In The Air
By: Terence C. Gannon
Tags: Flying, September 2021, Aviation, Hobbies And Interests, Model Aircraft

In The Air

Whither our community?

In the short time I have been Managing Editor of the NEW RC Soaring Digest, one of the things of which I’m most proud is the truly international group of authors who have assembled to bring you such outstanding material each month. In this issue alone, there are contributions from (alphabetically): Canada, France, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. I’m equally proud of the truly global audience that returns each month for a fresh dose of soaring journalism. We now have readers in 93 countries around the world.

I had the great honour of interviewing Canadian astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk a number of years ago, and one of his most memorable reflections of his extensive time in space was that Earth is actually a very small place. A ‘spaceship with seven billion crew members’ were approximately his words. My time at RCSD and my consequent interactions with people from around the world ground-truths Dr. Thirsk’s observation. The world is actually a very small place indeed. Furthermore, enabled by completely miraculous information technology, it’s becoming smaller all the time.

And yet, I can’t help but feel that something is somewhat amiss. One would think that this great ‘bringing together’ of a global community would be unifying — that is, give us a feeling of belonging to something. That is true, in one sense, but I must say that as I work with each author I am inevitably led back to the same place: I can’t wait to meet them in person — to shake their hand at their flying field, kibitz about the weather and our latest gear, take the obligatory selfie and then, most importantly, fly with them.

In other words, there is still nothing quite like being there, in person, with other people with whom we have something in common.

These thoughts were triggered, in part, by Michael Berends’ latest edition of RC Soaring Diaries in this issue. I won’t steal any of Michael’s thunder but he makes some really interesting observations about the lamentable state of competitive RC glider flying, at least in his neck of the woods. As he states, “[w]e haven’t seen soaring contests in this region for over a decade”. You’ll just have to read Michael’s excellent article to find out why he thinks that is, and what he misses most about contest flying — although you can probably guess. He also proposes some simple but potentially very effective ideas as to how the trend can be turned around. It’s well worth a read and provides some important food for thought.

Phil Cooke does his usual excellent job, also in this issue, of describing what has to be the gold standard of what an RC flying community should be. Or, if in the unlikely event his Power Scale Soaring Association is not the gold standard, then you can at least see it from the slopes of The Great Orme. Read his A ‘Big Air’ Weekend at ‘The Big Rock’! for a bit of inspiration on how to do ‘community’ exactly right. For my part, I can’t wait to fly with them.

The Erquy Aerobatic Glider team in action. Folks, it really doesn’t get much better than this. (video: Laurent Ducros)

I was chatting with Doc Hammond a couple of days ago — or what passes for chatting as conducted with nine typing fingers — and one thought we had was something currently assigned the working title of RCSD Live. If there has been any sort of silver lining to this infernal, seemingly unending pandemic is that the ubiquitous Zoom call has become an accepted way for communities to engage with each other in real time. To strip away the abstractions and actually see each other more-or-less as we actually are at common moment in time. It’s not ‘being there’, exactly, but ‘you can at least see it from there’ and it will certainly do until teleportation is a viable option.

But I digress. What Doc has offered is to be a guinea pig for a whole new channel of communication for RCSD — a free, approximately one hour session conducted on Zoom (or equivalent) where he will talk about his series’ in RCSD and take your questions! It will be a facilitated conversation conducted in a time slot where it will be a reasonable time of the day in most parts of the world. If that were to work out well, then other speakers could be lined up and it could become a more-or-less regular thing. Think of it as RCSD’s contribution to getting closer to the spirit of community described above.

But — and it’s a big but — that will all depend on whether there is sufficient interest. There’s nothing worse than throwing a party only to have nobody show up. If you would be interested in attending something along these lines, please drop us a line and let us know. But here’s the thing to keep in mind: the whole idea will be to attend while it’s happening as opposed to watching (or, more likely, not watching) a recording after the fact.

There are also other ideas percolating around that all core in on the notion of community building. For examples does anybody remember, or maybe even participating in a ‘postal contest’? Basically, the idea was to have some sort of competition where participants, wherever they might be, take on the contest tasks in their own locale — usually on a specific day or days — and then mail in their results so they can be ranked alongside all the other entrants. Here’s the takeaway: how about a 21st century version of that? Any takers?

That’s enough for now. But how about this: between now and when we get together at this same place at this same time next month, consider giving your buddies a call and see if they want to hit the slopes for a flight or two.