Our Belief in Greatness

Dear Reader

It’s been many years since, at the delegate assemblies of our Aero Club, a section president (now regional president) would begin his remarks with “…we from the largest section of the AeCS…”. We “little model aviators” used to smile a bit back then because we found it funny. Not too long ago, another president—this time of the Aero Club of Switzerland—apologized to a regional president for missing his annual meeting, saying he was sorry he couldn’t be present at the AeCS’s second-largest regional association of all places. He had forgotten that we model aviators—if by “second-largest” he meant the number of members—have long since recalibrated these metrics within the AeCS. Purely in numerical terms, I mean. We need to think carefully about how we model aviators want to define “size” in the future; because our membership numbers have by no means led to

the AeCS to stop overlooking us. There are very small organizations that do outstanding work and have a greater public presence than so-called “big” ones. The problem within our aviation umbrella organization has long since ceased to be a minority issue; rather, it is a matter of status or prestige. There are still (hopefully only a few) powered-flight pilots who take no other airspace users seriously besides themselves. Trying to convince them otherwise is a waste of time. On the other hand, we must take a more consistent stance in the fierce battle for our airspace and ensure that we—as the supposedly weakest link among airspace users—do not become the scapegoats of the “big players.” Our model flying clubs take their responsibilities seriously; after all, they must answer for their actions. Encounters in the air between model aircraft and manned aircraft should not be automatically condemned as misconduct on our part—

; even the “big players” make mistakes—even flight instructors (there are plenty of examples)! Such incidents must be thoroughly investigated with a high degree of transparency so that, first, all parties involved can learn from them, and second, we are taken seriously. Unfortunately, we are still a long way from that. While the police cannot stop us from flying model aircraft, they can force us to go from being members of a well-organized club airfield to anonymous “flying outlaws.” Further restrictions on model flying operations around airports and airfields could even drive model flyers into the arms of those opposed to airports, which would plunge our associations into what is likely to be their worst crisis. Therefore, it must be in the “big aviators’” own best interest to take us “little ones” seriously.

Sincerely,
Emil Ch. Giezendanner

The opinions expressed on this page by the editor—as well as by other authors of this issue—do not necessarily reflect the official position of the SMV. Readers can find official association announcements in the “SMV” section.