the same - to give pilots a voice in National Championship contests. These other side actions are, I think, good things we have done in general support of the event.
Brett: I may be antogonizing people, but I didn't intend to. I'm simply trying to state my viewpoint.
You are calling them out for not caring. But mostly I was addressing your point about "Brodak 2.0", and suggesting you compare and contrast Brodak's approach to Mark Weiss. You probably *do* have an extra burden of proof, for lack of a better term, because of history. Given that, you have to factor in other people's predispositions into your campaign to make sure they *don't* think it is a re-run. I expect you are going to be particularly challenged in your plan by the presence and willingness of some of the same people volunteering to help you - who may have a different axe to grind and will want to use your efforts and good will to further their own ends.
Positing the problem as "us against PAMPA" is almost guaranteed way to get people's hackles up. That might not be your intent but it does bring back very bad memories among the people who you need to assist you. I suggest you have to consider things like that, fair to you or not, because people are sensitized to it.
I said it before - what you and Mark want to do as described here is a unquestionably good thing and I wish you could succeed. I and many others are pretty skeptical given a large variety of reasons over which you/we/anybody has no control, - because we have tried and watched others try for decades with no success.
But one thing that guarantees failure on Day 1 is not pursuing it at all because of naysayers.
Brett
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The one major player in this 'problem' has been completely missing in this entire conversation so far. Where the heck are the manufacturers, distributors and retailers of control line kits and products?? They have the most skin in the game and the most to loose as control line slowly declines. What are they doing to encourage newcomers to the hobby to sustain their own business?? A quick search online reveals The Vintage Model Co doing some work but as far as North American suppliers - a big fat ZIP. Where are the beginner ready complete packages of current and modern airframe kits and powerplant selections? Where is the one-stop source for all control line related information that a newcomer needs? Where are the Youtube video build logs of beginner packages?
These days, potential customers want to find information and products and they want it feed to them dead simple and instantaneously. WHY aren't the retailers providing this?? I'd like to hear from them but, my guess is they are so lean they just don't have the budget, manpower, talent or resources to commit to a meaningful effort.
Here is a thought - instead of a new control line general SIG (as already discussed probably wouldn't be very effective) how about a Control Line Industry Association or similar. Its main objective is to assist manufacturers, distributors and retailers of all sizes in targeting newcomers. 'We' as experienced modellers could pool our talents and provide things like: CAD/CAM for new model designs, detailed qualitative testing of proposed powerplant packages, possibly an organized selection of online reference material, video build log material, etc. All of this could be offered to the retailers for their use in exchange for increased exposure for our model flying clubs. We scratch your back, you scratch ours. They give us a page on their retail web site listing flying club locations and contact information. If they can attract new fliers, we get new fliers.
If a person has the spark, we can supply plenty of oxygen but the retailers have to supply the combustibles to get the fire started.
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A quick search online reveals The Vintage Model Co doing some work but as far as North American suppliers - a big fat ZIP. Where are the beginner ready complete packages of current and modern airframe kits and powerplant selections?
'
I think I can answer that one - even here, where it is literally a website about stunt competition, most people have *no idea* or interest in "modern powerplants". Read the engine setup forum, there are nearly no posts in the entire history since 2006 regarding competitive stunt engine systems, no one even seems to realize that its not 1976 any more. If people *here* don't care, there's no hope for a "manufacturers"
how about a Control Line Industry Association or similar. Its main objective is to assist manufacturers, distributors and retailers of all sizes in targeting newcomers.
There hasn't been anything like "control-line" manufacturers in 50-60 years! SIG was about RC, Top Flite was about RC, and everything else was gone and RC dominated it as soon as RC became practical in the early 70's. Brodak tried and still exists as of now - but also blew up the entire event from which aren't ever likely to recover. Everything else is cottage industries at most.
There is no industry because there is no demand, and while you might think it is a chicken and the egg situation, that is what you have to overcome. RC "manufacturers" are largely concerned with ordering ARF foamies and RTFs "bond and flies" from China and are in severe decline.
Brett
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Then there is also the other draw, as a former boss of mine used to say: "He's discovered cars and girls"..
This is exactly what happened to me.
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The one major player in this 'problem' has been completely missing in this entire conversation so far. Where the heck are the manufacturers, distributors and retailers of control line kits and products?? They have the most skin in the game and the most to loose as control line slowly declines. What are they doing to encourage newcomers to the hobby to sustain their own business?? A quick search online reveals The Vintage Model Co doing some work but as far as North American suppliers - a big fat ZIP. Where are the beginner ready complete packages of current and modern airframe kits and powerplant selections? Where is the one-stop source for all control line related information that a newcomer needs? Where are the Youtube video build logs of beginner packages?
