“I started in the hobby as a kid around 45 years ago, flying tissue and balsa rubber-band free-flight planes in the middle of nowhere with my father. I loved it. We had fairly large planes that flew pretty long distances and we never had an incident where people were injured or property damaged, despite having the typical adventures of planes stuck on trees, losing planes after unusually long flights, etc. Then I had a couple bad experiences with gas motors and RC planes, and as equipment was expensive, moved on to electronics and computers and left the hobby for quite some time. Then around 2004 I found out about these tiny EPP helicopters with IR control that just went round and round, then bought my first RC helicopter… and was hooked again. I started flying electric RC planes and helicopters, building ARF or BNF. Around my area it was difficult to join a club because there were few and had long waiting lists, so I flew in parks near home or industrial sites on Sundays, with few people around. I also discovered slope soaring around this time and fell in love instantly. Flying an Alula over windy dunes on the beach at dawn with seagulls trying to catch you is a lot of fun, challenging and a very rewarding experience! Again, no safety issues as safety was an important aspect of the people I flew with, with common sense rules and procedures in place. Then I had children and stopped for a while, but eventually went back and joined a club with an approved place to fly. This is where I do all my flying now. It is 20 minutes driving away from home. I’ve met excellent people there, passionate and knowledgeable about the hobby, with new aircraft and technologies brought to the club all the time. That’s how I learnt about FPV and drones, and also about quads and long range. I like building as much as flying, and I’ve always a project going on and try to fly as much as I can. In fact, I fly small quads almost everyday. For me, model flying has become an integral part of my life. Regarding regulations, I see several flaws in what is being put in place. In my opinion, regulations should be about managing risk, but I’ve seen no risk assessments worth of the name to present as evidence for more stringent regulations. All these regulatory fever looks like a move to give control of the airspace below 400 ft to paying companies more than anything else. I’m a follower of Bruce Simpson’s RCModelReviews YouTube channel and I couldn’t agree more with him. Apart from the impact this regulations can have for me, the real pity about all this would be to lose the educational aspect of the hobby, as it is an excellent vehicle for presenting engineering, physics and math to kids in a meaningful and entertaining way. I’m an engineer by trade and also a father, so I really appreciate how modelling aircraft can be used for this purpose. An excellent video about this is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5rsfcc8hzs. In summary, I’m a Spanish model flyer who shouldn’t care about new regulations being put in place by the FAA in the US. But I care, because I love this hobby and I believe that losing it would be like losing an old friend.”