District IX—Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming
UAS demonstrations at the Big Iron Farm Show
This fall, the AMA asked the Valley RC Flyers (VRCF) club of Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, to be the local facilitators for the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) demonstrations at the Big Iron Farm Show in September. Longtime club member and retired Air Force pilot Dick Vos took the lead and ran the event professionally. He met with the four teams and their pilots the day before the event, laid out the safety plan and the field configuration, and ensured that each pilot and spotter was an AMA member.
The demonstrations were presented each day of the three-day event. Participants gave brief overviews of the capabilities of their equipment and the potential benefits. All of the demonstrations involved providing farmers with geo-referenced data from onboard cameras or sensors; the data could be downloaded or viewed online to assist farmers in making timely decisions on crop care.
There was a significant amount of interest in these demonstrations, many questions, and even some farmers who are conducting experiments of their own.
VRCF club members who assisted on one or more days include:
- Ryan John
- Greg Wentz
- Ron Landman
They served as additional spotters, provided spectator direction, and demonstrated how UAS flying can be handled safely.
Thanks to AMA’s Director of Public Relations and Government Affairs, Rich Hanson, for asking our club to help, for communicating with the FAA, and for traveling to Fargo to attend the Big Iron event.
National Model Aviation Day
Thanks to all District IX clubs that held a National Model Aviation Day event last August. According to event director Mandee Mikulski, your contributions helped this year’s Wounded Warrior Project donation reach $100,000. National Model Aviation Day is on the calendar for August 15, 2015. Now is the time for your club to start planning its event.
UAS mission — University of Nebraska
Last month I reported on the UAS mission that Dean Copeland was working on with the University of Nebraska. He sent a picture of the aircraft the group is using. It is a Tempest glider with a 120-inch wingspan and an all-up weight of 14 pounds, including computer, camera, and sensor systems. The aircraft has roughly a two-hour flight time.
District calendar
Norm Berger, Colorado associate vice president (AVP) and District IX webmaster, has set up a district-wide calendar of events on our website. Your AVP or one of your club representatives can easily add your events to the 2015 calendar. I hope this will become a clearinghouse for District IX events. Visit www.district-IX.org to see the calendar. If you have trouble logging in to update the calendar, contact Norm or me.
Camp AMA scholarship
This year I reserved a space at Camp AMA for a deserving young man from the Omaha, Nebraska area named Matt Carlson. He comes highly recommended; his résumé is posted on our Facebook page and the District IX website.
I have set up a scholarship account for District IX with the AMA. I’d like to ask all of you, as individuals or clubs, to contribute to this scholarship account to help with educational activities for the youth of our district.
Although Matt will be the first recipient of scholarship money to send him to Camp AMA, I want this fund to assist other deserving District IX youth in attending associated events in our district this summer and in future years. I hope we will have enough to fund many such endeavors.
If you wish to contribute, please follow these steps:
- Make your check payable to AMA.
- Write "District IX Scholarship Fund" in the memo/subject line.
- Send the check to me (I will gather contributions and forward them together to AMA Headquarters).
I will keep an accounting of the funds gathered and distributed on our website.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
