Flying field notifications?

[LaurenceGough]

I say it's fine to fly on your own, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to fly with others .

[3d_willz]

[QUOTE=Detritus;644583]We're not allowed to fly solo at our club. Twice now I've ended up sitting in a deckchair in the middle of a field for an hour and no-one else has turned up. And twice now just one other person has turned up, and would not have been able to fly if I had not already been there.QUOTE]

did you know you can buy inflatable sofas or maybe buy a double air bed so when one of the other guys pulls up they can wake you.

im only kidding sorry lol. on a serious note i know how you feel as i used to fly at a club that had the same rules

[electricsceadu]

if you are alone how does anyone know your flying?
and when the second person turns up your no longer alone

[Mslater]

Has the world gone mad? Does the person who made that rule up realise that you had to travel by road, to get to the field, on your own and could have been killed in an RTA? How many flyers are hit by their own models anyway? Maybe it's better to go to a local park or field, risk life and limb practicing, so that you won't ever have an accident.
Does this rule apply to holders of A or B certs as well?

PS - Message to the rule makers. Don't ever take a shower alone, you may slip and bang your head - again

The difference is that you are in a field - no one can hear you scream, the 'Golden Hour' will pass away and so will you !

Its a safety rule, it doesn't have to be a flyer with you normally, anyone with enough sense to get help if needed would be fine.

[mole hunter]

I can appreciate that's it's a rule designed to improve your chances after an accident, but it won't prevent one. It could be argued, that the lone flyer has fewer targets to hit. The problem I have with all this " risk assessed, Hi vis jacket world" is, how has it been calculated? On what set of statistics?

I work from home, on my own most of the time, with some of the most "potentially dangerous" woodworking machinery known to man. If I applied the same logic, I would have to wait for the wife to come home before I switched anything on.
I'm sorry, but I think we are sleepwalking into a mad safety obsessed nightmare, where school children have to don safety glasses before they can use drawing pins to put their artwork on the walls.
I think skydivers will be the only sane people left on the planet. Rant over.

[alioth]

I know how you feel, At my clubs the rule is not there, but it's a safety aspect not to fly on your own, There have been many stories of people getting hurt from models being planks or helis

This may be true, but the risk is very small if you have even a modicum of common sense. (And if you're on your own, that's one fewer person to hit with the model anyway, so the unintended consequence of the rule is that it's actually increasing the probability of someone being hit).

Sometimes I wish I were in a club (we don't really have one here, and the only organized flying is 30 miles away, a bit too far to travel), but far more often, I'm really glad I'm not in a club. Too many rigid rules when applying a bit of careful thought beforehand (preflighting models, not launching too close, making sure you're well away from other people etc) is actually sufficient. After all, no one has to be there to hold my hand when I fly *full scale* (quite often, I've departed on a cross country flight from our airfield and I've been the only one there when I departed).

[Guest]

I think that whether it's safe to fly alone or not is a little moot - when there's a lot of public about, it's practical to have someone there to keep an eye on your kit, rabid dogs on the loose, etc, and probably an independant witness is handy on more numerous occasions than an ambulance. But if the club rules are no-solo, then that's the club rules. Bemoan it if you like, try and change it if you will (and much respect for being proactive about it), but for me I'd just be happy to comply. But it is annoying.

Bit like taxes really - you can see why you have to pay them, but they still suck.

These are the ideas that I've accumulated so far thanks to yourselves (well, all the sensible ones were yours anyway):

1. Flare gun, pilot in distress (at being on own in field)

2. Group SMS (thanks to teenagers, texts are mostly free now)

3. Club forum (difficult at my club for the moment, one day..)

4. Shared Google Calendar (bit tricky for some of the members but least work)

5. Wacky self-organising event web site idea employing constraint satisfaction algorithm to merge people's availability and other criteria. (Eldest is very intersted in this, but I think she just wants to come up with a web site name really).

6. Another wacky idea I had, more like post-it notes on a fridge door than a regular forum, where members can move them around to form natural groups, and items regularly expire and fall off as they are unpopular or perished. Spectacular waste of time I expect.

7. Encourage a new chap into the hobby that's even more into flying all the time than I am so I've always got a go-to buddy

8. Drive round between the 3 flying sites I now know of until I find someone at one of them. Bit soul destroying and heavy on petrol but at least I can catch up on podcasts

9. Fly on own, be weed on by dogs, choppers nicked by scum, sued by public, and be lonely (also slight danger of "have chopper blown back over your head and land right in the middle of the roof of your company's main building" - any offers on a 10m ladder, used just once, pick up only..)