Well, while I personally haven't much experience with RC aircraft, I grew up with an older brother who was heavily into building model aircraft. In my later life I took up flying small single engine aircraft and have always been quite interested in almost every aspect of aviation. Presently, due to age and financial issues I limit my flying to MS Flight Simulator which allows me to fly everything from my homebuilt ultralight to the Air Canada Airbus A380, which I developed the paint scheme for myself (see photo).
Radio Controlled model aircraft have been the passion of many people all over the world and probably always will be.
That said, we all must admit that the world in which we live has changed dramatically in the post 9/11 era. For the most part these changes have been for the worse, in my opinion. We're now living in a world where ALL innocence we once had is gone and has been replaced with distrust, hysteria and paranoia in most cases.
RC aircraft model aviation will quite likely suffer greatly over the next several years as a result of this paranoia and the recent advent of remotely controlled DRONE surveillance aircraft, at least until the laws in most countries catch up with modern technology. I know here in Brazil the use of drones has become a hot topic and is now being litigated and legislated, sort of after the fact. This country is famous for locking the barn door after the horse has already bolted, but that's another story altogether.
IMHO the model aviators will most certainly take a hit, but I'm not sure that it's going to be a doom and gloom, "end of the world" scenario. I'm sure that in some countries RC aircraft will probably end up being completely banned. This will be a sad day for all model aviators. In other countries, they will surely face some restrictions that they never imagined before, but I believe the hobby will survive.
The bottom line, I guess, is national security in any country and that is ultimately in the hands of the legislators in each sovereign nation, something that while we may have some input toward have little or no control over. I think that each case must be judged on it's own merits at any rate. I mean, there is really a huge difference in somebody firing up his RC Spitfire and doing aerobatics over a public park than there is with somebody strapping a minicam to a model helicopter and using it to transmit images to some remote location on the ground for whatever purposes he wishes. I don't want to think that he'd be flying over my backyard and spying on me even though I have absolutely nothing to hide. I guess the real responsiblity of government is to act to protect us all from this kind of invasion of privacy and undermining of our security. I think that countries that exercise common sense can achieve that goal without outlawing RC aircraft completely or giving all model aviators the "potential terrorist" label.
Cheers,
William James Woodward, EB Experts Team
My own Air Canada Airbus A380, it was a real challenge to paint this one!
