Club updates

A number of items to convey to the membership in this email:

1)  The Work Day scheduled for Saturday 8/17 has been rescheduled to September.

2)  The Monday afternoon meeting with Henry County Parks & Recreation leadership was attended by Vic and Murphy.   The primary purpose of this meeting was to present the club's firm plan to use the gate fence line as the southern most flight boundary on all days wherein base ball games are scheduled on the Red Hawk Baseball Complex. 

 

We also explained once again that the "hump" in the paved runway has forced our flight operations further south than we had originally planned and that it was the club's firm intention to correct this hump prior to the 2014 flying season even if the RC Club had to pay for it.  We explained that this was necessary to move our flight pattern back north to the original position using the paved runway as the flight pattern guide.  At this time, the Director of the Parks and Recreation Department indicated that the County has some funds remaining in their "Repair" budget that could be used for this purpose and they asked us when we could meet with them at the field to review the situation.  We told them that we would be at the field tomorrow morning (Tuesday) and after checking with some of their DOT counterparts they agreed to meet with us at 9:30 Tuesday morning.

 

This meeting took place on schedule with an engineer and production supervisor from the DOT and the Director of the Parks and Recreation Department and the Manager thereof.  We proceeded to the runway "hump" area and answered their questions as they examined different possibilities for the rework of our paved runway.  Bottom line was they agreed to remove the sunken area of the paved runway, fill in the underlayment and re-pave that section of the runway.  Then they discussed the top coating of the runway and agreed to put out for bid the top-coating of the full runway.  They then discussed the 97 foot overrun on the north end of the paved runway with cost estimates to pave it vs the possibility of smoothing it for grass.  The engineer said that it might be a long term situation to try to get a permit to pave additional area of the landfill.  We said we would be content if they could add fill dirt to smooth that area for the installation of grass sod. 

 

When they discussed scheduling of this rework, they indicated that cutting out the sunken area and re- paving it would be done within the DOT and therefore could be accomplished without delay while the top-coating would require putting it out for bids and would take longer. 

 

Bottom line........ We were very excited about the possible repair of the sunken area of the paved runway and even more excited about the fact that it could well be accomplished in the next two months. 

 

During the Monday afternoon meeting, the county presented us with an amended Red Hawk Baseball Complex schedule, so as this schedule becomes firm for the fall months, we will publish it and give copies to those attending the end of the month membership business meeting and also supply it on an email release. 

 

It is the firm intention of your club leadership to schedule an early September work day that will include some of the items needed to move the functional flight pattern north.  Such as:

1)  Fabrication and installation of two additional Pilot Flight Stations on the north side of the present north infield fence.  We will then have six pilot stations but only four may be used at one time.

2)  Fabrication and installation of two new starting tables to support the new  pilot stations.

3)  Install a new north safety fence. 

4)  Move the helicopter operations to the South end of the present infield. 

 

So, as you can see, lots of things happening at the field as we struggle to maintain the best interests of the membership.  Just imagine a top-coated smooth runway with no "hump" and pilots starting their takeoff run to the south at the north end of that runway.  It would be a different world and so much easier to provide a much larger safety zone for those using the base ball complex. 

 

Working hard to make it happen for the Henry County Radio Control Club and its members. 

 

JRM