“As a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) teacher, I can tell from personal experience that few things trigger students’ technical interest more than watching something they’ve made fly, meaning that building a model aircraft might just be the thing that pushes a student to go for a degree in engineering, computer science or some other technical higher education. Those are areas where we need as much expertise as possible to tackle everything from space travel and global climate change to safer cars, and better food and medicine. Building a model aircraft teaches valuable skills such as patience, hand-eye co-ordination, electronics, physics, maths and problem-solving. I am afraid that limiting flight as a hobby might severely hamper innovation and deprive the world of the next Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart, Elon Musk, Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gagarin. By restricting (effectively killing) model aviation, we stand to gain very little and lose much more.”