An RC plane was picked out of the Willamette River on Wednesday, June
16. No name or telephone number appeared on the plane. I checked with
Eugene Toy & Hobby. A salesperson said he may know the owner but
doesn't know that person's name. Meanwhile, I wondered whether anyone
in your organization has reported a missing plane? If so, have that
person get in touch with me.
NOAA2
(This is a new link added to weather page. Much more detailed
info. Thanks for suggesting it Don)
This site offers a lot more detailed information than the
NOAA site you have linked….and I think to any other weax site.
Take a peek, I think you will agree….Don Hansen
5-30-10
Jim, please distribute this to as many people in the club as possible.
-Pat
---
Friends,
It is not a time to panic, but it is a time to plan. Before the
rumors
start to spread and get our of control, here is what happened:
I spoke with Mike Burgess today and he has been offered a great sum of
money for 70 of his 80 acres of property. The Federal Government
would
like to convert those 70 acres to wetlands and pay Mike $250,000 to do
so. Mike would still own the property and could hunt on it.
The affected area would not be able to be improved on or farmed.
Mike
said he does not plan to use our leased 2 acres as part of that plan;
however, it is possible that if he goes through with it, the Feds will
close down our field to avoid having our hobby
activities disturb the
wildlife. One of Mike's neighbors apparently does not like the
noise
of the airplanes, even though he is quite a ways away, but he may try
and influence the Feds in that direction.
If they decide to leave us be, the wetland area will receive a lot of
new trees, possibly some rather large ones. As you can imagine,
after
a few years, our flying site would become much less desirable.
So, our worst case scenario is that Mike sells the land and we get shut
down. This could happen within two years. Mike would then
buy us out
of the contract we have with him.
If we were allowed to stay, we would have only a few more years before
the trees would start to create problems for us. We don't know
how
close they would end up being to our runway, but I imagine they could
plant them wherever they want and we could have trees near our borders.
The best case scenario, of course, is that the deal won't happen and we
can continue flying through the end of our lease, (five more years) and
then hopefully renew it. I see this as unlikely given that it is
a
pretty large sum of money that is being offered to Mike.
This is not a time to be upset with Mike. He has to look out for
his
livelihood and his family's future, which is, and should be, a higher
priority to him than our flying field. If we can make it sweeter
to
keep us and keep us untouched in our current location, that would be
ideal.
Now, my friends, is the time to start taking some action. I have
some recommendations:
1 - We freeze all spending on field improvements and unnecessary
expenses, effective immediately.
2 - We all need to start looking for possible new flying sites in
preparation for the worst case scenario.
3 - We need to contact the AMA to see what their ideas are in this area
since they have a whole division devoted to saving existing flying
sites from this type of issue.
4 - We all need to put our heads together and start coming up with
solutions. We like this hobby way too much to abandon it
altogether.
5 - Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
If you want to discuss this with me, please give me a call or email
me. I'm as upset about this as you are, but I'm sure we can all
put
our heads together and keep this club going. We always have, and
we
always will.
Please refrain from talking to Mike individually and get him upset.
The club officers will dicuss with him the details of his offering and
communicate the information to the membership at the next
meeting.
Khoi
---
MARK GIESSEN wrote:
For what it's worth, the short mountain flying site was considered a
wet land as well.
There were a few Environmentalists trying to cause the club a little
grief and there also was a distant neighbor who complained about the
noise. As I recall none of these caused the loss of the short mountain
flying site. We angered the county when they expanded there land fill
cells and endangered their employees with poor flying practices (mainly
by flying toward operating machinery).
We can be a good steward near a wet land, we have done it before. A
little out reach to government
and neighbors may go along way.
---
In case of an
EMERGENCY
Call 911
ERCA Flying Field Is at 92560 Alvadore Rd Junction City, OR97448
