In late September 2017, AMA’s Flying Site Assistance Coordinator, Tony Stillman, attended the National Recreation and Park Association annual convention in New Orleans, Louisiana.
This convention boasts hundreds of attendees from city and county park management and governmental leaders. These are just the people that a local AMA club or member would want to talk to about creating a flying site! The goal was to speak with as many of these leaders as we could in order to inform them of AMA clubs that were looking for new or additional flying sites. This is one of many ways that AMA works to support our clubs and members by reaching out to local government officials and try to create new flying sites.
We spoke with many officials who indicated that they would be interested in creating a flying site in their city! Even if your club already has a flying site, becoming connected with your city’s park and recreation department can help the club improve what it already has, or expand to additional sites. It can also help your club be more secure about its flying site situation.
| Arkansas North Little Rock California Colorado Georgia Iowa Idaho |
Illinois Madison Morton Grove Mapleton Dolton Lockport Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maryland Montana |
New Jersey Hackensack Oklahoma Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington |
If any clubs or members would be interested in following up on these prospective flying site locations, contact Tony for more information. Call (765) 287-1256, extension 230, or email him at FSAC@modelaircraft.org. He will be happy to pass this information along to you.
We’ve done the hard part … Now it’s up to you to take the next steps…
This effort by AMA to contact local parks departments concerning possible flight sites is a great step toward in reducing the burden of local club representatives having to make initial contact. This is often awkward, and results in less than an ideal outcome!
A few years ago, I put forth the idea of an AMA LAND BANK. The idea was to have an AMA OFFICIAL scout out areas in various AMA districts for possible sites, make OFFICIAL contact with those owning or controlling the land (dump sites, parks, sod farms, owners of open land, etc. ). If there was success in any of these contacts, the resultant available land would be listed in a data base of available land, a land bank! Groups of folks in these districts looking to start a club, or have to move their club because of impending development, could contact AMA and be directed to the land bank for their district.
The big advantage of this approach is the fact that an OFFICIAL has made initial contact. After a 4year effort of trying to find a flight site in our area, we found the biggest barrier to acquisition of using any available land for flying was the question of liability! With virtually every approached land owner flat out rejecting the idea due to liability concerns, it became increasingly frustrating for new or existing clubs to find a new site. We are not OFFICIALS in any sense of the term, only armatures with hat in hand making these contacts. Having the AMA making a proactive contact on our behalf is the right way to do things. Building a land bank is proactive! The AMA official would have the expertise to handle the liability question as well as other questions much better than we flyers.
Thanks again for the great step forward in flight site acquisition. More needs to be done!
Gary W. Filice
Secretary, flight site coordinator,
Thousand Oaks Soaring Society
My name is Michael L DeWitt AMA #788977 and I’m a member of the Sky Kings R/C Club #4693 in Webb City Missouri. While reading AMA Flying Site Assistance Blog about Possible New Flying Site Locations in Your State, the last couple of sentences caught my eye. “Even if your club already has a flying site, becoming connected with your city’s park and recreation department can help he club improve what it already has, or expand to additional sites. It can also help your club be more secure about its flying site situation.” Our Sky Kings flying field is located on old mining land that the EPA has reclaimed and is now owned by the town of Webb City Missouri. Webb City has designated it as an industrial park but is allowing us to fly on it until some industry buys it. Because sink holes occur from time to time we do not believe there’s going to be a big rush to build on the property, but the possibility exists. If becoming connected with Webb City’s park and recreation department can help our club be more secure about its flying site situation we would appreciate your help in reaching out to local government officials. There has been talk of putting in a walking trail in this area so the city fathers may already be considering turning part of this property over to the park and recreation department. If you can offer us any help please contacts Ken Spencer of one of the other officers of the club. We have a great flying field and our 60+ members would not like to lose it.
Mike:
I will contact Ken about this.
Tony Stillman
AMA Flying Site Assistance Coordinator
We have been working diligently to get fields open in Colorado in several municipalities and have had poor response from the AMA on all fronts. Tony, in particular, has made me question weather I should renew my AMA membership as the entire AMA team is an underperforming element.
We are now working to open private fields using an alternative CBO ruleset (much safer). Beyond that we are working with several organizations to create a much needed reboot to model aviation for FPV enthusiasts citing the AMA’s poor representation of our hobby and the close minded legacy leadership in the AMA.
What happen to the state of Oregon, Having come back to Modeling after 40 yrs.!! Wheee after control line & free flight RC is more fun than anyone should have. Thank you AMA . BJ. Any suggestions as to local Clubs/sites? I need all the help I can get.
Robert, please check our club search tool at http://www.modelaircraft.org/clubsearch.aspx and reach out to the club contact.
Pleased Update all your flying Sites in our Database top.
Report changes and closings also.
Greets from Germany
We have two fields in Central/Western Iowa but have been met with stiff bias in multirotors, no matter size or LOS. The members in in both location have voiced there side that they rather not have multirotors/drones on their fields so we are no longer fly there. Currently we have permission from a local Community College that let us use an open fields for practices and races but we share it with a local cross country team. We are opening it up for wing racing next year but we will be looking for more field to cover the track area. Our local MultiGP chapter is growing fast and are all AMA members but the city and current local clubs have negated our growth in this hobby.
Hi,
I live in Melbourne Florida and I used to fly my electric park plane in Wickham Park, but the park have closed flying permit for about 4 month now. The park ranger do not know if they ever going to permit fly in the park again. Somebody knows whom to contact to have this permit to fly reintegrated again?
There are several clubs in the area that might be working with the park for access to flying. You might check with the club finder at: https://www.modelaircraft.org/clubsearch.aspx
and put in the zip code for Melbourne, FL (32901). you will get several clubs that you can reach out to and see if they are involved with that park.
I really think this is a great step forward and a positive one at that. However I was somewhat disappointed to see Iowa only had one listing. Currently we fly from an industrial park,in Osceola, Iowa and are allowed to until the land would happen to be purchased for business. While we have a very nice site, it has become congested over the years with nearby development and expansions with the sale of land surrounding us in this industrial park. We have debated the idea of talking to the county regarding gaining space in the local park or nearby as they have some open land that sits idle. Just really not sure how to go about this without it turning sour. We did consider the old closed landfill, however there is a gravel mining operation next to this area now and that may pose issues with the large amounts of lime dust when they are crushing and processing, so we are open to other areas. Being a small club, we simply do not have the option of leasing land.
I have to disagree with a previous statement about FPV racers being poorly supported within AMA. MultiGP won’t even let us race in their events unless we hold an active AMA membership, FPV is well documented within the AMA Membership Guidelines and most other official AMA publications, FPV flyers are covered under the same AMA Member insurance umbrella without any special provisions or bias, and AMA partners with more FPV racing leages, and clubs than any other single entity or nonprofit that have seen in my 4 or so years being involved in the FPV hobby.
What specifically is AMA not doing for you that would invoke such a claim? I just don’t see it that way at all in my FPV experience. I also fly aircraft, so my exposure to AMA isn’t just from an FPV lens. (no pun intended)