Originally Posted by
T.S.Davis
This isn't a safety thing. More of a don't screw it up for everyone else thing. Some of these I touched on earlier.
If a pond is available for RC use and you know that your club and others have applied for and received special permit from the city to use the pond, don't go there and run when ever your feel like it. Find out what the permit allows. If you're only approved for certain days stick to that. Doing it any ole' way you want to because you're above it all will only serve to screw it up for everyone. Our local authority knows what days MMEU is supposed to be on our home pond. There have been problems. Primarily with people that have no permit at all for any days. There will likely be fines for those using the pond without a permit in the future. So those using it without permission have essentially made it harder for those of us that are doing it the right way.
Also, if the local municipality has rules or even simple expectations that aren't even on paper............just try to make them happy. Pissing off the people that control our access to any particular body of water is just stupid in my opinion. Again, guess who pays the price? Everybody. So while you're busy fighting the city, the rules, the establishment, the man, etc....... all you're really doing is messing up the fun for the majority.
Clean up after yourself. At the nats we filled a dumpster and had about 10 bags outside the dumpster. Everyone did pretty well with the trash. I gave the grounds at another once over last night. Second walk through. Still found a few stray strips of tape. Not too bad considering how long we were out there. Just got me to thinking. We all need to do a better job keeping track of our debris. Tape seems to be the most common thing left behind. We need to think like boy scouts and leave it cleaner than we found it.
Last thing.......critters. We all know what a royal pain in the can it is when water fowl suck up our play time but I promise you that if the locals see us terrorizing the birds we're screwed. I don't care if they're Loons of those fly'n rats we get from down town Detroit. We will lose that battle. Sooooo......birds never stay in one spot long. Wait it out. They're just toy boats. We can wait 10 minutes for them to move along.