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Club Open Days (Flightfest)


Romeo Whisky
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With the BMFA Centenary Year and "Flightfest" Open Days in mind, as the P/R Officer of a small club I am concerned about the logistics and planning issues - car park space, unpredictable numbers, catering issues, safety, kids, dogs and a myriad of other potential issues.

 

I would be grateful to any other club members who have useful knowledge or experiences they could share - (good or bad/ dos or don'ts).

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Personally, if as club committe member my opinion was asked, I'd prefer to keep any celebrations within the club itself and possibly limited to personal invites to friends and family only. Nothing wrong with inviting the local press or radio to attend and get some publicity for the hobby that way. I'd steer clear of  having a public open day as there are just too many headaches associated with it as you have alluded to for the average small/medium sized club operating from a farm site and for very little return.

Edited by Cuban8
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   My club has one or two most years excepting the recent covid ones. The open days are mainly for members of other model clubs but we do allow interested spectators who happen to see/hear what is going on in [ potential new members ]  A local food fan is used for catering with our club giving each flyer with aircraft a ticket for a basic lunch and drink.[ they can order more if they want] Others can purchase their own.

  Entry to site is manned and insurance for flyers checked and some one must be in charge of parking [ usually my job ] or it will be a piggle.

  We do divide the pits and flightline area with orange plastic netting. This will prevent a low or ground running aircraft from entering the pits/spectator area on take off and landing . I tested it a few years ago with my SNJ [avatar pic][ I was having to much fun strafing the strip and ran out of fuel.]  However the main purpose of the fence is a obvious divide from the active flight line and to prevent any entry from small children or even the odd escaped dog. Model start up box's are built into the fence at entry point for flyers.

 A safety briefing is done at the start with info about flight circuit direction, numbers up, no go areas, dump zone for aircraft with problems and more.

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8 hours ago, Romeo Whisky said:

With the BMFA Centenary Year and "Flightfest" Open Days in mind, as the P/R Officer of a small club I am concerned about the logistics and planning issues - car park space, unpredictable numbers, catering issues, safety, kids, dogs and a myriad of other potential issues.

 

I would be grateful to any other club members who have useful knowledge or experiences they could share - (good or bad/ dos or don'ts).

 

Go on BMFA page, hover club, it'll show club support, theres downloads in there one for doing a display/event.

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If a club is set up to give public displays, has previous experience and operates from a suitable site then that's fine - think of the Woodspring Show among many others.  I do think that some clubs who with the very best intentions decide to 'open their doors' to a much wider audience, risk more than they bargained for in terms of nimby complaints from nearby residents who accept a few 'planes being flown now and again in the club environment, but might take advantage of the situation to make a fuss over much else.  Just something to be considered IMHO.

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you could always limit the numbers by getting people to pre-register. So you set up a date and publish it and invite people to contact you rather than just have an open day.

 

A few years back a local events site asked us if we'd like to attend their open day, as they had a big field next to the main site we decided to do some buddy box have a go flights, while we had a few takers we weren't exactly inundated!

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I agree with Cuban.     It was the visiting pilots who lost my ( then ) club it's field for a while due to complaints from the open event.   Only regained the field with loss of hours and some restrictions.   Instead of gaining new members you might lose the field!

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23 hours ago, Cuban8 said:

Personally, if as club committe member my opinion was asked, I'd prefer to keep any celebrations within the club itself and possibly limited to personal invites to friends and family only. Nothing wrong with inviting the local press or radio to attend and get some publicity for the hobby that way. I'd steer clear of  having a public open day as there are just too many headaches associated with it as you have alluded to for the average small/medium sized club operating from a farm site and for very little return.

Absolutely. As club chairman I have a hard enough time making sure existing club members don't lose us the field, never mind controlling a bunch of strangers. The idea of setting up all the ancillaries for a safe event fills me with horror. 

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Thanks for all the input guys.  Actually the more I've thought about it, the logistics, parking, safety and organisational issues of a true Open Day (to the public) filled me with dread, especially as the numbers attending would be totally unpredictable. 

 

On the other hand, I would like to leverage the BMFA Flightfest concept to hopefully attract potential new members and generate local press interest.

I'm starting to think towards perhaps inviting a local over 50's group (which I think is the most fertile source of new members who'll stick with it), or perhaps one of the numerous local camera clubs.  That way we could predetermine (and limit) potential take-up for the trial flights, and the other issues would be more easily manageable.

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Hi Guys

 

It's me again, Paul, Chair of the BMFA's Centenary Planning Group. Our aims are very simple, 'Celebrate the past and look to the future.'

 

We are the oldest National Model Flying Association in the world and have a rich heritage to celebrate. I have a letter on my workbench (once a home to balsa now paper!) from a long time SMAE member born in 1922. He built his first model aged 8 and in 1939 he started a model flying club with the help of a local shop. In the war he was posted to the Aerodynamics Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment conducting tests in wind tunnels and the flight test section, no doubt heavily influenced by his model flying experience. Post war his experience fed back into the SMAE and model flying.  We also have the SMAE membership card numbered 02 for A E Jones who was one of the founding members of the SMAE. These, and others are the pioneering giants on whose shoulders we stand and our centenary exhibition at Buckminster will be a unique opportunity to see models and artefacts from the past century.

 

But what about at a local level? There is some great advice and wisdom in this thread and in the Club Guide so all I would say is please don't let our centenary pass without doing something to celebrate model flying, be it large or small do it safely, free of undue stress and above all have fun. Create good memories and share the joys and frustrations of model flying with family, friends, neighbours and the wider public in whichever way works for you. In this way we will look to the future and secure model flying for future generations.

 

I look forward to hearing of your adventures and please use the BMFA Face Book and send articles to Andy Symonds. Thank you.

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