District VII
This is the type of District VII information I like to write about! It's a true success story—maybe even a Cinderella story.
It started last summer with a group of guys from the North Mankato Electric Flyers Club who were flying at a local school soccer field. Of course, when the soccer players show up, all flying ceases for the day.
One Saturday, one of the coaches stopped and spoke with some of the flyers, saying he had flown models when he was a youngster. He was invited to try flying again by one of the members.
As luck would have it, the coach was a friend of a city official and mentioned the Electric Flyers; the city official had also flown model aircraft as a youngster.
The seed was planted, and in the fall, after a few meetings with the club, a site was selected for an electric-powered model flying field that the city agreed to build using city employees and funds.
The site was graded, then blacktopped, and electric power was installed for battery-charging stations. There is much more to this story that may show up elsewhere in MA, but I’ll share a few of the pictures in this column.
Many thanks to Mike F. Stott Sr. for supplying the photos and story for this column, and to the following people who made this all happen:
Acknowledgments
- Mayor Gary Zellmer and the North Mankato City Council
- Wendell Sande, North Mankato city administrator
- Gary Endersbe
- Bob Kurkowski
- Carl Larson
- Steve Eccles
- Steve Mills
- Mike Stott
- Brad Swanson
- Tom Neubert, city electrician
Take a youngster out to the flying site and teach him to fly.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