These days, potential customers want to find information and products and they want it feed to them dead simple and instantaneously. WHY aren't the retailers providing this?? I'd like to hear from them but, my guess is they are so lean they just don't have the budget, manpower, talent or resources to commit to a meaningful effort.
Here is a thought - instead of a new control line general SIG (as already discussed probably wouldn't be very effective) how about a Control Line Industry Association or similar. Its main objective is to assist manufacturers, distributors and retailers of all sizes in targeting newcomers. 'We' as experienced modellers could pool our talents and provide things like: CAD/CAM for new model designs, detailed qualitative testing of proposed powerplant packages, possibly an organized selection of online reference material, video build log material, etc. All of this could be offered to the retailers for their use in exchange for increased exposure for our model flying clubs. We scratch your back, you scratch ours. They give us a page on their retail web site listing flying club locations and contact information. If they can attract new fliers, we get new fliers.
If a person has the spark, we can supply plenty of oxygen but the retailers have to supply the combustibles to get the fire started.
The manufacturers are OUT OF BUSINESS and not there anymore due to lack of sales!! In order to stay in business, you must have customers. If there is no one interested in your product, then you can not pay your over head and meet your payroll. They are out of business because the typical hobby shop has almost become extinct. Retail in general has changed tremendously and even if you look at everyday general household merchandise, think about brands and items that you do not see any more. Brick and mortar stores have disappeared. Malls have been erased from the face of the planet. Amazon and everyone else drove people to these computer screens to shop from home. Look at the brands of automobiles that are not around any more. It really is a similar situation to what happened after WW-II as the population and economy adjusted to life after 5 years of world war and big advances in technology. What we are experiencing didn't just happen recently, it's been going on for 20 years. I last worked at a local hobby shop in 2015 ( after 35 years) and I could see the changes coming ten years before that. Where have you been?
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee
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I have to agree with you Dan- this fellow isn't current with where we are. The hobby industry has been declining for at least twenty years-maybe thirty. When was it Tower Hobby put hobby shops out of business? They undercut hobby dealers on kits and engines because they didn't have to pay for brick and mortar stores. Then companies like SIG suffered because they built their business around supplying hobby shops around the country. Then thee were the jobbers that collapsed. Here in KC like in many metros that had numerous hobby dealers in town the jobbers were the wholesale outfits where the hobby dealers went to buy the merchandise to put on their shelves. I made some of those trips with the shop owner I worked for while I was in high school, like a supermarket for all the hobby dealers in town. This is what the hobby shop made money on. All that was left was the secondary building supplies to sell and that didn't pay the bills. Thats why they had to sell crafts, beads and whatever else to try and stay open. I guess in the day of internet it would have been inevitable anyway but leave it to say there is no hobby industry left to promote or support anything. It's true that control line never really did make anybody rich and RC actually supported the manufacturers so that they kept making the things we need as well. Now that RC modeling is sort of sold down river to imported foamies not even that provides enough revenue for manufacturers or hobby shops to stay around. I think it is probably misguided to blame a hobby industry that doesn't exist any longer.
Dave
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While I'm a new returnee I'm not surprised to see this subject pop up. People these days just have no interest in doing anything that delays gratification any more than a half hour. I just stopped drag racing after a career of forty years. They are dealing with the same problems modelling is. The only youth involved there are the sons and grandsons. No one ever decides to start from scratch on their own like we did. Don't get me started on NHRA and the AMA magazine.
A real newbie is rare and for good reason. Start-up costs are high as are operating expenses. Kits can no longer be purchased with pocket change. Fuel's a pain in the rear to get. Flying sites are a long way away. (I just had to walk across the street when I flew.) The very places newbies go, hobby shops and speed shops are a thing of the past. The places most would go for parts and advice are gone, replaced by mail order places owned by investment firms with no interest in the product beyond what profit it can generate. Online is a very poor resource for good relevant information.
In the end I just don't think it's our job to "get youth interested". They are by personality either interested or they are not. If they have to be forced or coerced, they will quit the minute they turn 16 or when Dad stops. The youth of today is not necessarily, dumb or lazy, they just live in a different world than we do. And it's not their fault any more than ours was in the eyes of our parents.
I just intend to enjoy this while I can and not worry about it.
