Banning Turbines
 

I remember when this was a big topic, but as years passed not so much. Probably as the hobby matured and became safer. Turns out the Kelowna club (KORC) decided to ban turbine aircraft siting noise and fire hazard. Seems pretty lame for myself and few others in the area. Any one else experiencing this type of backwards thinking?

Re: Banning Turbines
 

You need to get a big 12s edf and slam her into the ground, and burn all surrounding areas. Just to prove turbines arent the only thing that can catch fire. Im sure I will get flak over this!

Re: Banning Turbines
 

or even a nice 40 size glow and some how get that to burn to prove cause thats what everyone around there mostly flies. but also the vernon club is in the works of baning them to

Re: Banning Turbines
 

That's too bad about the turbines because all of our models can cause serious injury if not respected.
I'm guessing though that there must have been a vote with all the members of the club.
At any funfly I have attended, the turbines draw the biggest crowd, thier cool.

Bill

Re: Banning Turbines
 

Personally I find the sound of an EDF more annoying, (relatively speaking) than turbines, (mind you, I was in aviation for quite a while and nothing compares to ground ops around a DC9, MU2 or Falcon 20). As for fire hazard, I have worked at a few turbine events and find their operators are very safety conscious, (in fact more than many nitro and gas ops I've seen) On the subject of nitro I have been in this hobby for over 25 years and have yet to see one ignite under any circumstance or contribute to a fire. That cannot be said even of LiPo powered electrics.

williame3590 is correct that any of our craft can be a risk, the reason MAAC carries liability coverage. Care must be taken regardless of the power system.

Re: Banning Turbines
 

There are many reasons why a club may "ban" turbines. We passed a resolution a few years ago to not allow turbines at our field either. In our particular case it was because of the length of a down wind or upwind leg that would require overflying a busy highway close to our field. There was also discussion of potential fire issues on a plane that may crash. We have a lot of residential areas around our club abd a turbine can cover a lot of space in a big hurry.

Our club is also close to the local airport. We have a great relationship with the airport at this time and do not want to jeopardise it, almost 20 years. The relationship was compromised a few years ago when a couple members with large IMAC planes were "practising" and their so called "box" took them higher than the airport and our club members wanted. We got one warning, "incident" report", from Nav Canada. Upon investigation, we got everything from the horses mouth, (Nav Canada) about "acceptable behavior". relative to full scale. The offending member(s) were asked to leave the club. I was personally involved in the investigations and the Nav Canada and the local airport meetings. We had our "that's once" and didn't feel we would get a "that's twice" warning. Not something you want to go through more than once. They are reasonable to deal with, but can shut your field down in a wink.

We felt the potential risk was not worth it in either case. If clubs want to take "the good of the club" as a priority, unfortunately there are some members that will not agree with all decisions, nor will they take the time to understand the reasons for them.

Re: Banning Turbines
 

Not sure where you got your information from regarding a turbine ban in Kelowna (KORC)? We have flown turbine powered jets at the Korc field. It is just something that our club has never really had a good chance to experience. I think if there would be any issues it would stem from members not understanding turbine powered jets and having false information on their dangers. I understand that turbines do pose certain dangers if not operated correctly .. but this is the same for any electric or fuel powered aircraft. I have seen numerous electric powered aircraft catch fire. The biggest issue is there are many people who do not understand that when choosing a "safe " electric setup there is alot more to it than just throwing any old esc and battery in there. A poorly calculated setup can start a fire just as easy as a turbine especially with lipo batteries. I am new to turbines I will admit that. However I have spent 100s of hrs asking questions, reading threads, speaking to experience jet turbine pilots about installs, safety etc!!! I will be completing my first turbine aircraft in the next couple months and plan on flying it at the KORC field. I have spoken to some of the clubs executives and long time members and the only concerns that they have raised was noise. The turbine I am going to be running is a P20 and is way less annoying than any big gasser or high pitched screaming edf. I along with Pepperpete are going to try and educate our club about turbines and hopefully we can see more of them here in the future. I see no issues with our club and small turbine powered aircraft as long as we operate them within club rules and in a safe manner at all times. I hope there is no talk of them banning turbines behind the scenes. But as it stands in the club rules Turbines have no mention of being banned. You can view our club rules here >>>> http://new.korc.ca/?page_id=31

Re: Banning Turbines
 

Actually it's in the minutes emailed to all the KORC members and myself included. Maybe the three of us should get together and try to salvage this. Given where I've been working the last few years, I've been flying my jet in the boundary area. Now that I'm full time in Kelowna, I would love to fly jets here.

Re: Banning Turbines
 

Sent you a pm!!!


Cheers,

Jason

Re: Banning Turbines
 

Well I hope thats not the case but Princeton ain't that far away and is a great venue to fly at and it's jets only too.

Hope to see u guys this spring and hopefully u can afford the steep club dues :) I think it's a whopping 25$ which gets u a reduced entry fee on the events we hold.

I have been in this hobby for well over 30 yrs and the only time I've ever seen a fire extinguisher present is at a jet event and we all carry them.
Yes they fly faster in most cases and carry more fuel on board , but we take more precautions than most when we fly them too.