By Quan Nguyen,
It’s been another fairly quiet month at the field. If you want to come down on weekends to get your flights in, there are plenty of gates available! We had good weather, with only one weekend where there was a nasty south wind that kept most of us grounded. The only safety issue I noticed several times was some members flying opposite the pattern when they are along the northern edge of the runway. If you want to go fast downwind, please keep it on the northern edge of the field, away from the runway. While the skies haven’t been too crowded, we still want multiple models to operate safely without risk of a mid-air collision.
I had a few reports of kite fliers on the northern end of field who get in the way of the flight line on the weekdays. On one occasion, Brad, Hoang, and I walked over to the shore when they were flying and very politely informed them that they were letting their kites fly too close to the field. We had some success in getting them to cooperate and reel it in. At our field, members have right of way over non-members intruding (deliberately or not) in our organized, city-sanctioned hobby. When you have people doing things that prevent you from flying safely (whether they fly a kite over the field, or walk across the field), you can bring two friends with you (safety in numbers) and inform the encroachers that they are in a model plane field.
On to more exciting news. The holiday committee and myself have been checking out some very nice venues for our winter banquet. Last year, we had about 120 attendees. This year, we are looking at booking a high quality venue that can hold up to 200 people for a sit down dinner. We hope to get as much attendance as possible from our 400+ members for this special gathering. Expect an announcement in the upcoming days as we confirm a venue.
-Quan
