Brian
Meyer
, Michigan
, United States
Posted on
2020-02-14 15:53:33
“I grew up with a dad that was a GA pilot, and once I was able, I followed in his footsteps, getting my pilots license. Life, family, job, and kids all require my time, love, and attention, so my love of flying GA took a back seat. Once my boys were of an appropriate age, we started building and flying model airplanes to help fulfill that love of aviation. Many years later, my boys are grown, but we all have a passion for flight, regularly engaging in flights together, mostly at our 10 acre farm in the country, where there is room to fly. We also take a vacation every summer to attend FliteFest, the “Festival of Flight” where thousands of model aviation enthusiasts gather to build and fly model airplanes and muti-rotors over the course of a long weekend. My garage is filled with home-built model aircraft of all types, powered gliders, sport planes, single and muti-motor designs, float-planes, and homebuilt multi-rotors. I also use my passion for flight to reach out to under-privileged kids in the community, taking our foam trainers to local parks and letting the children learn about flight, and allowing them to learn to control the planes using buddy-box controls. The joy on a young kids face when they get to flip a switch and drop a small plastic parachute soldier from a model plane is priceless. When they get to keep the toy soldier, well, that’s just icing on the cake. They remember that for years. This is a hobby that I look forward to sharing with my grandkids and great grandkids for the rest of my life.
I agree that there are situations that could require remote ID of some type; commercial flight, autonomous flight, etc. DJI already has a remote ID system built into their equipment that works very effectively, and is worthy of considering as a standard. To require every unmanned model aircraft to carry remote ID equipment, when the majority of the flights are in remote areas below a safe altitude, or are in parks, below treetop level, is not only excessive, but would add unnecessary load on the remote ID networks, as well as adding unnecessary burden, cost, and complexity on model aviation enthusiasts, if not making the hobby completely unaffordable and/or illegal. The death of model aviation would be a sad day indeed.”