AMA Flying clubs who don't "allow?" drones are doomed to fade away with the age of the members.
I am an old guy dronie puke, part 107, joined an AMA club, found it was just a social club for a bunch of old guys who love aviation but are more of a master builder. They build everything they fly, put a butt load of money in the equipment for an hour of flying and 8 hours of socializing and talking about flying r/c airplanes. zzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzzzzz.
I was targeted by one of the "elders" of the club to say things like "it don't take any skill to fly a drone".
I bought him a drone, the sorriest pos I could find and presented it to him during a meeting and asked him to show the club how it doesn't take any skill to fly a drone. I took it out of the box and did a pretty impressive demo, flying it all around, landed, handed him the control and told him to go for it. With no altitude hold it was tough to fly and I made it look easy.
He took all the laughs and kidding he deserved, pretty well, since it either slammed into the wall or crashed wildly without actually flying, at all. A truce was declared. Not me, I won.
Before I arrived 18 months ago there was one drone flyer. Not even one new member since.
Since I have been there I have "infected" about six of the old farts that are now drone flyers(kinda).
The attitudes are changing, only from within...This club might still struggle in 5 years.
Quite a broad brush you're using to paint AMA Flying Clubs there. Let me use my own brush for a moment...
I'm one of those "Elders" and I know first hand the difference between flying an unstabilized, unGPS guided, R/C plank to your DJI MR is night and day. All you need to know is how to charge the batteries, turn on the equipment and hit the LAUNCH button. If you desired you could literally "fly it with a single button (Launch then land). The R/C plane requires you to know how the plane flies, how to control it in all flights parameters, how to navigate from point A to point B and being able to manage speed, altitude, and momentum to have a successful flight. The beauty of this type of flying is a "Self Correcting Problem". If you don't learn to fly correctly & safely you crash and have to re-build or replace the kit. That's a Win-Win.
I find the fact that you "stacked the deck" against him and pulled such a crappy stunt shows more about your character than your skills as an aviator. While I'm sure he took it well that's still a pretty crappy stunt to pull IMHO.
Fortunately I belong to an old AMA club that not only allows but embraces MultiRotors. We were flying Custom Built MR's back as early as approximately 2006. Admittedly most of the flights were short and resulted in repair/replacement parts but it was flight none-the-less. We were testing and crashing because off-the-shelf gyros and GPS units weren't readily available. Things have come a long way since that time in the advancement of GPS and GRYO units to act as Training Wheels. I'm as guilty as anyone else of enjoying the ease of control/stabilization of the latest and greatest units which I fly daily in many various scenarios from FUN to WORK to Search & Rescue.
The majority of our members are now flying both MR's and planks (airplanes) but we have some members who only fly one or the other. Yes we spend hours "hangar flying" but that's part of the history of Aviation. At most airports around the nation if you show up on weekends, holidays, and bad weather days you'll find pilots sitting around "Hangar Flying" for hours and hours on end. It's one of the joys of sharing experiences, new ideas, and sometimes what NOT TO DO with fellow aviators.
While I do agree that a club that doesn't allow MR could be doing better there has been a HUGE surge of activity/interest in nonMR flying over the last couple of years thanks to the expansion of easy-to-fly (
Gyro Stabilized ironically) small inexpensive flying packages from your most well known vendors (
Horizon Hobby for example). Also we, the R/C industry as a whole, owes a huge round of THANKS to the gang at
Flite Test who have introduced so many new people to this amazing and exciting hobby via their YouTube productions and their Easy to Build Kits made from Foamboard. If you're not familiar with Flite Test you might want to check out their YT Channel for yourself:
FliteTest