I'll confess, this poll has me scratching my head, wondering exactly what the objective is, beyond possibly embarassing one, or both, of the national organizations?
Think about it. You're asking people to publicly document potential safety issues, making them public record, and providing documentation that could quite seriously potentially bite one of the organizations in the posterior in the future.
If you have concerns, fine. Express them to the respective organization.
But putting it out publicly, where it'll get grabbed by other sites, and archived for all posterity....imagine if one of the organizations has their insurance up for review, and the insurance company happens to catch wind of it. What do you realistically think is going to happen to the insurance premiums?
-Kevin (who won't be voting in this poll)
I just don't get this "ignore the problem and it'll go away" mindset... it just boggles the mind... you can't solve a problem that needs addressing by ignoring it. Yet, from what I've seen, it's a particularly pernicious and typical attitude, one I've seen especially from HPR fliers, who should be the MOST conscious about safety issues and addressing them quickly... (before they "bite someone in the butt"...) Again, I'm speaking from personal experience, YMMV...
We had some similar issues in the LPR only launches occurring on our farms... In fact the club had quite a brou-ha-ha after a former president of the now defunct Challenger 498 made a huge issue out of a Scissor Wing Transport that flew a somewhat low parabolic trajectory, ejected it's power pod on the way down, and entered a steep and fast semicircling dive that put it landing fast but level behind the cars/prep/spectator area... whereupon he had a typical "kneejerk reaction" and demanded in all future launches, the rods were "NOT allowed to be tilted WHATSOEVER". Needless to say this went over like a fart in a diving helmet...
After his cursing streak in front of the club members and their kids, and subsequently again on the club's discussion board group, read by many of the kids, he was removed and the club "reorganized"... (not that it lasted much longer anyway, mostly due to his kind of antics by similar minded folks).
At any rate, I could see that it COULD be a safety issue, and after doing a little research, I figured out probably the most realistic solution-- place the flight line parallel to the prevailing wind direction at the time the launch was set up. IOW, with the pads and prep/parking areas located in such a way that facing the pads from the vehicles, the wind would be blowing from either ones right or left side... NOT in one's face or at one's back. This would cause the rockets to weathercock over the other pads, not over the vehicles and spectators. The rods could be tilted as appropriate for the conditions, and usually tilted a bit AWAY from the flight line so that any non-deploys would be upwind and landing out BEHIND the flightline. Normal deployments would descend under chute or streamer back down parallel to the flightline, landing past the pads downwind in the pasture. I drew up some maps using printouts from Google Earth, drew in the appropriate setups for the TYPICAL prevailing wind conditions, and then scanned them back in and sent them to the club officers...
This required a slight change of mindset... instead of setting up the flightline aligned with the road or the fencelines or other "landmarks", instead the flightline was established parallel to the wind conditions AT THE TIME THE FLIGHTLINE WAS SET UP... so it would be at a "crazy angle" across the field, but much safer from a standpoint of overflights. The hardest part of the process was simply to get people to understand what the purpose was, that it made things safer, that it wasn't hard to do, and that it was worth the effort. Does it make things perfect?? Of course not... as I answered in the poll, we still have occassional flights that go over the prep/parking area, especially gliders, but then NO solution is 100% effective while still providing a practical flight path (IOW, tilting the rods hard over to the maximum deflection away from the flight line would probably ensure that NO rockets or gliders overflew the flight line, but it would also ensure probably near 100% of the rockets would be recovered half a mile away at best or completely lost, IOW, not a viable solution.) All in all, it's a practical solution (aligning the flight line parallel to the wind) that MINIMIZES the risks from overflights while minimally impacting the actual flight dynamics and recovery distances...
Is there now zero risk?? NO, again, NO system is perfect, and every time a rocket is flown, there is a slight risk that something will go wrong, regardless of size/power. BUT, there is a principle in play called the GOOD FAITH EFFORT... IOW, making every reasonable and prudent measure possible to prevent any unforeseen problem from creating damage or injury... this is a method that has minimal impacts on the actual flights, yet enhances safety-- it's IRRESPONSIBLE NOT TO do things that enhance safety with little/no cost to the actual progress of operations... IF something happened and it came down to litigation, having made a demonstrable "good faith effort" to avoid the situation does help; it demonstrates one was actively trying to avoid the situation and put due care and concern towards that end, even if the solution was imperfect...
It's also IRRESPONSIBLE to REFUSE TO DISCUSS OR ADDRESS potential safety problems and their solutions... but then, like I said, it seems to be the modus operandi of lots of folks... bury your head in the sand, deny everything, and hope nothing happens... and as I've said before, "NO HARM, NO FOUL" is NOT a valid safety program...
Later! OL JR