Public Fields

[Gray E Fowler]

I have a question to all that have a city or county field that is managed 
by a club.  Have you ever had to remove a troublemaker from your club and 
not allow them to fly at the site?  Our club is in a city park and the 
site is leased to the club but we have allowed nonmembers to purchase 
field permits and fly without being a club member.  We are going to change 
the rules this coming year and there are some people that are not going to 
be allowed in the club.  I would like to know if anyone has experienced 
this problem and how it went.
 Thanks Claude Weimer
                 Omaha NE

Claude

Almost.....We got lucky and the guy disappeared. We had a member from 
Taiwan who could barely speak english. He owned a 1/3 gas OVER powered 
Extra. He could not land without nearly killing someone, he could not stay 
within 1000 ft of the runway (flew past our boundaries), he could not seem 
to keep from flying over the pits, he was 106db BUT that never stopped him 
from ATTEMPTING to hover...Thats when it got real scarey! Hover and drift 
over the pits. Once he had and engine failure during a hover, luckily he 
was out past the runway and totalled his plane.
Relief quickly spread throughout the club that somehow we all escaped 
death. Then the next day he showed up with a bigger plane!

Countless reprimanding got us countless "So sorry".  As President I had 
made up my mind to ground him if he ever hovered over the pits again. 
Luckily for us he dissapeared. I would have been over stepping my 
authority, but I would also had the backing of the membership. We had no 
hard and fast rules at the time to deal with such a problem. Meanwhile 
Lance VanNostrand and I devised a plan and got it placed into the bylaws. 
In summary, there are two divisions.......anyone with any plane, and 
anyone with a "large" place (by engine cc).
A visitor or new member must pass a basic flying test to enable him to fly 
as a guest (can he stay within boundaries and can he land the plane). Then 
for a large plane, a visitor must pass a basic flying test ONLY by one of 
our large plane members same requirements, but added....is the plane 
structurally sound. Any one exhibiting the problem we had before can now 
be grounded by any club member, with the executive council as judge and 
jury.
Add to this a manditory sound check at any time for any plane.
This took a year to word and get passed....Now at least we have some 
method of stopping dangerous flyersand  people who consistantly overfly 
the 1000 ft boundary, risking our field. Unfortunately if we have an old 
fashioned icehole in the club that flys okay we must just deal with it.


Gray Fowler
Principal Chemical Engineer
Composites Engineering
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