Letter to the Editor

Dear Mr. Giezendanner

As president of the Rothrist Model Aircraft Club, the continued existence of model aviation is certainly a matter close to my heart. Unfortunately, it often seems to me that I’m standing alone on this. Many model aircraft enthusiasts feel as though the world is waiting for them and couldn’t exist without them. Here are two short stories to illustrate this.

Since the weather wasn’t exactly ideal for gliding, a few model airplane enthusiasts (none from Rothrist) unpacked their electric-powered models and flew them around the mountain restaurant area at breakneck speed. So, what was bound to happen eventually did. The pilot’s friends egged him on to fly faster and lower and lower—ideally right between the information kiosk and the signpost. The model made contact, broke apart into its component parts, and the motor slammed into the wall of the hut just centimeters above the head of one of the pilot’s colleagues and got stuck there. You can imagine for yourself what the consequences

if the motor were to fly just a little lower.

The same pilots as last year simply showed up at the Grosse Scheidegg, even though the landlady—at our request—had told them there was no more room at the hotel. I have nothing against fellow model airplane enthusiasts, but after last year’s experience, we were wary. At Grosse Scheidegg, you have to walk about 10 to 20 minutes to the flying fields—along with the very large number of tourists and hikers. There is a road, but it’s off-limits to unauthorized vehicles. Despite this ban and our good intentions not to annoy the tourists and hikers, our “colleagues” loaded up the VW Transporter with models and their own colleagues and drove to a launch site. When I asked why they wouldn’t

not forgo such transport trips in the mountains—given our reputation, which is already tarnished by rogue pilots and drone hooligans—I received only a shrug. The look on my counterpart’s face, however, spoke volumes. “You’re a nutcase. We do whatever we want here—after all, we’re model airplane enthusiasts, and the tourists and hikers enjoy watching us,” he told me. “You know, back at our model airfield, the walkers enjoy watching us fly.” How unreasonable!

Now, let’s turn to the conclusions we can draw from these stories. Yes, they are just small, isolated incidents and probably not universally applicable, but they certainly tend to contain more than a little grain of truth. Due to the proliferation of drone hooligans and the sensationalization of drone incidents by the—often—uninformed media, as well as the actions of model pilots blessed with a touch of megalomania,

our hobby is in danger of being viewed by the non-model-aircraft world as a necessary evil. In some areas, action has already been taken and model flying has been banned. Because there are model flyers who feel that model flying is the most important thing of all—and that everyone else must accept this—the reputation of model flying could suffer.

I don’t know if you want to publish these stories. However, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to remind the model aviation community that, while model flying is very important to us, However, if we want to continue pursuing our hobby, we will increasingly depend on the goodwill of the authorities and, almost more importantly, the general public. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time can have devastating consequences for our hobby. ■

Best regards
, E. Japichino