Hey All,

I'm just wondering how this worked for the the rest of the world.  Do you guys all around the world fly in insured or sanctioned fields?  Or do you just get together with friends and setup a track in a moderately empty park?

I noticed a growing problem that has to do with this hobby.  The Greater Toronto Area (Ontario, Canada)  have a lot of fpv hobbyists.  A lot of people want to race in groups.  The problem happens when there's too many people that show up in a place to fly  (16 or more).  Just to name a few issues:

• waiting for your turn will be much longer, and will be flying less packs during the day.
  
• some people have problematic vtx's that's hard to pinpoint with so many pilots waiting their turn
  
• a big variety on skill set can mean some pilots might get stuck or get lost in the field while others wait
  
• setting up track and tearing it down.
  
• having a large gathering of fpv pilots causes negative attention from the public's eye and can get banned out of the park.
  

Right now the only solution we have for this is to limit our flying meetups to about 8 people,  the group is much easier to control.  The problem is...  many of our friends get excluded.

I'm just wondering if this is a common issue all around the world or do you have a viable solution to accommodate large groups to fly together.

Let me know what you guys think.

I assume you are talking about casual meet up?

We do normally just find an empty spot in a park, setup and fly... We don't really have a model park or anything formal here...
That is a big problem when too many people turn up and all eager to fly LOL We do try to keep it quiet and low key, only me and maybe 2-3 more people i know well... when you post on social media about you going to fly somewhere tomorrow, and suddenly half of the city turn up LOL the worse is most of them you don't even know who they are...

It's nice to introduce 1 or 2 new people in the group once a while, but when too many strangers turn up at the same time, it gets hard to manage, and they don't know how things are done properly... someone powers on their quad while there are still people in the air... someone leaving tons of broken props everywhere... someone stealing stuff... not a good idea

Hey Oscar,

Yes that's a big problem for us. I would consider 8 people is already a small turn out. If it's a public park and others find out where that spot is, then yes that number can grow to 20+. I'm almost considering writing an article on why this is an issue and how other pilots need to understand that we don't want to be anti-social or "snobby". Maybe a unique content on your blog since it's not about hardware The hobby seems to have an ideal number of people to keep flying enjoyable. I just want to know if the rest of the world is having this issue as well.

Of course there are official races that have ground stations that can host a much larger amount of pilots. 30+

I wish I had friends that were in the hobby

(14-May-2017, 12:19 AM)RCFlyer85 Wrote: I wish I had friends that were in the hobby

There must be a local club or group in your area that flies together.

Friends in the hobby are over rated sometimes I prefer flying alone just to enjoy some peace and quiet haha

(15-May-2017, 11:53 AM)trojanGoat Wrote: There must be a local club or group in your area that flies together.

Well I wouldn't call it local necessarily and I don't have time to travel to go fly but once in a blue moon.... Got 2 toddlers at home to watch full time lol

(15-May-2017, 03:12 PM)Oscar Wrote: Friends in the hobby are over rated sometimes I prefer flying alone just to enjoy some peach and quiet haha

Yeah that is a positive thing... I never have to worry about vtx output or changing channels and what not

(15-May-2017, 03:12 PM)Oscar Wrote: ... enjoy some peach ...

sure you do, canned or as a drink?

i prefer to fly "in groups" yet, my biggest flying in group was and is when i find time to stalk konrad... so ... never worried about overlapping channels, only "im connecting" is always a moment of panic as you need to hover... sufer the noise/nosignal... fly further

(15-May-2017, 06:10 PM)Grisha0 Wrote: sure you do, canned or as a drink?

Damn it phone!

in Hong Kong place are really limited, usually popular spots in weekend will have 10+ people there...and we don't even know each other

waiting / have a sudden video shock cuz someone's connecting their battery with high powered vtx is really annoying here...

find new places, and go fly with your close friends there secretly

I tend to fly on my own (with a spotter) - this hobby hasn't really taken off yet in Northern Ireland. There are plenty of clubs for RC Cars and Gliders but very little for multirotors

By the looks of it, maybe north america has a much bigger crowd. In Toronto alone, there are over 300+ active pilots. There's about 6 facebook groups that fly very regularly and if publicly announced will have at least 20 pilots showing up. So keeping numbers low is a big hurdle over here.

Since I posted this thread, I've discovered multigp. Anyone not registered there, I tell them they can't fly. The site organizes the groups automatically as they join. Makes my life easier.

Thanks for the input guys.

I fly at a local park, usually with 2 or 3 others at the time. It seems to be just enough that I have someone to chatter with between batteries but not so much that we ever step on one another. Whoever gets there first picks their channel on raceband. Then when others show up we ask "what channel are you on" and try to pick a channel that it's right next to theirs... If it's just 2 of us we'll usually go for opposite sides of the band just to be safe. Usually after one or two tries you don't even have to announce powering up any more if you're still flying the same quad.

I think I like it with just 2-4 people... seems to be a good set so far

I wouldn't mind going to a better event sometime though.

(16-May-2017, 03:42 PM)trojanGoat Wrote: Since I posted this thread, I've discovered multigp.  Anyone not registered there, I tell them they can't fly.  The site organizes the groups automatically as they join.  Makes my life easier.

I'm curious about MultiGP in Canada (and countries other than USA).  In the US, to fly in MultiGP events requires AMA membership.  Are there similar requirements in Canada?