2 things: Club Elections are up and coming and group airplane design project for our club.
I know it has been a long time since we have had a HAFFA club meeting. Our last meeting was in February. We had intended to have one in March but we had to cancel it due to the start of Covid19!
It has been rough eight months relative to dealing with covid-19. I want everyone to know I am thinking about you all. Our indoor flying season has started. Our outdoor summer flying sessions were a success. We even gained two new club members. I think our club members had a lot of fun being able to just show up and fly on warm Tuesday Evenings this last summer.
I would like to get some feedback from you all to come up with some ideas relative to how to keep our club together over the next few months while the various vaccine’s come to fruition and we can get back to normal.
One thing that seems to work at present… is that indoor model flying season has started and we have plenty of space in the gym…. to stay apart (social distance)…. when we are flying our airplanes. I know it is somewhat of a drive to Osawatomie but it gets you out of the house for a while. We did have to raise the price to $15 to cover the losses incurred last year. It costs us about $70 per session at Osawatomie Auditorium. (basically $500 per year)
At the same time…during this indoor flying opportunity… I do not want anyone to take this covid-19 lightly… as the latest statistics show the rate of infection has been increasing in the KC area. If you are flying in the auditorium building wear a mask!
We have an indoor session coming up this weekend on Sunday November 1st. (this is our chance to get together) I know it will probably be a while before we can conduct a normal business meeting at a library and even if we had the chance it would be a little bit unnerving to be inside an enclosed room all wearing our masks and trying to stay apart.
At some point I think this meeting could possibly happen though…. and perhaps we could get together. If we have a nice day…. possibly coming up in the next couple weeks we could even meet outdoors at the new park facility at 91st and Nall during the mid-afternoon outdoors. This new park has large brand new outdoor picnic table systems with large overhead protection….easy to park your car and walk to….. I know it is absolutely freezing today as I write this on October 27th.. but I am guessing we will get a few 60 or 70 degrees… yet days before the end of the year. Here is a link to that park.
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/meadowbrook-park-overland-park?select=PUKQFih7hVHmpgRRO8MhYg
Meadowbrook Park is large enough with some clear space we might even be able to do a little outdoor hand launch glider. Anyway I’m just thinking out loud I would appreciate any members comments.
There where several highlights for me this summer: The Sky Bunny contest….. it was more or less held on the spur of the moment on a Sunday last summer as part of a national contest. I enjoyed seeing Scott and his son Alex flying the Sky bunny together… they had built two of them. The other highlight that day was watching Mike Basta’s Sky Bunny hook a thermal and Fly Away. Also I enjoyed the picnic this year at Suman’s place. Lots of airplanes were flown that day. Dennis Baker launching his Jetstream glider at Suman’s place with a bungee was one of the best textbook examples of tow line glider should fly….. there were some perfect launches and Dennis had some excellent conditions for flying. I was glad just to see this Jetstream thing fly along with his E36 airplanes. Paul brought his huge electric RC Korda…Charlie Taylor brought CL, FF and RC stuff to fly. I regret not getting over to the control line circle with Dana, Suman and Charlie.
Also I noticed lots of people have been doing some building/flying this summer. I saw Jack Vetter had built the embryo class airplane from Volare models called the “GO DEVIL”. Jerry White had built and flew a PECK PRAIRE Bird that turned out beautiful. Charley Taylor had built one of the PECK PRAIRE Birds as well. I managed to get my Mr. Smoothie built. Dana ordered a supply of the new P1B Sky Voyager… our club members built a few of these as well. These P1B planes fly great. Suman built his P1B at the field….it flew really well…..so well it flew over the school building and was lost on the first flight….. Roie….Renz….and Field need to get their P1Bs tuned up for next spring. I am sure I missed other members build projects….let me know if I missed yours.
As we head into the end of the year I know our club will have elections coming up soon… we will need to establish who is running for officers. We will have to appoint a non-officer who is a club member to come up with a slate of potential officers in order to vote in December. So keep this in mind.
I am looking forward to some feedback from all of you. Some projects to keep our club together might be things like…. a group airplane design effort for a HAFFA Embryo….or HAFFA Bostonian…other club design….we could all sketch up some ideas and Mike Basta could draw it up for us. Another idea for 2021/2022 would be a HAFFA historical exhibit at the Linda Hall Library. This would be a project that would have to be professionally assembled in concert with the Linda Hall library staff and might take a lot of work…but might yield some great exposure to the general public to show the rich history of model airplanes in Kansas City over the last 80 years. If you have ever seen some of the exhibits at that library you will know what I am talking about.
Thanks Jeff renz
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