Money and the Mind—or the Lost Innocence of Aviators

Dear Reader

Last summer, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks at a small airfield in Romania. We hosted the World Electric Aircraft Championships there. I felt as if I had been transported back 50 years in my life. Old memories came flooding back: There was (and still is today) the small Speck airfield within sight of my neighborhood. An airfield manager who lived and breathed flying. He probably spent day and night at his airfield. He had a big heart. He welcomed young aviation enthusiasts into his life in a way no father could have done better. Thanks to him, my brother was introduced to the aviation community while he was still in middle school. There was also a handful of pilots there. Most of them had to scrimp and save just to afford to fly. Flying means working! That was the name of what was probably the most successful youth program ever implemented at the AeCS. It wasn’t conveyed via PowerPoint, but quite simply through the example set by the “great pilots.” Whether in the workshop, the hangar, or on the apron, the pilots always had work to do. Every now and then came the well-deserved reward: a flight with the boss. The airfield manager in Romania, his full-time glider and powered-flight instructors with their students, and the mechanic always reminded me

reminded me of the old days. The airfield wasn’t planned from the start as the venue for the 2006 World Championships. Initially, a different, much larger airfield was intended. The commander there—a carbon copy of all the old airfield commanders in the world—promised us every kind of help. We would have needed the airfield for eight days. Flying was the most important thing to him, no matter how big or small the aircraft, and nothing seemed impossible. But in a year and a half, everything had changed. Suddenly there were state-of-the-art aircraft, including two Sukhoi aerobatic planes—and even large twin-engine aircraft. “You can hold the World Championships,” they said, “but you can’t use the airfield exclusively. We don’t want to simply suspend flight operations for eight days and need time slots when we can take off and land.” Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—I’ve already had this kind of experience in Ambri. Although our Air Force’s airfield was a bit complicated, it was at least reserved exclusively for us, and together with our colleagues from Ticino, we were able to hold wonderful competitions there. The military left, and our “big colleagues” arrived—and increasingly, the business sector as well. Closing the airfield for two days for model flying isn’t worth it, they said, and so Ambri was lost to model flying. That’s why I preferred the small airfield in Romania to the large one

. The most recent example is the F3A European Championship in Buochs. There, the model aviators were pushed to the edge of the airfield next to the highway by the business sector—and perhaps also by the arrogance of the “big players.” The airfield had plenty of infrastructure available, including paved runways, hangars, restrooms, and so on. The model aviators had to set everything up themselves on a meadow, and for safety reasons, they weren’t allowed to fly roll circles during practice. The “big” flight operations—which, by the way, barely took place at all—were given priority over everything else, which was almost laughable. So don’t give me any of that “safety” nonsense or similar red tape. Ultimately, it comes down to two things: first, money, and second, self-importance and bureaucracy. I think that Swiss aviation has bigger problems to solve than those involving us model aircraft pilots. Even business pilots at their old/new military airfields depend on the goodwill of the public, and we model aviators will have to consider in the future to what extent we want to influence such developments with our votes. As a member of an aviation umbrella organization—we’re all aviators, after all—I’m ashamed of the stubbornness and arrogance of such “colleagues”!

Sincerely,
Emil Ch. Giezendanner