Flying Site Assistance - 2009/03

EVERY YEAR the AMA Expo in Ontario, California, provides me with an opportunity to meet face-to-face with modelers with whom I have been working throughout the year, either online or via telephone conversations. Three such meetings during the 2009 Expo were particularly rewarding in that they included stories of successful flying site development. Interestingly, none of the fields in question is on private land. The Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, and a local town are our landlords in these cases. Early in the Expo, District X Vice President Jim Giffin and I met with members Dave Meriwether and Bob Lung of the Orange Coast RC Club. These men have been tireless in their efforts to get a model airplane flying facility included in the development plans for the Great Park, a planned residential/ recreational venue on what was once the El Toro Marine Base in southern California. Even in light of the planned inclusion of high-density residential development, they were able to get a one-year agreement for an electric flying site. This is the proverbial “foot-in-the-door,” with prospects for an expanded field and expanded flying choices in the future. A prominent member of the Great Park planning group has been to Muncie, Indiana, and has had a tour of the facilities there, so he knows what a great venue ought to look like. An aviation museum is part of the vision for the Great Park. AMA is looking at the potential for a loan of model aviation artifacts from the world-class National Model Aviation Museum in Muncie to the Great Park museum once it is developed. What a great way to promote model aviation to the general public at an easily accessible location. Congratulations to Dave and Bob, and thanks for the many hours of hard work! I also spent some time with the Inland Slope Rebels club members. Roughly three years ago, member Rick Schwemmer took me on a tour of the club’s great flying site on the Cajon Pass: breathtaking views on a great slope soaring site on US Forest Service land. I’ve watched local members use this excellent facility, and I’ve seen pilots from as far away as Korea flying from the slopes. Some had remarkable success; others, well, remarkable nonetheless … The US Forest Service and the club meet frequently to try to develop and improve the ridge-top site. As with the Great Park development effort, hard work and a consistent focus on the goal of a top-notch facility is yielding excellent results. I was able to have a nice chat with Andreas Blaser, president of the MARKS (Miniature Aircraft Radio Kontrol Society) on the last afternoon of Expo 2009. I met Andreas at the show last year, and provided him with some pertinent information about the AMA Flying Site Grant program. The information was timely, since the club was in the process of designing a new flying field on some Bureau of Land Management land near the Redlands, California, airport. The grant program provided $5,000 to the club, and the membership got together and created an exceptional flying site. According to Andreas, the end result was the product of the collaborative efforts of many, if not all, of the club members. In his words, “We kept our costs down by recruiting members with special skills and/or access to construction equipment and by basically doing everything ourselves.” As you can see from the pictures, there was a lot of work to accomplish, but there was also a supply of equipment and operators to help with the project. For an in-depth look at the field construction (and for a look at a truly firstclass newsletter, go to the following Web page: www.rcmarks.org/NewsLetters/ jan09.pdf. Dennis Driskill makes final calculations for grading the field. The crew responsible for laying the polymer runway surface. Dump trucks and graders … the stuff of nifty runways. Flying Site Assistance Wes De Cou | [email protected] Wes De Cou Coordinator Western Region AMA Districts VIII - XI 202 W. Desert Flower Ln., Phoenix AZ 85045 Voice: (480) 460-9466; Cell: (480) 296-9515 Fax: (480) 460-9434 E-mail: [email protected] Joe Beshar Coordinator Eastern Region AMA Districts I - VII 198 Merritt Dr., Oradell NJ 07649 Tel.: (201) 261-1281; E-mail: [email protected] Finding—Preserving—Maintaining Success Stories From AMA Expo 2009 March 2009 152 Three generations of Inland Slope Rebels members: Alex Maas, granddad Carl Maas, Wes De Cou, and Carl Maas, Jr. 03amanews:11amanews.qxd 1/26/2009 2:10 PM Page 152