The Fayette Flyers of Georgia NOW at http://fayetteflyers.com

 
The Fly Paper Monthly Radio Control info for Fayette County Georgia.

Remember : American Idol?? is that a New 3D airplane?

May 2004 Issue. Editor/ Webmaster Randy Hawkins - email ffly98@aol.com

From The President, David Keller 

 Field Status:     Not much has happened at the existing field over the last month.  In discussions that one of our members had with the workers on site, it appears that the developer is not going to start construction on the land with our airstrip until the end of the overall project.  Currently they are grading the land near Oakley Road to put in some town homes.  Next they will develop the area up near the McDonalds for business use ,  and last they are doing an office park in our area.  As a result it could be months or even the rest of the year before we lose access to the field.  However, because the access is open to the public we will not reinstall the frequency board or the portable toilet as we would have no ability to secure the area.  Despite this the field is very usable.

Field Search:     I have no further update on the lead that Ernie has been developing on a possible flying site.  Additionally we have not received tips on further sites to investigate since the last update. 

Joe Nall:    Several club members and former members participated in the 22nd Annual Joe Nall Fly-In at the Tripletree Aerodrome in Woodruff, SC (see list below).  This is an annual IMAA event held at the private airstrip of Mr. Pat Hartness.   He hosts this event each year for a few of his closest friends.  Actually there were just under 500 registered pilots this year and another 100 that registered to buy the BBQ tickets and get this year's litho plate.   The Joe Nall officially started with Registration on Tuesday afternoon and concluded on Saturday after the Matt Chapman full scale airshow.  Despite this published schedule people were showing up as early as the Saturday before and were still there on the Sunday following the event. 

The Joe Nall is our hobbies biggest annual fly-in and also its most hospitable social event.  In addition to plenty of flying,  there were demonstration flights by Team Futaba, Team Jr, Jason Schulman, and others.  Pat Hartness also had Jason and the folks at HACKER fly his latest creation, a 40% scale electric Extra 300 with enough power and batteries to climb straight up and fly for 30 minutes.  They only thing they lacked was a big enough propeller to efficiently use the $8,000 power system.  It appears the 33 x 13 prop was insufficient and they needed something a bit bigger.

The Joe Nall BBQ is the key social event of the Fly-In complete with live Blue Grass band, cold beer and soda, and all you can eat pork, beans, slaw and a 1/2 pound of shrimp.  This year's BBQ was expanded to 1150 tickets and completely sold out.  The individuals serving at the BBQ were the staff at the event and the members of Team JR and Team Futaba (TOC, Masters, and International champions of numerous countries).  All 1150 attendees were served in 30 minutes.

If you haven't had a chance to attend a Joe Nall you need to do so.  Its only 3.5 hours up the road and only open to AMA members to watch and AMA/IMAA members to fly.  The Tripletree Aerodrome is the closest thing to the perfect modeling field available.  Mr. Hartness purchased a 400 acre spread, installed a 50 acre lake for float planes, a 6000 foot grass strip for airplanes small to large, a hanger, bathroom and shower facility, and a 40' x 40'  gazebo to watch events from.  The actual runway for model airplanes is Tifton Bermuda that runs 300 to 400 feet deep by 1000 feet long.  This grass is cut at about 1/2" and is manicured like a golf course.  This field easily handled every type of airplane from Sopwith Pups to the latest high performance turbine powered jets.  The facility is even tiered to handle the 150 +  RVs that arrive each year.  In addition to the Joe Nall, the Tripletree Aerodrome hosts the Masters competition,  the Youth Masters, a jet event, and two Aero tow events. 

Over the three day event I saw the following club members or former club members in attendance.

Registered Pilots (combined we logged over 60 flights in four days)
Tom Huckaby, Henry "PeeWee" Maddox, Paul De Waard & David Keller.

There to watch  (there may have been others, but we didn't get to say hello):

Jeff Myers, Neal Hagley, Tom Whitehead, Bill Boro, Ernie Schlumberger, Ric Vaughn, Josh Thorner, David Parr

VP’s Corner by Ernie Schlumberger

Well it’s only 4 weeks until the 3rd annual Southeastern Electric Flight Festival or SEFF for short (June 17-20). It will be held at the Hodges Hobbies field in Americus again this year. We still need a few volunteers to help out at the event and it would be great to have more club members support the event. In addition to SEFF’s success as an event, it has also brought in a lot of money in the last two years for the club membership to use as it sees fit. If and when we find a new field, it will come in handy to help with the initial start up costs. It by no means will be enough to BUY a field, but it would pay a couple of years’ worth of leases.

The Fayette Flyers membership needs to volunteer to help keep this event going otherwise the few that do, may become burned out, that’s what happened to the KRC electric event that ran for 19 years and died. It later was picked up by another club and is now the NEAT Fair and is doing well. Volunteers are only asked to work 2-two hour shifts per day and will receive registration, a T-shirt and boarding. Contact an officer or Jeff Meyers to volunteer.

That being said, come on down to the event to have fun flying and take advantage of participating in the best raffle of any event. There were over $12,000 worth of RC equipment in the raffle. Several people won over $500 worth each. We also will have a large group of electric RC vendors selling their stuff at show prices. If you plan to buy any electric equipment this year, it would be worth the trip just to save some money and talk to some folks that use the stuff and know what to use.

There will be daily flight demos, hourly GWS drawings, Zagi combat, Soarstar Pylon races, Saturday night BBQ, Thursday Sailplane Contest and loads of open flying the rest of the weekend. We already have 150 pilots pre-registered and are likely to top 200 this year. Check out the link to SEFF on our home page. See you all at the event.

 

Fayette Flyers
Meeting Minutes for April

The meeting was called to order at 7:35PM.
There were 16 members and one guest in attendance.

Ernie Schlumberger stood in as acting president in David Keller's absence.

Dave Zeigler gave the treasury report and stated for the first time since he became the club treasurer there had been absolutely no activity over the month. The club balance stands at $18,689.00 .

A general field report was given by the officers and it has been agreed that Tommy Vinci should cut the field and after a short discussion with a foreman from the Knight Group it has been determined that we may the current field for longer than we had thought. Due to the nature of the development it could come to pass that we might be off at anytime, but that didn't look like it was going to be the case right now.

The search for a more permanent flying site is still underway. If anyone has any leads, please email David Keller. Also, if anyone is at the field
and sees any workers or damage done by the construction, please let a club officer know. We are trying to get a feel for how long we are going to be
at this location.

Jeff Meyers gave a SEFF update. The event is well on track to being bigger and better than ever. The vendor mall is full, and the pilot count is climbing. There is still room for volunteers, so contact Jeff if you would like to work
the event.

Tom Huckaby wanted to make sure that everyone got a copy of the AMA email concerning the LiPoly battery dangers. The AMA has the alert on their website.

Ernie gave everyone a reminder about the Joe Nall and King Peach events.

Tom Huckaby is canceling the Cub Event this year. Everyone should be receiving an email confirming this.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:55PM.