Flying Site Assistance
Conejo Valley Flyers: The Saga Continues
In the dark, damp, cobweb-strewn recesses of my aging memory, I'm getting a vision of an early 2006 column in which I reported the successful acquisition of a flying site lease by the Conejo Valley Flyers (CVF) of Ventura, California.
Open-space advocate and Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks was instrumental in steering CVF member Joe Martin to the property owners, the Seventh Day Adventist Conference in Burbank, California. At that point, Joe had more than six years invested in his quest for a new flying site for his club.
As Joe related to me recently, the signing of the lease merely put him at the trailhead of a tortuous path to an actual flying field. There would be many months and many miles between the stroke of a pen in town and the sound of a four-stroke on a runway.
The property specified in the lease was open space but was slated for eventual development. Although it was private property, the parcel was governed by myriad regulations and code requirements.
It seemed that every attempt to design and construct the eventual flying field was stopped or altered as the plans fell victim to one or more of these requirements. You can slow Joe, but with Joe, it's never a "no-go."
He got together with the developer the conference was employing, David Fillips, and discussed the requirements for the project as well as the regulatory impediments in detail. As "luck" (read: hard work) would have it, Joe discovered that Dave had a pre-cleared, unrestricted area on the designated parcel that just happened to coincide with the field runway requirements. It was approximately 75 feet wide and 400 feet long.
When the qualifying parcel was designated, there was the problem of grading. In the flying-site area, grading must be accompanied by dust control, so a water truck was needed.
Again, Dave Fillips provided Joe with a solution. It happened that Dave had a grading specialist and a water truck in the area on another of his projects. The resources would be in the area for a limited time, so if Joe wanted to take advantage of a reduced rate because the equipment was nearby, he had to act with his usual alacrity. And he did!
With the expert help of club members Marcel Gillette, who is a surveyor, and Wil Trautmann, a stake-pounder in this instance, the short turn-around time and the cost of this grading project were brought into an acceptable range.
But what about the cost? With a short lead time, how could a club with limited resources because of a decline in membership attendant to a field loss come up with the required dollars?
Well, you can slow Joe, but... With a few well-placed telephone calls, Joe enlisted the willing financial support of two members of another local club. The Channel Island Condors' president, John O'Brien, and the club's safety officer, Tony Brown, provided the necessary funds on a short turn-around loan, and the deed was done within the required four-day window. The Channel Island Condors members supported the effort by reimbursing John and Tony. The CVF will now retire a loan from the Channel Island club. A great story of one club helping another.
The CVF club is now looking for an economical, environmentally friendly runway surface. Believe it or not, an industrial, molasses-based material is being considered! (Let's see — you want me to put my twin turbine down on a strip of molasses?) More on this at a later time. For now, Joe says flying off of dirt has its drawbacks, but at least the club is flying! I'll let you know when the ribbon is cut!
I continue to get calls from members who fly or want to fly on full-scale airports or on land contiguous with full-scale airports. In some cases, the member just wants to know if that is permitted. In other cases, members tell me that "John Q. Public said that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) doesn't allow that."
Here's the real deal: The FAA issued an Advisory Circular (AC 91-57) in 1981 dealing with the fact that model aviation and full-scale aviation are indeed compatible. It issued broad guidelines and suggestions for the safe operation of models on or near full-scale airports.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association's Directory of Airports lists more than 450 airports in the U.S. where model aviation is indicated as an ancillary activity on or near the airport. For low- to moderate-use full-scale airports, model aviation is a good fit, and often includes many of the same full-scale pilots who use the field.
You can find a copy of the FAA Advisory Circular online at the AMA website: www.modelaircraft.org. Click on Member Services, then click on AMA Documents (PDF) and scroll down to document number 540-C.
Keep looking for your next flying site.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