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Mother Nature cooperated and relaxed winter enough on Tuesday with some warmer temps and some low winds so I met Mark Hughes at Buder and committed some model aviation. We had a perfect example of what we are dealing with these days that day. A guy stopped to watch a bit, then got out of his car to walk over. He was a younger guy, late 20's, maybe early 30's. Introductions all around and he asked if we minded if he took some photos. I immediately thought he had a quad copter but he said he just had a SLR digital camera with him. We have guys with quads stop by quite often, usually the same age range. This particular guy followed the same pattern. He was not aware that Buder existed, and had never seen nor heard of C/L models before. He walked around the circle as we flew, took some pictures, and then handed us each a business card and then left. We'll probably never see him again!! But he is pretty typical of the general public in the age range of 40 years old on down, I would imagine. Buder is kind of tucked away and hidden in a corner. If you don't know it's there, you might not see it driving by on the interstate, and the Missouri DOT and Highway Department have done all they can to make access more difficult these days so you can't even accidentally find it!! You have to be actually going to Buder Park to drive by it. It would be nice if there was more pedestrian and vehicular traffic going by where we could be seen, and we might pick up a tiny bit of new interest. The only public interaction is when the giant scale 3D guys are flying there, and they hit altitudes that get up above the trees, and can be seen from the highway. Sometimes the sight of an airplane, trailing smoke, spinning down and disappearing behind the trees triggers a phone call about a possible plane crash! I have a nephew that works for the St. Louis County Police at their main communications center that is close by, and he hears the calls come in. Having people see our activity on a regular basis would be a definite help especially if they see it in a positive light.
Type at you later and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Dan McEntee
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After my final PCS to Ft Carson about 7 years ago, and not much CL going on here in Colorado, I rejoined the local FF club and have been getting more involved with the club, the National Free Flight Society, and the FF component of the AMA ( I've been "voluntold" to be associate VP to cover FF in Colorado"). While CL is shrinking, FF is growing. Here's what I've observed:
Unity: CL is a fractured group and is suffering as a result. While the nature of events, clubs and contests are notably different from FF, its hard to argue that the architecture is still failing. Speed guys hate stunt guys. Stunt guys hate racing guys. Combat guys are savages. I'm speaking in generalities of course, and individual experiences may vary, but I've heard it all in my time on the contest trail. Stunt guys (again, generally) don't support speed contests, or combat meets, and the lack of support from other groups is reciprocal.
There are guys in the FF community that only fly FAI, or only fly power, or rubber, or indoor, or whatever. However, most still support contests and events that they don't fly, through CDing, assisting with running the contest, and so on.
NFFS serves as the SIG for all of FF. This notion is purely academic, but would the reduction of PAMPA, NCLRA and other SIGs to sub-components of a larger group not be an effective change? I'm sure there will be kicking and screaming at the very mention of such a thing...but would it though?
Science Olympiad: CL is missing the boat on Science Olympiad. When AMA discontinued its support of SciOly, NFFS immediately saw the benefit and jumped on it. The result is incredible. Our local FF club, who is heavily involved in officiating at the regional and state level, has a monthly indoor session/contests, and it's advertised to schools in the area for kids to come, trim models and receive coaching/mentoring. Around this time each year, we start having more kids showing up to contests, flying SciOly models than adults. We have a couple young folks that have stuck with FF after high school here, and several all over the country that fly at a very competitive level, with a few even becoming F1D flyers. All plucked from an event at the middle school and high school level...
CL flyers are missing out. Get involved in SciOly, TSA or whatever is going in the area and offer your support, or contact local FF clubs in the area. A lot of FFers used to fly CL back in the day, and won't run anyone off because of it. Bring a CL model or two to SciOly meets and some Youtube videos of CL models, for show and tell purposes. For the love of all that is holy, DONT try to get the kids to join PAMPA that day...it's been done! The goal is to promote CL, not individual events. With enough influence, having a CL event in SciOly is possible. The rules change for the model airplane portion of SciOly every year, to prevent kids/schools from passing a competitive model on to younger students. There have been indoor electric events in the past. Indoor CL is a thing...2+2=?
Someone was wondering about industry in a previous post: SciOly created such an industry in FF. Just about every cottage industry that supplies FF stuff has a line of supplies, kits, ect. for SciOly. Yes, since the rules change every year, so must the models offered, but small tweaks to designs (span, chord, weight, ect) is often minimal. If CL were to "infiltrate" SciOly and get a CL event, could a series of indoor electric CL models be developed that are inexpensive, somewhat rugged, and fairly easy to build/fly?
Technology and Social Media: Someone posted what seemed to be a joke about an "influencer" in CL. NFFS is very active on facebook....and Instagram...and YouTube...and TikTok (for now). People complain about how much kids are attached to their phones...get on their phones! This is perhaps the biggest paradigm shift that really needs to happen and "I don't want to get on social media because...." is not a good excuse anymore. Clubs only having a website isn't good enough anymore. Getting people to the field is no longer the first step. The first step is getting into people's living rooms, and social media is the ticket.
