On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 11:05:05 -0500, Wallace Berry
wrote:

In article ,
Roger wrote:

Sorry if this shows up multiple times, but my (Charter's) news server
has gone screwey again.


We have some turf wars going on and it looks like the pilots may be
the losers.


It seems to me that these sort of problems occur on 100% of small
municipal airports here in the U.S. Almost always due to someone wanting
all the taxpayer subsidized marbles for themselves. Someone wants to be
the sole fuel supplier, the only FBO, the exclusive flight school on the
field. Doesn't matter that there are regs against "anti-competitive"
practices on government supported airports. The jerks who always want to
make "their" airfield and keep all the busines for themselves can't see
that activity begets activity. Put a fast food restaurant or gas station
out by itself. It will fail. Put it on a strip with a dozen others and
they all thrive.

Oh, and God help you if you are conspicuously having fun...

A bit of an update:

There was a meeting Tuesday evening between the Airport Advisory
Committee, City Attorney, Airport Manager, and pilots, for the pilots
to give their input. A very well attended meeting with near 90
pilots in attendance.

Our AOPA rep also had presented the AOPA's evaluation of the proposed
rules and some suggestions.
There were so many in attendance that most (all but one) of the
Advisory Committee wanted the pilots to form a committee as they
didn't think they could get anything done with that many people. One
commissioner stuck to his guns and after a bit of discussion pointed
out we'd already solved one issue (the ultra lights) and were half way
through the second (parachute activity) and it looked like the
interactive approach was working well. Sooo... They kept going.

Due to this meeting, they Advisory Commission voted to scrap the
separate rules for the ultra lights and treat them the same as other
planes are far as airport rules. The ultra light pilots pointed out
that they were not only proposing rules that were dangerous, but
requiring the ultra lights to do specific operations opened them up to
some big liability. The AOPA had said basically the same thing.

They also voted to streamline the rules pertaining to Jump (
parachute) operations to be inline with other airports.

We only made it part way through the hangar and land lease rules, but
it looks like progress is being made there as well.

They are setting up another meeting to finish up the lease/renting
rules and regs as well as general airport rules. We only got a little
way into the alcohol on the airport as well as camping issue. So far
I think we will end up in alignment with most other airports our size
who allow both camping and alcohol in the hangers.

They say camping is against the zoning, but they allow the spray crews
to camp on the field and it's allowed at the fair grounds which has
the same zoning. One pilot said he'd never seen any camping and I
said it was a relatively common thing. Just those who did it were a
bit on the discrete side. (When I was in the T-hangar one guy was
camped in there all summer - I never asked him whyG)

The gal that got so up tight about the tail dragger landing on a taxi
way while practicing emergency procedures should have been there
yesterday.

We have cop dusters in for Gypsy Moth control. They were taking off
on 6 and landing 24 while the rest of us were using 24 and it was a
busy day.

We'd kinda make a "Y" off the inbound end of 24 where the spray planes
would turn left and we'd be turning left onto final going in opposite
directions.

With the open dialog I don't think the FBO is going to be nearly as
successful in getting his way as he had thought. Many of the issues
he has been fighting were found to be pretty much "non issues", or not
problem issues. Of course we still have a long way to go and I doubt
we will be able to finish up in another two hour meeting.

With a light wind out of the South it's common for the tail draggers
and literalists to use 18 while the bigger and heavier high
performance stuff uses 06. That makes for an interesting pattern mix
which works fine unless some one starts a *long* down wind, or flys a
wide pattern for 18.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com