Couple of quick points first:

1. Don't forget the work day this Saturday. We plan to start early at 7 AM to avoid the worst of the heat.

2. If you really love workdays, Atlanta RC is having one next Saturday, August 6th. They need some help as they are a small club, and their field was trashed by "protestors". Apparently the protest was unrelated to RC, but affected them nonetheless. I posted their letter to Slack #Random.

3. We have more donations to sell. We'll be taking photos and posting them Saturday.

Now for the runway, the short of it is the fund raising isn't happening, so time for a new plan. Read as far as you can, and please vote in the survey on the club website.

A fair number of people have been asking about updates to the runway plan, so here goes. I have some questions for the membership as well, so please read the whole text and submit a vote.

Fundraising for the runway went exceptionally poorly. I suspect our visitors from the park (the survey team) put a serious damper on the membership’s faith that the field would continue as an RC club. Of course, we’ve had visitors like that in the past, and nothing ever came of it. Our particular stretch of land is somewhat awkward to develop, and so we may well stay there for another twenty years. Of course, like any field that is rented or on park land, we might also be asked to leave tomorrow.

The condition of the runway is fairly bad, but not completely unusable yet. The edge of the runway is crumbling and the large cracks in the middle are a hazard for small wheels (< 2”). However, other than that, we obviously continue to use it with only a rare issue directly caused by it. In my humble opinion, those rare issues will continue to increase in frequency, and we should act as soon as possible to rejuvenate the runway. But, there is an argument for just leaving it be for now. In any event, as a club, we need to have a solid plan for when and how we deal with this.

My original hope was to have sufficient funds by about this time next year. Two things make that now seem out of reach. The fund raising / confidence failure means it would take a few more years. Add to that the recent economic turmoil and high inflation mean the costs will likely be significantly higher than expected by next year.

There are other options for dealing with the runway. Broadly speaking we could:

Return to a grass runway (not ideal given the types of airplanes most people at the club fly) As far as I know, this is too unpopular to consider. Though, most AMA clubs I’ve visited do use a simple grass strip.

We could spend money and improve the grass next to the runway as a backup, while continuing to stretch out the pavement as long as possible.

We could repair cracks and reseal (again, not ideal, because of the bad state of the runway, this would break down quickly - probably 12-24 months)

We could try fund raising again, but we’d probably need another $20,000 for a proper runway, so this seems very unlikely to me.

We could switch to a Geotex runway which is what our neighbor club Hilltop uses. There are some advantages and disadvantages here. On the plus side, we can afford it and if kicked off the field, we can roll it up and take it with us. (In the worst case, we’d donate it to Hilltop to either extend their runway or extend its life.) On the negative, it won’t last as long, based on Hilltop’s experience, it seems to last about ten years. Plus, it requires regular maintenance since crashes and bad prop strikes can leave tears in it.

We could just live with things on the runway as it is and spend money on other issues like tree removal or shelter improvements. (Of course, we’d need to check with park leadership to make sure we still have permission on that.)

I think that covers the current state of things. I think our choices boil down to the ones in section 4 above. I have posted a vote on the club website, so please make your opinion known. (Last time I asked for email responses, the response rate was really low.) If we choose tree removal or shelter improvements, I’ll likely post another poll for the priority of issues we could tackle. Depending on decisions, we could possibly afford more than one project.

With respect to the GeoTex, Hilltop is having a Summer event August 13th. If you’d like more information about GeoTex before deciding, I’d suggest you go to the event and check it out for yourself. Ask questions of their membership. RC Pilots love to talk about RC things.

Below are some cost estimates for various ideas above.

Ken

SMRCF

Crack Repair and Reseal:

Again, I can’t stress enough this is likely a waste of resources. Every pavement contractor I’ve talked to has said the same. Many years ago we hired Rose to do this. They only crack sealed about 60% of the runway as they didn’t bring enough material for our situation, and then did a quick reseal. If I recall correctly, their fee was around $2,000. Of course, they didn’t correctly estimate the scope of the problem and never finished. A better estimate would probably have been $3,500 back then, and probably $4-5,000 today. The runway was in very good shape (at least the 60% they covered) for about 18 months. However, all those cracks move, and the crack fill will quickly fail leaving us where we are now.

GeoTex:

Aeromodeling Geotextiles - Products - US Fabrics

Last I checked, we would need 4 rolls at about $2k a piece. ($1,200 per roll as of July 25, 2022 or total of $5,300 including shipping) The fabric can install over nearly anything, but good weed treatment and leveling seem like a good idea in addition to removing the current pavement. We’ve removed pavement in the area before for the truck track. It’s relatively easy with a Bobcat. Our pavement is actually surprisingly thin. The big expenses would probably include some sand delivery (prob $250 per dump, and just guessing but probably no more than 10 loads) and construction dumpsters for hauling off the old pavement. A construction dumpster runs around $600 per, I’m guessing we’d need two, but asphalt is recyclable and may be cheaper. (https://rolloffdumpsterdirect.secure.force.com/lpquote?wt=Construction&z=30047&_ga=2.101383816.887780778.1658763679-7060381.1658763679)

All in, we’ve estimated about $6,000 for prep work, which I view as conservative. This means this is a project we could start now. Though, I would submit for an AMA field improvement grant (up to 10% of the cost) and wait for the slow flying season around February of 2023.

The fabric would need replacing in about 10 years, but at that point, there should be very limited additional prep work required.

Adjacent Grass runway:

Similar to the Geotex, to get a really good adjacent runway suitable for smaller aircraft, we’d probably get some dirt or sand loads to level things off a bit better and run a roller over it.

Tree Trimming:

In the past, we simply hired a machine operator for a day (or two in one case), and they simply removed as many trees as possible in that time. Past areas did not include any large trees, so future passes may be higher cost as we may require a larger machine. Past prices were $1,550 per day. It has gone up to $1,650 per day as of July 25th, 2022. The current section that seems most popular is the South end of the runway. Since there is an elevation falloff just past the trees, we could easily remove enough to make that approach almost treeless. We can’t remove trees past the fence, but there are still plenty on this side of the fence on the North and South side that would make good candidates as well.

Shelter Extension:

We’ve always done shelter improvements ourselves. It requires about four or five volunteers with some construction experience and about $1,500 in materials. (Prices on the materials have likely increased though.)