Lead from the top: A lot of the top FFers in the country are spearheading volunteer efforts, designing SciOly models, and even traveling the country to support SciOly events. Our local support of things like SciOly often includes folks with, collectively, hundreds of years of FF experience and several Nat's champions and AMA and NFFS HoF members, and that gets attention...
Look at the lack of attendance at VSC and contest at large. Look at the contests that no longer exist: of all the contests in the midwest that I used to go to as a kid in the 90s. The St Louis contests are all that's left. The house is burning, yet people are still having the same ineffectual discussions about how to put the fire out.
Just my 7 cents (inflation and all)...
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***deleted, created in error***
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Here in Huntsville, we have a young man that got started in CL by his grandfather, at age 6,, Now 17 he is still with us.. His five brothers all prefer RC..About once a year we pick up a new guy, coming over from the RC ranks as he got bored and prefer to have actual hands on type flying.. thus is goes.. We seem to keep an average of 12 guys year after year. Some move, some die, but NONE leave out of boredom.
Want to generate excitement, fly two Bi-slobs at the same time...
I started with Hornets when I was about 7 or 8. At 13 I got a Firebaby, built a few scientific kits (1/2A) then a Barnstormer,, crashed it and went on to learning to drive, dating hot chicks (ha ha) and forgot CL other than reading FM and MAN in the high school library. Got married at 23 and came home to find my Barnstormer started, took it with us and have never looked back. It goes in spurts of interest, and lets face it, it you don't fly CLPA, it can be boring to watch.. golf is boring as sh*t, but I watch it for about two holes.
When I was in the Navy, one of my ships, a tin can had a 350 man crew. I was the only one that even knew about CL,, but my next ship a smaller tin can with a crew of 176, there were five of us that flew CL. FWIW.
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If someone had done a film like these , back then , what happened with them mayve been happening with stunt. maybe . As In THAT got it POPULAR .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clhXwxmaPsU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWQTl1QCNs
After All , Two People have been eaten here , so far , this year . It hasnt put the rest off .
Just needs a few heroes & villans . the Quest for the holy Walker Cup . Like what the guy in the film was . Drama suspense & action .& blown plugs . The Wisnewski Era woulda been the go .All Disciplines .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5pirefpZ4
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Ok folks, here is an update on what I have been doing about this "problem".
1. Please check out https://controllineflying.org (it's currently being built so it will get better.. Remember I have a full time job still)
2. I started an Instagram account called controllineflying_org
3. I've spoken with Mark Feist, AMA District III Associate VP, I have a Zoom call scheduled with the "Jetstars" the group of 25 young men between the ages of 13-17 who have currently started their own group in the Cincinnati RC club, have been sponsored by the club and Old School Model Works and are ***GASP*** building BALSA model airplanes.. Yes, they are RC, but it's a start.
4. Been in contact with Nicky @ Brodak, Herb Rizzo @ Sig, Lucien @ Innov8tive Designs and put him and Pat Johnston and Pat King in touch with each other.
5. Have an invite to go to Clow Int'l Airport for an EAA Young Eagles Hangar Night.
6. Scheduled to officiate a Science Olympiad Regional "Indoor Helicopter" event in March
One last thing to think about:
Lew McFarland recruited me into control line model airplanes way back in 1973.. He had set up a card table outside of the Pharmacy he worked at on Southland Drive, in Lexington Kentucky on his lunch hour. He had membership forms for joining the AMA, and the Lexington Model Airplane Club.
My Mom is the one who met him first, she drove home to get me and bring me back to meet him.
This is how it happens.. You have to be involved and not self absorbed.
For those of you who feel "I've done enough, I'm focusing on myself going forward." You are certainly entitled to your opinion.. I'm not talking to you, just keep on scrolling.
One last thing. I don't "own' this.. This isn't "Marks thing" or "Bills thing".. or whoever's thing.. I don't care who gets the "credit".. That isn't the point.
Building this will take a LOT of people doing even a small thing that lies nearest.. It isn't going to work with herculean efforts of one person or even a couple of people..
But, if like me, you decide it's too great a hobby to just let die, and you are willing to jump in and help then please email me at mark@controllineflying.org.
Thanks,
Mark
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My Mom is the one who met him first, she drove home to get me
Absolutely! When it comes to getting kids involved, we need to sell to the parents! The list of benefits to a young person's development from participating in building model airplanes is a yard long. We, as a society, would be much better off if every junior-high aged boy was exposed to model airplane building. And when we were doing our after school class there were some girls who enjoyed it too!
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Want to generate excitement, fly two Bi-slobs at the same time...
I like it!
With streamers...Bi-Slob Combat! Keep the speed down and shorten up the streamers. LL~