WOW!,
What a great and busy month it has been! We started off on the 7th with the first swap meet of the year hosted by the Weed Whackers club in Lakeside. I saw a lot of you there and a lot of interesting purchases have shown up at the field in the weeks since. Some amazing flyers – some not so much, but all of them fun.
Then on the 14th, we hosted the multi-rotor community for International Drone Day. The turnout was AMAZING! We had nearly 50 pilots show up with an incredible variety of flying machines. During our ” ALL-UP” at noon, we had 33 multi-rotors in the air at once – along with thousands across the country at the same moment. We fed nearly 250 hungry persons before having a great Raffle and finishing the event as scheduled around 2:00 PM. MANY THANKS to Jim Bonnardel for doing the legwork in gaining sponsors for the event who all donated prizes to the raffle. A total of $2,750 dollars’ worth of prizes were donated by local vendors, and we sold enough tickets to make up the clubs investment and add a few dollars to our coffer towards future prizes! The 21st saw another swap meet / estate sale at Franks house to raise funds for the Alliant indoor site. If you use the indoor facility routinely, make sure you state so in an e-mail to Jim and myself so we know who you are and it is easier to discuss Alliant funding in the future. Also on the 21st was another installment of the Electro-glide competition. There were some great thermals and some impressive scores posted by participants. We are still hoping for someone to voluntarily take the torch from Jim and run this monthly event. Jim has done it for the last 6 years and would like to actually FLY in it for a change. If no one steps up, Jim will implement some changes starting the next electro-glide on Apr 18th, please stand by…
As usual the 4th Saturday of the month will be our club meeting and fun fly event. This month’s event will be the Poker Fun Fly. I encourage everyone with a flying machine to participate. All types of flyers as long as its RC (no kites or paper airplanes…). This is a club favorite as our oldest flyer has the same chance to win as the youngest – as long as they fly a couple of times! Following the fun fly will be the club meeting, during which we will be voting to fill a member at large seat on the board of directors that was vacated by the exit of Ray Fulks – Then lunch will be served.
Some last notes about happenings at the field: Guests can fly with a sponsor at our field as long as they have a valid AMA card. If they are not an AMA member, the only way they can fly is in a buddy box configuration in which the club sponsor (AMA member ) controls the “master” radio. BOTH sponsor and guest must sign the guest log. Guests can fly 3 times in a calendar year – then will be required to join the club to continue flying at our site.
If you sponsor a guest, YOU must be familiar with and instruct your guest on our field rules. Recently there was a guest Heli pilot flying 3D at the main flight line with members. I’m not sure who his sponsor was – the guest was the only one that signed the guest log. When asked to fly from the heli-pad he argued that he had “been told” that he could fly 3d as long as he was over the edge of the grass. This is not the case and he was asked to move to the heli-pad or stop.
Finally, the use of tobacco products is heavily discouraged in all publically accessible areas of Mission Bay (including our field). The smokers have been asked, and are doing their thing out in the parking area, but the chewing tobacco users have been slipping under the radar. It is REAL VISIBLE when you spit and hook out a finger full of chewing tobacco directly onto the carpet in the pit area. The same area where people let their young children play, and the rest of us kneel periodically to work on our models. NASTY!!! Dispose of the waste into the asphalt grindings or please don’t use it at our site!
See you next month!!
Brad
