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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 |
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